HEALTH TEACHING IN TOWNS AND VILLAGES.
RURAL HYGIENE.
BY FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
I have been pressed to write a paper, for the Leeds Conference of Women Workers, on Rural Health and Rural Health Missioners; and, though sorely entangled by pressing matters, I am the more anxious to do so because of the great attention which many ladies seem to be giving to the subject, and which appears to be spreading not only West but East. In two of the provinces of wide India it has been asked whether something could not be done there by instructed native Lecturers, who were also to go round the village showing the people on the spot where to put their refuse, how to keep their water-supply pure, &c., &c. And in one of these provinces the Lecturers were to be seconded by instructed native women visiting and teaching health habits to the village poor native women in their own homes. And the true word has been spoken: What can be done for the health of the home without the woman of the home?
Let not England lag behind—especially not in the conviction that nothing can be done without personal friendship with the women to be taught. It is a truism to say that the women who teach in India must know the languages, the religions, superstitions, and customs of the women to be taught in India. It ought to be a
