QUESTIONS.
Why is fruit that is too ripe unfit to eat?
How do we select oranges that are fresh and good?
Why should we be careful to wash all fruit and vegetables before we eat them?
Why is spitting in public places a filthy habit?
How may it be dangerous to others?
Why should meat not hang in the open air in tropical countries?
How do flies carry disease?
Why is it injurious to eat meat that has just been killed?
Why is it not a good plan to buy dead fish?
Why are crabs and shellfish a poor sort of food?
What does good rice look like?
What kinds of rice should be avoided?
What sort of food and drink are best for the tropics?
How ought babies and young children to be fed?
CHAPTER IV.
ALL AROUND THE HOUSE.
The English people have a saying: “Every man’s house is his castle.” In his own house a man ought to be safe, if he is to be so anywhere, and there he ought to feel sure that his family is safe. With his strong right arm he will keep all enemies away; will fight, if need be, for the safety of his castle. It would be a very mean man who would not do this. We should think even a child a coward who did not help to defend his home. But while we defend the front door, we must not let enemies creep in at the back. Now, the deadliest enemy of human life in the tropics is dirt. We have to fight hard against dirt of every sort. Let us see, to-day, about building a house and keeping our enemy out of it.
Every country must have its own particular kind of a house. The house suitable for a cold country would not do at all in the country where we are now. We do not need walls built so as to keep out cold and winds. We have no use for fires to fight off frost and chill. But houses in countries where the winters are cold and snowy must have thick walls; they must have carpets on the floors and heavy curtains at the windows. There must be fires in the houses, to keep people warm. If the houses were not warm, people would suffer from cold and many would die.
Nevertheless, while they do not need to be built for warmth, our houses in the tropics ought to be as carefully built as are the homes in winter lands. That they are not so built is one reason why so many little children die here,—many more than in America, for instance.
An Unhealthful Street.
Without pavement or gutters.
First of all, since we are to build a house, we must have a good place for it. We will not build on low land if we can help it. Neither will we build near standing water. We see a great many houses upon land that is almost always wet, but they are very unhealthful for the people who have to live in them. If our house is to be a healthful place for us, we must build it on firm land that is well drained. Some day the whole city of Manila, within the walls, will have to be raised several feet higher than it is at present, to get it far enough above the low, unhealthful land it now stands on. The streets must be made wider, too, so that the sun can shine upon the house walls. The narrow streets are nearly always damp and unhealthful. Manila will never be a healthy place until these things are done.
But outside of the walls, and in the country, we can pick our plots and prepare our building sites. The fine, beautiful house and the little nipa cottage can be equal in one respect; that is, both can have clean, healthful surroundings.
The living-rooms of houses in this country should never be close to the ground. The land on which a house stands should be well drained and kept dry. This, however, is not all that should be done to prepare a building spot. In tropical countries bad gases rise from the earth at night, and we should do what we can to prevent these from getting into the house. The ground where the house is to stand should be dug down at least a foot and filled in with hard cement. This will keep it dry and prevent the earth-gases from rising through the floors. Besides this foundation, the house should have cement gutters running all around it, to carry off surface water. The foundation walls should rise from the cement bottom to a height of at least six feet.
The ground floor may be used as a place to store carriages, furniture, and other things of that sort; but it is unsafe to keep horses or other animals there. All the bad odors and gases from these rise, making the living rooms above unhealthful.
The first floor of our house,—the floor on which we mean to live, should be tightly built, so as to keep out all drafts of air, and to leave as few cracks as possible for insects to crawl through. We shall get fresh air enough if we have large windows that open freely.
We are fortunate, in this country, in having the beautiful thin shells with which our window sashes are filled. These are much better here than glass would be. They shut out the bright rays of the sun, while they can be pierced with tiny holes, if need be, to let in air when the window is closed. Heavy shutters with slats are also good. If we have these in the house, the windows may be open, even at night, or when it rains.
The roof of our house is a very important part. Most of the roofs in this country are of nipa or bamboo. These make a good protection against the sun’s rays, but they need great care, and should be often renewed, as the wind tears them so that they become leaky. They catch and hold the dust, and are always hatching-places for all sorts of insects. The roof of split bamboo is cheap, beautiful, and easy to make, but it is also easily blown away by a high wind. If we use it, we must fasten it with wire to the rafters and walls.
