Frank Norris - "A Deal in Wheat"

Susanna Moodie - "Life in the Backwoods"

Richard F. Burton - "Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1"

William A. Williams - "The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A Handbook of Health

W >> Woods Hutchinson >> A Handbook of Health




Springs are among the most highly prized sources of water supply,
because they have gone underground sufficiently deep to become well
filtered and cooled to a low temperature, and usually not far enough to
become too heavily loaded with salts or minerals like the waters of the
deep wells. It must, however, be remembered that they also come from
rain-water, and that in hilly or broken regions the source of that rain
water may be the surface of the ground only a few hundred yards up the
hill or mountain, and impurities there may affect it. Much of the
delightful sparkle of spring water is due, as in the case of the popular
soda water, to the presence of carbon dioxid, only in spring water it is
produced by the decomposition of vegetable matter in it. As springs
usually break out in a hollow or at the foot of a hill, unless
carefully closed in they are quite liable to contamination from rain
water from the surrounding surface of the ground. Where springs of a
sufficient size can be reached, or a sufficiently "live" series of deep
wells can be bored, these furnish a safe source of water supply for
cities. But of course not more than one city in five or ten is so
favored.

Mountain Reservoirs. Two other methods of securing a water supply are
now generally adopted. One is to pick out some stream up in the hills or
mountains, within fifteen miles or so of the city, and put in a dam,
thus making a reservoir, or to enlarge some lake which already exists
there. At the same time, the entire valley, or slope of the mountain,
which this stream or lake drains of its surface water, is bought up by
the Government, or turned into a forest reserve, so that no houses can
be built or settlement of any kind permitted upon it. It can still be
used for lumber supply, for pastures, and, within reasonable limits, for
a great public hunting and fishing reserve and camping resort.

[Illustration: A CITY WATER SUPPLY BROUGHT FROM THE FAR HILLS]

Almost every intelligent and farsighted town, which has not springs or
deep wells, is looking toward the acquirement of some such area as this
for its source of pure water. Many great cities go from thirty to fifty
miles, and some even a hundred and fifty miles, in order to reach such a
source, carrying the water into the city in a huge water-pipe, or
_aqueduct_. These cities find that the millions of dollars saved by the
prevention of death and disease amount to many times the cost of such a
system, while the water rents gladly paid by both private houses and
manufacturing establishments give good interest on the investment. Any
town can afford to go a mile for every thousand of its population for
such a source of water supply as this; and secure, _gratis_, a valuable
forest preserve, public park, and beauty spot.[15]

Filtration. The other method, which has to be adopted by cities
situated on level plains, or at the mouths of great rivers, is to take
the water of some lake, or river, as far out in the former, or as high
up the latter, as possible, and purify it by filtration. This can be
done at a moderate expense by preparing great settling-basins and
filter-beds. The first are great pools or small lakes, into which the
water is run and held until most of the mud and coarser dirt has settled
or sunk. Then this clear water above the sediment is run on to great
beds, first of gravel, then of coarse sand, then of fine sand; and if
these beds are large enough, and frequently changed and cleaned, so that
they do not become clogged, and the process is carried out slowly, the
water, when it comes through the last bed, is pure enough to drink
safely.[16]

[Illustration: A RESERVOIR AND COSTLY DAM]

One of these sources of a safe and wholesome water-supply--the deep
flowing well, or spring; the water shut up in the mountains in its lake
or reservoir; or the slow filter-bed--should be used by every
intelligent and progressive town of more than a thousand inhabitants.

Sewage and its Disposal. At the same time, while seeking a source of
water-supply far removed from any possibility of contagion, we must not
neglect the other end of the problem, the protecting of our rivers and
lakes from pollution so far as possible; for the water from these must
necessarily be used by thousands of people along their banks, either
directly, or in the form of shallow wells, sunk not far from the water's
edge. Moreover, so foul are many of our rivers and streams becoming in
thickly settled regions that fish can no longer live in them, and it is
hardly safe to bathe in them.[17] Fortunately, however, a great deal of
the worst contamination can be prevented by using modern methods of
disposing of sewage, such as filter-beds and sewage farms. All of these
methods use the bacteria of the soil, or crops growing in it, to eat up
the waste and thus purify the sewage.

