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.

by George Michael James Giles

On the preceding page is given the [ground plan] of an actually existing “up-country” bungalow of a very usual type in which the spaces guarded by gauze are indicated with dotted lines. The original doors are shown as complete, and the windows as shaded gaps. As will be seen, the number of doors for actual traffic is reduced to three, not counting those of the bath-rooms, which, being but little used during the hours of mosquito activity, have been left with single spring doors only.

There are many situations, such as houses necessarily placed in the midst of canal irrigation—Government canal bungalows for example—in which no other method of protection is in any way practicable, and it is clearly the duty of Government to protect officers, such as irrigation and forest officials, whose duties lead them into specially dangerous places, in this way in all cases where official quarters are provided. There cannot be the least doubt, too, that the capital so spent would be found to be a highly remunerative investment, and that this would be equally the case if steps were taken to protect all barracks in this way instead of wasting the costly soldier by needless invaliding. In the case however, of civil and military officers, who have to rent their houses from landlords, who are generally needy natives, with neither inclination, nor means, to provide costly improvements, the utmost they can do is to provide themselves with a sufficiency of portable folding gauze screens to protect their sleeping chambers. In any given locality there is generally some approach to a standard size for doors and windows, so that by the exercise of a little ingenuity it ought to be possible to adapt a set of folding screens to any room, allowing them when too large to overlap the sides of the embrasure, and supplementing deficiencies with sacking or rough planking. In India, for example, door openings are usually about 7 ft. by 4 ft., and screens opening out to this size might be utilised in most houses. It is obvious that the set of frames provided for each room must include one filled with a small spring door. I believe that a number of screens capable of opening out to something larger than the dimensions of an average doorway would be less bulky than any possible portable mosquito-proof room—and at any rate a complete set for an ordinary family would weigh far less than an average piano, and would be far more conducive to health. It should be added that in this, and in all cases where single rooms are placed under protection, all doors, internal as well as external, must be protected, and as they would in no way prevent the use of a punkah, they would be an enormous improvement on the ordinary mosquito net, which, failing such appliances, is an absolute essential to health during the malarious season.

Where nothing more permanent is possible, recourse must be had to mosquito nets, which can with care be made to afford a fairly thorough protection during the most dangerous portion of the twenty-four hours. It is a mistake, however, to trust to tucking the net in beneath the mattress, as this is apt to become disarranged during the night, and it is further very undesirable that the net should touch any portion of the mattress at all, as if it does so, the net can be also touched by the sleeper, who thus readily exposes himself to being bitten through the net. The top of the frame of the net should, therefore, be made both longer and wider than the bed and should be long enough to reach easily to the floor, with which its edge should be kept in contact by means of a hem weighted with sand or small shot.

I have seen, especially in Calcutta, several attempts at the construction of curtains so large as to admit of a punkah being swung inside them, the top of the curtains being carried right up to the ceiling, and the strap of the punkah being pulled through a sort of sleeve; but the arrangement is necessarily an expensive one, and the swing of the punkah is always more or less crippled by the sleeve. A better plan is, I think, to make the frame supporting the netting very low, scarcely higher in fact than that of a child’s cot, so that the punkah swinging outside, but almost in contact with it, still passes within a foot or two of the sleeper. Such an arrangement is rather awkward to get in and out of, but this drawback is a very trifling one, compared with the enormous advantage of combining the protection of the net with the comforts of a punkah. For this idea I am indebted to Mr. Symmonds, of Rosa, whose contrivance I presume it is, as I have certainly never seen beds fitted in this way in anyone else’s house. For sleeping out of doors in the open, the net must, however, be of the usual fashion; as if the wind be at all strong, a weighted hem would not suffice to keep the net closed. It is therefore important when sleeping out to use a large bed, so that contact with the net may be less likely to happen; and the top of the net should be formed of ordinary calico, so as to keep off the dew. Not unfrequently the mesh of the netting sold for making mosquito nets is too coarse, a point of some importance, as Anopheles mosquitoes in particular are adepts in creeping through small openings; and as the writer has found it impossible to confine them in enclosures formed of the coarser patterns of net, it may be concluded that such a material is equally inadequate to keep them out.

Fig. 13.—Bed arranged with a low mosquito-net frame, with punkah above it.

References to the protection against malaria afforded by mosquito nets by observant sportsmen and explorers are to be found in numbers of books of travel and adventure published long before any explanation of the fact was possible; and during the malarious season it is nothing better than culpable rashness to pass the night without this protection, except in a room properly guarded with wire netting. It is quite common to hear it asserted that a punkah alone is sufficient protection, but this is an entire mistake, as I have repeatedly watched a mosquito making a comfortable feed on my person within a few inches of a spot actually flicked by the towel which it is usual to pin on to the lower edge of the punkah. In non-malarious months, such as the hot dry weather preceding the rains in northern India, there is, of course, no need of a net except as a matter of protection against the harmless, but very annoying, Culices that are very common at that season of the year; and in spite of its inferior protection against being bitten, many will prefer the freer air current afforded by the punkah. After the commencement of the rains, however, the fact cannot be too strongly emphasised that to sleep without the protection of a net is to wilfully expose oneself to a real and ever-present danger.

In the matter of preventing mosquitoes from becoming infected it is obvious that comparatively little can be effected by the private individual. All he can do is to bear in mind that persons suffering from malaria are as great and real a danger to their neighbours as those affected with scarlet fever, small-pox or any other communicable malady, and accordingly to try to limit the number of such cases amongst his servants and dependents. In the great majority of cases in all probability, the mosquito that infects the European resident has been infected by a case amongst his servants; and quite apart from philanthropic considerations, it is most important to detect all such cases and have them treated with quinine.

It is a well-known fact that, even where the drug appears to fail to cure the disease, it is very difficult to find the malarial parasite in the blood of cases that have been well dosed with the drug, and as there must be parasites present in the blood itself in order to convey infection to the mosquito, it is obvious that, apart from its curative action, quinine may also be said to act as a disinfectant. On this account, where the removal of a servant “down with fever” cannot be arranged, it is highly important that he should be liberally dosed with quinine; and it must be remembered that it is not sufficient to supply him with the drug, but that it is also necessary to see it taken. In some countries, the native is so truly a child in intellect, that he has to be treated like one if a bitter drug is to be administered; while the Indian, though in no way wanting in intelligence, has often a prejudice against quinine owing to the active propaganda against the drug preached by the Baids and Haqims, or practitioners of the indigenous systems of medicine. As a matter of fact, I believe these men use quinine largely, but they take care not to let their patients know they are taking a drug which can be got for a halfpenny a full dose at any post office, and try to prevent the spoiling of their market by promulgating all sorts of fables as to its dangerous and harmful character.

According to the queer phraseology in vogue amongst these folks—and it is not so long ago since it was employed also in Europe—fever is a cold disease which by an attractive paradox should be treated by cold remedy, while quinine is made to belong to the opposite category of medicinal agents. It is as well, then, to be prepared for objections of this sort; but, as a rule, the personal influence of an European employer will suffice to secure the taking of the medicine, provided he will take the trouble to personally see it swallowed.