CHAPTER III.
On Water and Food.
The importance of attention to personal hygiene in the matter of what to eat, drink and avoid, may be judged by the fact that three of the greatest scourges of tropical life—cholera, dysentery, and typhoid fever—are conveyed exclusively by the agency of germs that find their way into the body along with ordinary articles of diet; and even putting aside diseases of so dramatically striking a character, bad food, careless cooking, and impure water may set up such minor troubles as dyspepsia, with all its prolonged attendant miseries of body and mind. Those who do not die from an attack of cholera or typhoid usually recover fairly completely, but he who has once suffered from a bad attack of dysentery is as truly lamed for life as if he had suffered mutilation of a limb.
Accidents will, of course, occur, whereby the most careful precautions are frustrated, but putting aside such contingencies, it is quite possible to guard oneself against either of the above diseases by proper care and attention; and those who know how to take care of themselves may carry on their duty, with but little apprehension, while encamped in the midst of a cholera epidemic, which makes it no uncommon occurrence to find in the morning several pilgrims dead of the disease within a few yards of one’s tent. On one occasion, my camp arriving after dusk, I found in the morning that my tent had actually been pitched over a new-made grave; but cholera cannot be caught by proximity to either the dead or dying, but only by the fouling of what enters the mouth, so that I was more disgusted than alarmed at the gruesome discovery; whereas I should have been decidedly uneasy for the next day or so, had I discovered that I had unwittingly swallowed either water or food that had not been rendered harmless by cooking. There is one point, moreover, about the necessary precautions, and that is that they must be carried out, or at least superintended, personally; for neither natives nor even the lower class of Europeans can be trusted to carry them out, because, not understanding the reason of them, they are too apt to scamp the business; and, as a matter of fact, neglect that would discredit a native dairyman has more than once, to the writer’s knowledge, occurred in regimental dairies, where every operation was supposed to be either conducted or superintended by European soldiers.
One of these little incidents, due to sheer laziness and direct neglect of duty, cost nearly fifty lives, for it more than decimated the wing of the corps in which it occurred. The method in which this terrible catastrophe was brought about is worthy of record, as an instance of the way in which lives are sacrificed by a lack of attention to such details.
The water supply of the station was excellent and all water used in the dairy was supposed to be drawn from a standpost. Unfortunately, there was a well on the dairy premises, and the soldiers in charge were too lazy to prevent its being used. One of the native dairymen lived in a village which was attacked with cholera, and like all Hindoos, had a special vessel for drinking water. This vessel he used, of course, at home, and also during the day, to get himself a drink from the well in the dairy. He remained himself free from disease, but the germs of cholera were carried, adhering to his lotah, or drinking cup, from the infected village well, to the dairy well, and this, in its turn, infected the milk stored in vessels which had been washed in the well water, with the terrible results already described.
The remote fault, of course, in this case lay with the authorities, who should have seen that no alternative, and more easily obtained, water supply was available; for no one who knew much about either the native, or Tommy Atkins would have any doubt of the less laborious source of water supply being used the moment the eye of authority was off them. As a matter of fact, the quality of the well water was usually excellent, and its only fault, that it was not guarded against contamination, so that not understanding the subtle mechanism of infection, both soldier and native naturally regarded the journey to the more distant standpost as a mere unreasonable infliction.
The piped water supply ought, of course, to have been brought into every room of the dairy, but “spoiling the ship for a pennorth of paint” is a very common cause of failure in attempts at sanitary reform in India.
I have given this incident at some length, because it affords a good example of the way in which lives are sacrificed by a want of attention to the details of sanitary management, and because, although it occurred in a public institution, and the fatality was on a correspondingly large scale, it is an equally good illustration of the way in which infection finds its way into private households.
Let us now proceed to the consideration of the various articles of supply, commencing with water.
As a rule, in our dependencies and settlements, water supply is of a private character, as only a few of the larger towns enjoy the advantages of public waterworks. Even where this is the case too, it is not always safe to trust entirely to its purity, as in many places the arrangements are not such as to ensure safety, and it is only in towns where the waterworks are large modern instalments, with proper filter-beds, under the constant supervision of an adequate European staff, that it is safe to forego the systematic sterilising of the water. In India, for instance, while the supply of Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, and most of the other large towns is probably a great deal above the European average, the mere fact of the supply being laid on in pipes is by no means a guarantee of purity. In Naini Thal, a considerable hill station, for example, the supply is pumped directly from a lake without filtering, close to the spot at which the drainage of a filthy native bazaar is allowed to flow into it. When living, then, in a place where there is a piped water supply, it is well to ascertain if filtration is properly carried out, and if not, to treat the water with the same suspicion as that derived from any other doubtful source.