Both Uses of
hygiene
in
Atlas Shrugged
- With all of their noisy devotion to the age of science, their hysterically technological jargon, their cyclotrons, their sound rays, these men were moved forward, not by the image of an industrial skyline, but by the vision of that form of existence which the industrialists had swept away-the vision of a fat, unhygienic rajah of India, with vacant eyes staring in indolent stupor out of stagnant layers of flesh, with nothing to do but run precious gems through his fingers and, once in a while, stick a knife into the body of a starved, toil-dazed, germeaten creature, as a claim to a few grains of the creature's rice, then claim it from hundreds of millions of such creatures and thus let the ri†
Chpt 3.5unhygienic = not clean; or not promoting healthstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unhygienic means not and reverses the meaning of hygienic. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- Somewhere, he thought, there was this boy's mother, who had trembled with protective concern over his groping steps, while teaching him to walk, who had measured his baby formulas with a jeweler's caution, who had obeyed with a zealot's fervor the latest words of science on his diet and hygiene, protecting his unhardened body from germs-then had sent him to be turned into a tortured neurotic by the men who taught him that he had no mind and must never attempt to think.†
Chpt 3.6 *
Definition:
practices promoting the prevention of illness and maintenance of health -- such as cleanliness or promoting sanitary conditions