Three people voluntarily slept on the mattresses for one night.

Siftings from the straw were applied to the arm, under all of which circumstances the rash quickly developed, showing conclusively the relation of the straw to the disease.
Thirdly, siftings from the straw and mattresses which had been thoroughly disinfected failed to produce the rash.
And fourthly, careful inspection of the siftings of the straw disclosed living parasites, small mites, which when applied to the skin quickly produced the characteristic eruption.
SANITATION WHEN the thoughtful historian gets far enough away from the nineteenth century to see it as a whole, no single feature will stand out with greater distinctness than the fulfilment of the prophecy of Descartes that we could be freed from an infinity of maladies both of body and mind if we had sufficient knowledge of their causes and of all the remedies with which nature has provided us.

Sanitation takes its place among the great modern revolutions--political, social and intellectual.
Great Britain deserves the credit for the first practical recognition of the maxim salus populi suprema lex.

In the middle and latter part of the century a remarkable group of men, Southwood Smith, Chadwick, Budd, Murchison, Simon, Acland, Buchanan, J.W.Russell and Benjamin Ward Richardson, put practical sanitation on a scientific basis.

Even before the full demonstration of the germ theory, they had grasped the conception that the battle had to be fought against a living contagion which found in poverty, filth and wretched homes the conditions for its existence.