Wood makes a very bad roofing material. It decays quickly and is a poor protection against the rain. Then, too, it can hardly be built so that a great wind will not blow it away. Many roofs are now built of zinc, and for some reasons this is good material to make them of. If we have a zinc roof, however, we must build a garret between it and the living rooms,—a sort of air chamber for the sake of coolness; for when the sun beats down on the zinc roof, the metal gets very hot. This sort of roof is useful for catching rain water; after the first rain has washed off all the dust and dirt, then we may collect the rain water that falls from the roof into our cisterns, and have a plentiful, pure supply during the rainy season.
In early days roofs were covered with half-round red tiles. We see a great many of them still on old houses, but they are heavy, and dangerous as well during the typhoons and earthquakes that sometimes visit us.
Perhaps the best of all roofs for this climate are the ones covered with flat, broad pieces of slate, secured by wire or nails to boards and rafters underneath, but roofs of this sort are expensive. It will probably be best, therefore, for us to roof our house with zinc. If we have an airy garret between it and the ceiling of the upper rooms, it will be quite cool enough.
The rooms in our house will be very simple. We shall not have any heavy, stiff carpets on the floors, to catch dust and breed disease. Nor shall there be moldings or ornamental ledges along the walls, because these also catch and hold the dust. Our rooms shall be easy to keep clean. What pictures and ornaments we have on the walls shall be such as can readily be reached and dusted. A room so decorated that it cannot be kept free from dust and dirt cannot possibly be beautiful.
The kitchen of a house anywhere should be clean as can be, but particularly in this country. It should be on the north side of the house if possible, for the sake of shade. We will not, however, have trees growing very near it, even to shade it. They have a saying in the tropics that “He who grows a tree against his house invites death to his door.” This means that dampness and shade made by the trees growing too near the house breed disease and often bring death. So we shall have no trees nearer our house than twenty feet.
Nor shall any one be allowed to sleep in our kitchen. It is a very unhealthful and uncleanly custom to let the servants sleep in the kitchen. There should be no sleeping in a room where food is prepared. By morning the air of a sleeping room is always charged with bad matter given off from the lungs of the sleepers. Sleeping rooms have a chance for ventilation during the day, and all these vapors are replaced by pure air. But there is no time in the morning to change the air of the kitchen. The food must be prepared in the midst of all the bad gases that have gathered there during the night.
This brings us to think of what proper sleeping arrangements should be. Not enough attention is given to the subject in this country. The nights are so hot that people are careless. Many grown people and nearly all children sleep on or close to the floor. This custom is a great source of sickness. If the floor is of bamboo, the bad air from the earth rises through it at night. There is always a draft across the floor, from doors and from windows, and from spaces in the floor itself. When we are asleep the body is relaxed, the pores of the skin are open, and we are in every way less able to resist chills and the bad effects of impure air. Sleep is a condition of helplessness, and we should protect ourselves in it.
A serious cause of disease, which people are just beginning to understand, is the mosquito. We have only lately come to know that this insect is the direct cause of the malaria which is so common, and so dangerous, here. Malaria is a germ disease. That is, it is a disease caused by germs which get into the blood. The germ of malaria is a parasite which lives on the body of the mosquito. We can imagine how tiny it must be when we know that a great many of them find room to live on a single mosquito.
Now, when the mosquito lights on a person and bites him, these germs often get into the little puncture which the insect makes to draw blood. In this way they get into the blood of the human being, and there they increase in numbers very fast. They poison the blood, the person becomes sick and weak, suffers from headache and other pains, and very often dies at last of malaria.
We may learn from these facts how important it is that mosquito nets should be used in this country. Even if a person sleeps upon the floor, he should arrange some sort of protection from the mosquitoes.
Every morning, the floors of our house must be washed with water in which we have put a little kerosene oil; one or two large spoonfuls of oil will be enough for a bucket of water. We should see that the washing is carefully done. This washing with kerosene will help to keep mosquitoes away. It also tends to drive out ants and other small insects. Kerosene oil is cleansing, and helps to kill many of the germs that breed in corners and cracks. If it is poured upon standing water, it will prevent mosquitoes from breeding there. One ounce of kerosene will spread out over fifteen square feet of water, and this fact is made use of in some countries in getting rid of mosquitoes. It may be spread over the surface of the water in cisterns without imparting any taste to the water which is drawn from below for drinking purposes.
