I have never seen so many people with goitres. The missionaries at Jehol told me it was very much dreaded, and that the people brought the affliction upon themselves by flying into violent passions. I doubt very much whether that is the origin of the goitre; but that it is very much dreaded, I can quite believe. For not only does a goitre look most unsightly, but the unfortunate possessor must always keep his head very straight, for if he lets it drop forward, even for a moment, he closes the air passages, and is in danger of suffocating. I have heard it is brought on by something in the water. Water, of course, I never dared drink in China. I saw very pleasant, clear-looking, liquid drawn up from the wells in those inn courtyards in closely plaited buckets of basket-work, but I never ventured upon it. I always remembered Aunt Eliza:
“In the drinking well
Which the plumber built her,
Aunt Eliza fell.
We must buy a filter.”
Aunt Eliza's cheerful, if somewhat callous, legatees had some place where they could buy a filter, I had not, besides, I am sure, all the filters in the world could not make safe water drawn from a well in a Chinese inn yard, so I drank tea, which necessitates the water being boiled.
The Chinese build their wells with the expectation of someone, not necessarily Aunt Eliza, coming to grief in them. On one occasion a man of my acquaintance was ordering a well to be made in his yard, and he instructed the well-sinker that he need not make it, as the majority of Chinese wells are made, much wider at the bottom than at the top. But the workman shook his head.