How to live: A manual of hygiene for use in the schools of the Philippine islands

by Adeline Knapp

QUESTIONS.

What is thirst?

What is the proportion of water in the body?

What is the purest sort of water we have?

How does water become unfit for drinking?

How may it be purified and made fit to drink?

How should drinking water be kept?

CHAPTER III.
ABOUT FOOD.

Shall we go to market to-day? Let us go to one of the large new buildings that the government has put up in Manila, to be used as markets. They are well fitted for this purpose. They have cement floors, which can be washed every day, and clean, well-built stalls, where goods are sold. The floor of a market should be washed often, and every bit of waste matter should be carried off. If this is not done faithfully, the food sold there spoils and becomes unfit for use.

A Badly Arranged Market.

What quantities of fruit! It would take a long time to count all these bunches of bananas. The mangoes are in season now, and look very tempting. It is not well to eat too many of them at the beginning of the season, however, and we should be sure that those which we do eat are ripe and sound. Unripe fruit is very hurtful, and so is fruit which is too ripe, which has begun to decay. Some of these bananas, for instance, are so black and so soft that no one should think of trying to eat them. In some countries a merchant who tried to sell such fruit would soon find himself stopped from selling any fruit at all. The law would not allow him to offer poison for sale, and decayed fruit is poison.

We will buy some of these sound, clean-looking bananas, and a few oranges this morning. We will choose oranges that are of a fine, rich green, not too hard, but firm and of good weight. Oranges that feel light in the hand are dry and not wholesome.

Here are radishes and lettuce, for salad; but if we buy these, we must be sure that they are well washed in boiled water before we eat them. There are little creatures, so small that they cannot be seen without a strong microscope, that live among the lettuce and other green leaves. These tiny creatures are the cause of the worst form of dysentery. All sorts of vegetables which we eat raw should be washed clean, and it is of no use to wash them in unboiled water, as the amœba (which is the little creature’s name) may be in that, too.

We need camotes to-day, and here are some fine ones. We will not buy them, however. Why? Do you not see that some one has been chewing betel nut, and has spit close beside them, and the camotes are all spattered with the red stain?

It is a terrible thing that not even our markets can be kept clean from this bad habit of so many people. In some parts of the world the man who spit upon the sidewalk, the floor of a car, or in any public building would be arrested and taken to prison. This may seem to some a hard punishment for what many people think is a small offense. We know, however, that many diseases are caused by this practice, and the man who willfully does anything which puts his fellows in danger from disease does as great wrong as he who endangers their lives in any other way.

Many people have catarrh, bronchitis, and consumption; all such diseases can be given to others in this way. The air can become poisoned, so that other people catch the disease. People in older countries have learned that if sick persons are careless about spitting in public places, they often endanger the lives of others; so it is quite right to compel all to stop this bad habit and to punish them if they continue in it.

Constant spitting is a bad habit in other ways. The saliva is meant to help digest the food. If one gets into the senseless habit of spitting all the time, the saliva is wasted and the digestion hurt. Then, too, it is an uncleanly habit. It makes floors and sidewalks filthy, and people who have been well brought up always have a feeling of disgust when they see any one spit in public places. If one must spit, he should do so in private, where no one need be disgusted by his act. Certainly no one who has regard for decency would ever spit upon the floor of a market.

We should make sure that all vegetables which we buy are fresh and in good condition. Food the least bit decayed should never be eaten. It is very dangerous in this climate, where people are more likely than in colder countries to have trouble of the stomach and bowels. Not even cooking will make decayed vegetables fit to eat. The poison in them irritates the lining of the food canal and makes us sick. Besides, there is very little nourishment in poor vegetables; so that if they are eaten, the blood gets thin and cannot feed the body.

Now that we have fruit and salad, we will buy some camotes and gabi, and some squash, here at this stall where everything seems so clean. Some tomatoes, too, but we will not buy any of the beans to-day; they seem soft and flabby, and we may be sure that they are not fresh.

Meat? Yes, by and by; but we shall do better to get that elsewhere. It is bad for meat to lie in the open air as it does here. Meat should be killed at least twenty-four hours before it is eaten, and if it is kept so long, it must be on ice. Otherwise, it spoils in a very few hours. Meat should never be left where flies can light on it, and you see that the meat here is covered with flies.

A Market as it should be.

Flies are great carriers of disease, and often take germs from place to place on their feet. Some of these flies may have just left places where there is fever or cholera, or smallpox, and they can easily leave the germs of these diseases on the meat where they next alight. So you see we should be very careful where we buy meat, and what sort we buy.