Persons who have consumption ought never to sleep in the same room with others, particularly with children. Consumption is catching. The germs which cause it are breathed out by the victim, and other people often inhale them and contract the disease. A consumptive person should never spit on the floor, and all discharges from the mouth should be disinfected.
There are two other places about a house in the tropics where our arch enemy, dirt, may hide and slay us, if we are not on guard against it. These are the sinks and the cesspools, which receive waste from the bathroom, toilet, and such places. No refuse matter ought to be thrown out about the house, and no dirt should be allowed to gather on the ground floor or in the court. We cannot be too careful about this; for if dirt does gather in these places, it is sure to breed disease.
Decayed vegetables, fruit, and all leavings from the kitchen should be carried away and burned, or buried, or otherwise disposed of where they can do no harm. Even the water in which dishes are washed, or in which we have bathed, should not be poured out on the ground near the house. It should be carried as far away as possible and emptied in some waste place.
There are few sewers in this country. Even those in Manila are scarcely worthy of the name. Before long, steps will have to be taken to have them in all cities in the archipelago; for there is great need for them. The fact that there are no good sewers makes the question of cleanliness about the house a grave one. If waste from the toilets is carried into the cesspools, there should be plenty of running water with it for flushing; it should be carried in pipes to the cesspool, and at least once a day the water-closet should be flushed with water in which there is some good disinfectant. If, as is so often the case, the closet is merely an outhouse over a hole or vault dug in the earth, at least five liters of a mixture of quicklime and dry earth should be put into the vault every day.
Milk of lime is one of the best disinfectants for use in this country. It is cheap, and it not only disinfects waste matter, but destroys bad odors. It is powdered quicklime dissolved in water, about one liter of quicklime to four liters of water. Another very cheap, but reliable, disinfectant is made by dissolving three drams of mercury bichloride with three drams of ammonium chloride in a bucket of water. This mixture can always be kept in the house and a tabo or two of it thrown down the closet seat whenever the latter is used. It must be kept where little children cannot meddle with it; but a child need not be very old to be wise enough to use it when necessary and not to meddle with it. Children, as well as grown people, should feel in honor bound to take good care of the house and to fight against dirt and disease when these attack it.
The bathroom and water-closet of our house should be kept as clean as can be. They should be swept and washed every day, and no soiled clothing or towels should be allowed to lie about. Our enemies, the mosquitoes, are very fond of hiding about soiled clothing or that which has been worn and is not soiled enough to be sent to the laundry.
Soiled garments should be washed as soon as possible after they are taken off. Right here lurks one of the greatest foes to health in this country. People are too careless about the way their garments are washed. The clothes often lie for several days in baskets or bags before going to the laundry or being washed. This is bad, as germs breed quickly among them. It is harmful for clothes to be washed in pools or canals. The water of standing pools or even of the canals in the city is, more often than not, full of disease germs.
Clothes drying on the Ground.
To make matters worse, the clothes, when washed, are laid out on the grass to dry. All sorts of tiny creeping things are here; so that while the garments look white and clean, they may be full of wriggling life from the water and from the ground,—creatures too small to be seen without a microscope, yet the cause, many times, of the unpleasant skin diseases so common in this climate.
The laundry work of the family ought to be done at home, and the clothes should be hung upon lines to dry. In other countries clothes are boiled after first being washed with soap, but this is not possible here; probably it never will be possible. Yet clothes can be washed with soap and water and then leached,—that is, rinsed in lye water. Wood ashes are easy to get, and lye water—that is, water in which the ashes have been soaked—will destroy all germs. The clothes rinsed in it are as safe as those which have been boiled.
The Best Way to dry Clothes.
Attention to all of these things means work for men and women, and for the boys and girls who wish to feel that their house is really their castle which they are defending against unseen foes. These foes are harder to fight than those who come openly and slay with the sword. They are more dangerous foes, moreover; for they are about us always, and must be fought daily. Otherwise, they will rob us of health, of comfort, of sight; they will make us the victims of disease which is ugly to look upon and painful to bear. They even take from us life itself, unless we are constantly on guard to fight their great helper, the dirt, which gathers about any neglected spot.