ABSTRACT
It is fashionable to praise the superior civic virtues of the Middle Ages, and on some sides of life medieval civic economy perhaps surpassed the modern, but on the side of cleanliness and convenience such economy can scarcely be said to have existed. In many respects the towns of the Middle Ages were rural communities and, just as the politics of their citizens were often largely concerned with grazing rights and common fields, so the sanitary habits of backward rural communities continued almost unquestioned in their midst. The idea that practices which might be comparatively harmless in a small isolated hamlet, were absolutely fatal to health in a town, was of course totally beyond the ken of their inhabitants. The primitive sanitary regulations of medieval towns had arrayed against them that unanimous popular disapproval, manifested by a dogged and persistent passive resistance, against which the strongest government beats itself in vain.
