I saw this last week, near the British Museum. It’s part of University College, London. Why “Hygiene & Tropical Medicine”, what’s the connection? London School of Hygiene is a terrible, Orwellian name. I see a reeducation centre, prisoners in white masks scrubbing floors after having been found thinking naughty thoughts about the tropics.
A Bad Guide 
WKPD seems to simplythat “Hygiene” efffectively means Public Health. Since people nowadays confuse Public Health with the health of any member of the public, there might even be an advantage to the old term.
And keeping people and public spaces clean was good for the hygiene, not hygiene in and by itself.
Are those greenish stains mould? I would have thought algae.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t look very hygienic. Alexander Fleming’s office at St Mary’s Hospital – that was covered with mould. It must be a London thing.
Apparently the cleaner needs a higher ladder…
Yeah, well, while waiting for that ladder they could be scrubbing the steps.
¡jajaja!
Yes, I saw the steps right after I sent my comment
Seen in a field this morning: thirty six goats. Maybe there were more in the adjacent huts. We didn’t have a camera with us, alas.
This word “hygiene” does have overtones, doesn’t it?
I have the impression that in some US schools there used to be something called hygiene class. Sort of practical biology? How to stay healthy, and also where babies come from?
But in the US now “hygiene” seems to come up most often in connection with the care of teeth. A dentist’s assistant is a dental hygienist. Oral hygiene.
But you seem to be thinking of moral hygiene, Crown.
I’m always thinking of moral hygiene.
At least you don’t go to sleep counting goats.
Thank goodness there no such thing as Moralhygiene. Hygiene merely means personal health and/or cleanliness.
Speaking of moral hygiene, Nietzsche invented the wonderful terms Moralin and Moralinsäure: “moralic acid”, like vinegar a household product used by upright citizens to disinfect their environment, ridding it of non-upright citizens.
Surely hygienic means clean in the sense of germ-free. It’s only healthy indirectly. Leaches and seaweed and mud baths are sometimes healthy, but I wouldn’t call them particularly hygienic.
Now someone’s going to tell me how incredibly hygienic they are.
Cleanliness is next to godliness – but not too close.
It’s a poor library that has cleanliness next to godliness.
Definition of “hygiene” from Webster’s 1913 via Wordnik:
That department of sanitary science which treats of the preservation of health, esp. of households and communities; a system of principles or rules designated for the promotion of health.
This could include recommending the obliteration of germs, or the judicious application of seaweed, or even the exposure of children to dirt in moderate amounts for the development of the immune system.
Did you know that in Sao Paulo (Brazil) there’s a quarter or area (a very fine one) called “Higienopolis”?
It sounds very funny in Spanish because we call toilet paper “papel higiénico” and this place sounds like this… a toilet paper quarter
London School of Toilet Paper, then. No, I hadn’t heard of Higienopolis. Thanks Julia, that’s really made my day.
Ø, I don’t know about in 1913, but wouldn’t it sound perverse today to describe exposing children to dirt, in order to benefit their immune systems, as “hygienic”? I’d be more likely to describe it as unsanitary and unhygienic, no matter how it affects their health.
I think that the name of the institution in London means something like “School for Promoting the Survival of Those Who Get Posted to Far-flung Parts of the Empire”.
That sounds right – why didn’t they just say so in the first place. The mould or mold or algae may be a recent development but it is quite Indiana-Joneslike.
Indiana Jones and the Portal of Slime
But try googling “algae facade”.
Ooh, I want some algae facades!
Actually, didn’t Biggles have a friend called Algae? I wonder if he introduced him to Indiana Jones.