There is plenty of poultry in the market to-day,—chickens, ducks and pigeons, all alive, and dealers all anxious to sell. If we buy a chicken, we should get it home as carefully as we can, and it should be allowed to rest and get over its fright before it is killed. Then it should be killed as quietly and quickly as possible, as otherwise the meat will be feverish and bad for food. It should be killed some hours before it is needed for food, so that the flesh may cool. To kill it just before cooking, as is almost always done in this country, is a very bad custom, as flesh so killed is not wholesome.

Here are the fish stalls; and here are the fish, most of them alive and flopping about. Fish caught in the river should not be bought unless they are alive; fresh-water fish spoil so quickly that unless alive when bought, they are not likely to be fit for food. Deep-sea fish may be bought dead, and are safe to eat if the gills are bright red and the scales clean and shiny. If the gills look dull and bluish, we should never think of buying the fish; for it has been out of the water too long. Crabs and other shellfish should always be bought alive, unless they are already cooked and frozen, as we see them in the cold storage house. Then they must be kept on ice until they are made ready for the table. But under the very best circumstances shellfish should be sparingly used in this country, as they are the cause of much trouble of the digestion.

We will buy some rice to-day, but we must look at it carefully first. Good rice is clean and white. It is free from mold, and there should be no musty smell about it. If it has any such smell, we will not buy it, for it is unfit for food. It ought not to be fed, even to the chickens. Moldy and dirty rice is a common cause of the disease called beri-beri, which is so often fatal in tropical countries.

Many people are not prudent about selecting and cooking their rice. They are careless and often buy musty rice, nor do they cook it long enough. They eat it half cooked, and many people like it a little burned. Prepared this way the rice is hard to digest, and is irritating to the system and to the food canal.

A grown man who is well and strong needs a certain amount of food every day, to keep him in health. The body requires water, fat, sugar, and albumen, and some mineral salts. Albumen is a substance rich in food for the body, of which it makes up a large part. The white of egg is almost pure albumen, and therefore eggs are very good for food. Milk, which is the only food very young babies should have, contains all the things which the body needs, and in just the right quantities. It has water, sugar, fat, albumen, and some mineral matter. Meat has albumen and fat, but no sugar, and fish is similar to meat in this respect.

Most of the sugar we take into the body we really eat in the form of starch, but the saliva in the mouth turns the starch into sugar. The secretions of the liver do this also. Rice is a starchy food. It contains a great deal of starch, and before we eat it, it should be well cooked, so that it is soft enough to be acted upon by the saliva and turned into sugar; otherwise, the liver has all this work to do. Corn, potatoes, meal, bread, are all starchy foods, and we get with them nearly all of the mineral substances needed; but to most of our food we need to add a little salt.

Bananas and other fruits, when they are ripe, all have sugar, and in this country people are fortunate in having the sugar cane to eat. If one does not eat too much of this, it is pleasant and wholesome, and it is very good for the teeth; it makes them white and keeps them healthy.

Besides what he takes in with his solid food, a man should drink three pints of water a day. If he drinks tea or coffee he will get some water with these, and so will not need so much, but three pints of liquid are needed daily to keep the body well. People in this country drink also the sap of the cocoanut tree and the water contained in the cocoanut itself. These are both good and wholesome, when fresh. But if they are not fresh, they can do much harm. Why this is we shall see in another chapter.

People who live in the tropics need less fat than those in colder countries. Away in the frozen north the Esquimaux eat great quantities of fat meat and oil, and even tallow, from which candles are made. They need much fat to keep them warm. In the tropics, on the other hand, people should eat but little fat. Lean meat is good, especially beef, but pork raised here is very unwholesome. The pigs themselves eat all manner of unclean things. They are the natural scavengers of the country, and the food which they eat makes their flesh unfit for us.

The flesh of the carabao is not so good as beef. It gives really very little nourishment, and is tough and dry. The mutton which is grown in these islands is not so good as it might be if more pains were taken. Sheep ought to be shorn twice a year, not only for the value of the wool, but because it adds to the comfort of the sheep and makes the flesh better. Dry and salt meats are of little value here, and they spoil quickly.

The fish of the Philippine Islands are rich in albumen, which the body needs. They should always be fresh, as we have seen, and should always be eaten hot. Even cooked fish, after it has grown cold, is not good for food. It is likely to produce skin diseases and certain kinds of poisoning. Many of the shellfish cause this disease also, particularly the crabs of these islands. In fact, shellfish should all be used sparingly, as they are not easy to digest and are often the cause of diarrhœa and dysentery.

Babies and very young children ought to be fed carefully in this country. Yet frequently we see tiny babies eating fish and meat, and often raw vegetables and green fruit. The stomachs of such little children are very small and weak. Their natural food is milk, and if we give them anything else than this, we should choose it very carefully. It should be the best that we can get, perfectly clean, and easy to digest. Not until people are more careful about these matters will the children in the islands have a fair chance to grow up to healthy manhood and womanhood.