Climate and Health in Hot Countries and the Outlines of Tropical Climatology: A Popular Treatise on Personal Hygiene in the Hotter Parts of the World, and on the Climates That Will Be Met Within Them.Giles, George Michael James
Science
Climate and Health in Hot Countries and the Outlines of Tropical Climatology: A Popular Treatise on Personal Hygiene in the Hotter Parts of the World, and on the Climates That Will Be Met Within Them.
Giles, George Michael James
Hygiene -- Popular works; Medical climatology; Tropical medicine
From what has been said, it will be obvious that it is perfectly easy to
suggest measures for the prevention of cholera which may be trusted to
be perfectly effectual. The only difficulty lies in carrying them into
practice. Practically, all that is required is to protect all supplies
of drinking water by covering in wells and fitting them with pumps. But
the mere expense of doing so is often beyond the means of the community,
and when the pumps have been fitted, there is no one available to keep
them in order; so that after a very short period they become useless,
and the old infection-carrying bucket and string must needs be reverted
to. Nor is it by any means easy to protect one’s own supply, as
strangers have a free and easy way of making use of their neighbours’
wells, whether rich or poor. Nor can one’s native servants be trusted
either to prevent this or to employ for drawing water a single vessel
set apart for the purpose, for being unable to comprehend the reasons
for such precautions, they naturally regard them as merely troublesome
fads on the part of their employer, to be observed only when he chances
to be looking on.
On this account the cardinal precaution of personal hygiene is to drink
only water that has been boiled, and to see it boiled oneself. Every
housewife knows that even European servants are often singularly obtuse,
or neglectful, in recognising when water has actually come to the boil;
and that to be certain of the perfection of the domestic cup of tea she
must satisfy herself that the water is actually in a state of ebulition.
Nor are such precautions onerous or troublesome. Orders should be given
that the portable charcoal stove should be brought into the verandah and
that the water should be boiling at the time of some meal, when the
master of the house necessarily passes through on his way to table;
preferably that of late dinner, so that the water may have all night to
cool in, and so be ready for the next day’s consumption. The boiling
water should be poured directly into the vessels, porous or otherwise,
in which it is to stand, and put aside in some place sheltered from
dust. They should not be filled too full, as after they have cooled it
is desirable to shake the water violently so as to re-aerate it, and so
remove the insipid taste which the water has acquired, owing to its
dissolved air having been expelled during the boiling process. The still
boiling water may generally be trusted to sufficiently sterilise the
containers, but it is perhaps well, as an additional precaution, to boil
them occasionally in a large cauldron. Above all, do not filter; but
trust to settlement. Ordinary filters are perfect germ-traps, while all
varieties of the Pasteur filter are slow in action and apt to get out of
order. Added to this, their rubber connections may leak without our
being aware of it, and even when in their most perfect condition, they
afford a protection but little superior to that given by boiling, so
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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