A proper attention to cleanliness is no where more necessary than on shipboard. If epidemical distempers break out there, no one can be safe. The best way to prevent them, is to take care that the whole company be cleanly in their clothes, bedding, &c. When infectious diseases do break out, cleanliness is the most likely means to prevent their spreading; it is likewise necessary to prevent their returning afterwards, or being conveyed to other places. For this purpose, the clothes, bedding, &c. of the sick ought to be carefully washed, and fumigated with brimstone. Infection will lodge a long time in dirty clothes, and afterwards break out in the most terrible manner. In places where great numbers of sick people are collected together, cleanliness ought to be most religiously observed. The very smell in such places is often sufficient to make one sick. It is easy to imagine what effect that is likely to have upon the diseased. In an hospital or infirmary, where cleanliness is neglected, a person in perfect health has a greater chance to become sick, than a sick person has to get well. Few things are more unaccountable than that neglect, or rather dread of cleanliness, which appears among those who have the care of the sick; they think it almost criminal to suffer any thing that is clean to come near a person in a fever, for example, and would rather allow him to wallow in all manner of filth, than change the least bit of his linen. If cleanliness be necessary for persons in health, it is certainly more so for the sick. Many diseases may be cured by cleanliness alone; most of them might be mitigated by it; and, where it is neglected, the slightest disorders are often changed into the most malignant. The same mistaken care which prompted people to prevent the least admission of fresh air to the sick, seems to have induced them to keep them dirty. Both these destructive prejudices will, we hope, be soon entirely eradicated. Cleanliness is certainly agreeable to our nature. We cannot help approving it in others, even though we should not practice it ourselves. It sooner attracts our regard than even finery itself, and often gains esteem where that fails. It is an ornament to the highest as well as the lowest station, and cannot be dispensed with in either. Few virtues are of more importance to society than general cleanliness. It ought to be carefully cultivated every where; but in populous cities it should be almost revered[48]. CHAP. IX. OF INFECTION.