As the result of my long sponge bath, I felt that I myself could enjoy three or four boiled eggs, but I remembered the old adage: “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” As we were to have a hearty meal at eleven o’clock, eggs eaten now would spoil that meal, or if they did not, then the hearty meal eaten so soon after eggs would spoil them. In fact, the fat old gentleman was just recovering from an attack of rheumatism, probably brought on by eating and sitting too much. Accordingly I drank two cups of half coffee and half milk and ate two oranges and two rolls, and left the table feeling quite comfortable inwardly. The Central American takes his café-au-lait with merely enough nourishment to prevent a feeling of emptiness or weakness during the forenoon, but not enough to prevent an appetite for a hearty meal at eleven o’clock, which is usually only three or four hours later.
The Central American coffee is not only made quite strong, but it has a bitter, resinous taste which is developed by roasting it until burnt, and then by boiling it. At first I did not relish it, but after learning to dilute it with an equal quantity of the hot, unskimmed milk, I became very fond of it. Its heavy flavor seemed to give it something of the taste of food as well as being a drink.
CHAPTER VIII
For Doctors Only
Barber Shops and Disease—Chance for a Trust and a Public Benefaction—Tropical Hotel Clerk from Canada—A Visit to the Hospital at Ancón—Beautiful Location—Housekeeping under Difficulties—Genial and Gentlemanly Doctors—The Buildings Left by the French—Details—Prevalence of Malaria—Drinking Water—Why the People of Panama Ought to be Dead—The Spoiled Child—Why the Eleven O’clock Breakfast is Enjoyable at Ancón—A Specimen Hotel Breakfast.
Doctor Echeverría did not appear for a half hour after I had finished my coffee and rolls. While waiting for him I had my hair trimmed, and experienced the pleasure of sitting in the chair next to a dirty-looking man with a skin disease which had caused his hair to fall out in patches, and which caused mine to stand up all over, as the barber’s assistant began using comb and shears on him and making the hair and dust fly in my direction. If this man had come an hour earlier he might, without my knowledge, have been shorn on the same chair that I occupied, and with the same comb, scissors and unwashed hands that were used on my head. I felt like resolving never to go into a barber shop again, but knew that I could not live up to the resolution. I would have to step up and take my share of dirt and microbes and have them rubbed in at least once a month or two, for I could not trim my own hair. I could not help repeating that good old saying, “God made Barbarians and seeing that they were no good, called them Barbers.”
The proprietor of the shop was a gentle old German, too good natured and old to learn the technic or meaning of cleanliness. He had cut hair and beards in Germany, the United States and Cuba, and knew all about his business except cleanliness. Cleanliness in barbers is like biblical honesty in business. While having my hair trimmed and my scalp infected by the old fellow, I asked him if he did a better business in Panama than he had done in the United States. He said:
“Ogh, yes. In the Unidet States I did a goot pisness, yet not such a pig pisness ass here. Dere I wass only a boor barbeer, but here I make much money and am a pig man.”—He was.
The want of cleanliness of the barbers, and the custom of using public combs and brushes at hotels, clubs and entertainments accounts for nine tenths of the baldness in the world. Barbers’ brushes bear the germs of baldness and badness from scalp to scalp, and their infected fingers rub it in. One should always go home and wash his head with soap and water, or with alcohol, as soon as possible after a barber has had his comb and black-bristled brush on it. One should also furnish his own comb and brush, razor and mug, and insist that the barber wash his hands thoroughly before touching them. Under no circumstances should he be allowed to give the head a “dry rub.”
There is a chance to make millions of dollars and benefit millions of people in the barber business. A trust that would teach its employees an appropriate antiseptic technic; would provide combs, brushes and all kinds of barbers’ instruments adapted to sterilization by strong antiseptics or by heat each time they were used; and would provide aseptic shaving, hair cutting, epillation, electric vibration, facial massage, baths and hairdressing, as well as clean furniture, floors, hands and men, would drive the old dirt-men out of the business in a short time. It would at least force them to wash their hands between customers. Such a trust would, of course, raise, or try to raise, prices, and thus “scalp” the community, and be censured for it. But it is better to be scalped than bald-headed, to be expensively clean than economically dirty. It would constitute a great reform, which should be an aim of all trusts.