The water should be covered so as to protect it from dust and insects, and put aside to cool. If a sorhai, or porous water bottle, be used for cooling, it should be frequently washed out with strong permanganate solution and occasionally boiled, as it is difficult to keep the interior of these vessels clean, on account of their rough surface, and impossible to see whether they are so or not. It should be remembered, too, that it is as essential to have pure water on the toilet table for cleaning the teeth, as it is for drinking purposes, as the quantity of poison introduced into the system is of comparatively little importance, in the case of the virus of infective diseases, which have the power of multiplying within the system.
When travelling, it is a good plan to have an ample supply of tea brought for the early morning meal, usually taken before dressing; and to use what is left for cleansing the mouth instead of water. After standing as it thus has, the tea contains a good deal of tannin, and so forms an excellent mild astringent mouth wash, which makes it in some respects an improvement on plain water.
By far the greater proportion of the water consumed by Europeans in hot countries is, however, drunk in the form of aerated waters, and very frequently little or no care is taken in their manufacture, even when it is carried out by European firms in a large way of business. There can be no doubt that where the business is conducted on a large commercial scale, the water used should have been passed through suitable bacteria-proof filters; but in one of the few instances I have met with where this was even professed to be done, the filtering plant was obviously absurdly inadequate to filter more than a small percentage of the supply turned out by the firm. If such is the case with large and responsible European concerns, the character of the article turned out by the small native factories can easily be imagined. It would be hopeless to expect much improvement from the latter, but if consumers insisted on a guarantee that the water had been sterilised, in the case of the European factories, there can be little doubt that, before long, a safe supply would be put on the market to meet the demand.
Of late years the practice of aerated waters being manufactured by clubs and regimental institutions has enormously increased, but it must be remembered that, except as regards the avoidance of the coarser grades of filth, there is little or no advantage in this, unless the water supply of the factory be religiously guarded against pollution. As in the case of small institutions the amount of European supervision that can be given is but small, it may be doubted if much is likely to be gained by any attempts to sterilise the water either by filtration through biscuit porcelain or by boiling. The difficulty of cooling the water is an insuperable obstacle to the adoption of the latter expedient on even as large a scale as is required for a small club, for to make good aerated beverages the water must be as cool as possible. Quite recently the writer went over a station factory to try and ascertain why the “soda” was so feeble. Installed in a corner was a bath warmer capable of warming some forty or fifty gallons of water sufficiently for bathing purposes, but quite incapable of boiling so large a quantity under any circumstances, and indeed, not constructed with the view of doing so. This appliance had been installed by some previous zealous reformer, with the view of sterilising the drinks of the station, but he had never been at the pains of ascertaining if it was really capable of bringing its contents to the boiling point.
The murder was out:—the club soda had been systematically made of luke-warm fluid, tainted with the indescribable flavour of half cooked water. At the well a number of bhistis were chattering with a wandering faqir; and if his lotah had not been let down, the last time it was used, into a cholera-infected well, it was no fault of the arrangements. As the health of the entire European community depends on the purity of this well it should surely be worth while to make some attempt to secure its purity. It is quite true that the building of a well-house with a locked door might not ensure the absolute exclusion of unauthorised intruders, but an occasional surprise visit would go far to ensure a very general, if not complete, obedience to orders; especially after detection of neglect on some occasion had been followed by prompt dismissal of the responsible servant, and after the prompt destruction of any unauthorised water skins found in the well house. It is no more difficult to secure the locking up of a well, than it is to check peculations of club stores, provided that equal attention be devoted to the matter. No one expects absolute success in either task, but there can be no doubt that ill-gotten gains are successfully reduced to a minimum in most well-managed institutions; and surely our lives are as important as the curtailing of our club bills to the extent of a few shillings per mensem. Besides, to put it on a mere commercial basis, an attack of typhoid is a most expensive luxury, even apart from its dangers. After all, a doctor and two trained nurses for a month, followed up by an unostentatious funeral, cost something, and a very small proportion of the energy that is devoted by zealous honorary secretaries to thwarting the efforts of the club “bearer” to appropriate kerosine would go far to keep a well free from pollution. In places where no reliable aerated water is obtainable, there is no longer any necessity of drinking the more than doubtful fluids bottled in some dirty corner of the bazaar, as there is no longer any necessity for any complicated plant for the purpose.
At the present day, carbonic acid, compressed in steel cylinders, can be obtained at all large centres, and the attachment for filling bottles costs so little, and the method of using it is so simple that there is no difficulty whatever in making aerated waters at home, no skill whatever being required in the process.
The germs of certain diseases, such as cholera, are killed by the prolonged action of carbonic acid under pressure, and on this account, it is a good plan to keep a stock of aerated waters for a week before using them, but it must be understood that this is no protection against many other diseases, the majority of their germs being unaffected by carbonic acid.
In the matter of food supply, the main points that require attention are that it should be not only well, but also thoroughly, cooked, as only in this way can the destruction of disease germs be secured. Further, cooked food put aside for subsequent consumption should always be carefully protected from the access of insects. No one who has noticed how flies are attracted by filth of all sorts, and their omnivorous liking for food of every kind, can doubt that they must necessarily occasionally befoul food with the filth on which they have been battening but a few moments before; and in all probability both cholera and typhoid fever are not unfrequently conveyed in this way. Many articles of food, such as soups, jellies, and milk puddings, form ideal “cultivating media” for disease germs, as their composition is practically the same as the materials that are artificially prepared for the purpose in the bacteriological laboratories; so that if food of this sort be accidentally inoculated by an insect fresh from feeding on some dangerous form of filth, it may, in a few hours, become a teeming mass of microbes of the most virulent character. On this account a liberal supply of wire gauze dish covers should always be provided by the careful housekeeper in the tropics, and no cold food should ever be put aside without being covered in this way, unless it be placed in a large safe constructed of the same material, of which one or two should form a part of the furnishing of every tropical house. For camp use, receptacles formed of strong, closely-meshed, hand-made cotton netting, kept extended by means of hoops of cane, are very useful, as they collapse and occupy little or no space on the march. It is almost needless to remark that a cool airy spot should be selected for the larder, and that all safes, covers, &c., should be scrubbed out at frequent intervals with soap and water, to which a little boracic acid may advantageously be added.
After these preliminary remarks it will be preferable to consider separately the selection and treatment of the principal articles of food.