[Illustration: SCRAPING THE SEDIMENT FROM THE BOTTOM OF A RESERVOIR]


HOME METHODS OF PURIFYING WATER

Boiling. Where the water that you are obliged to drink is not known to
be pure, then it can be made quite safe for drinking purposes by the
simple process of boiling it for about ten or fifteen minutes. But this,
except in travelling or in emergencies, is a lazy, slipshod substitute
for pure water, and extremely unsatisfactory as well; for the boiling
drives off all its air and other gases, and throws down most of the
salts, so that boiled water has a flat, insipid taste. These salts,
although sometimes regarded as impurities, are not such in any true
sense; for the lime and soda especially are of considerable value in the
body, so that boiled or sterilized water is neither a pleasant nor a
wholesome permanent drink. Instead of boiling the water, get to work to
protect your own well from filth of all sorts, if you drink well water;
or, if not, to help the Board of Health to agitate, and keep on
agitating, until something is done to compel your selectmen or City
Council to secure a pure supply.

[Illustration: THE DOMESTIC FILTER IN USE

Unless the sand and charcoal in the glass bulb is very frequently
cleaned, it serves merely as a "catch-all" for impurities, through which
the water must flow.]

Domestic Filters. Much the same must be said of _private_ or _domestic
filters_. These are, at best, temporary substitutes, and should not be
depended upon for permanent use. Many of them are made to sell rather
than to purify, and will remove only the larger or mechanical impurities
from the water. Others, while they work well at first, are exceedingly
likely to become clogged, when the tendency is to punch at them to make
them work faster, thus either poking a hole through them or cracking the
filter-shell, so that a stream of water flows steadily through, just as
impure as when it entered. Private filters, like boiling water, are only
temporary ways of meeting conditions _which ought not to be allowed to
exist at all_ in civilized communities, or in your own homes.

A score of court decisions in all parts of the world have now held that
the water company is legally responsible for all avoidable pollution of
public water-supplies, and nine tenths of pollutions _are_ avoidable.


FOOTNOTES:

[13] These gases and salts are eagerly sucked up by the roots of plants,
so that the soil bacteria are our best friends, changing poisonous
decaying things into harmless plant-foods. They are the chief secret of
the fertility of a soil; and the more there are of them the richer a
soil is.

[14] This makes fourteen times as many deaths from typhoid in proportion
to the population as occur in Germany.

[15] New York City, for instance, goes forty miles up into the hills to
the great Croton reservoir for its water supply; and as this is proving
insufficient, is preparing to go ninety-five miles up into the Ramapo
Hills to secure control of a whole country-side for a permanent source
of supply. Portland, Oregon, nearly twenty years ago, with then a
population of some 75,000, built an aqueduct sixty miles up into the
mountains to a lake on the side of Mt. Hood, and has reaped the
advantages of its foresight ever since, in a low death rate and a rapid
growth (200,000 in 1910), as well as a financial profit on its
investment. Los Angeles, California, is preparing to build an aqueduct a
hundred and thirty miles, and tunnel two mountain ranges in order to
reach an inexhaustible supply of water.

[16] Of late, currents of electricity are passed through the water
(setting free _oxygen_ or _ozone_) which make the purifying of it much
more rapid and complete.

It is, however, often considered safer to pass the water through still
another filter bed, consisting of layers of charcoal, which has the
power of gathering oxygen in its pores, to attack and _oxidize_, or burn
up, the remaining impurities in the water. A sort of scum forms over the
surface of the last and finest bed of sand or charcoal, and if this scum
is not too frequently removed, though it makes the filtering slower, the
water comes out purer. On examining this scum, we find it to consist of
a thick mat of our old friends, the purifying bacteria of the soil. So
that the last step of our artificial filtration is simply an imitation
of nature's great filter-bed.

[17] Several streams emptying into the Ohio River from a thickly settled
region are said to be actually pumped out into waterworks systems, used
for drinking, washing, and manufacturing, and run back into the river
again through sewers by the different cities along its banks, at such
frequent intervals that every drop of water in them passes through
waterworks systems and sewers _three times_ before it reaches the mouth
of the stream.




CHAPTER X

BEVERAGES, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO


The Popularity of Beverages. For some curious reason, the habit has
grown up of taking a large part of the six glasses of water that we
require daily in the form of mixtures known as beverages. These
beverages are always much more expensive than pure water; are often
quite troublesome to secure and prepare; have little, or no, food value;
are of doubtful value even in small amounts; and injurious in large
ones. Why they should ever have come into such universal use, in all
races and in all ages of the world, is one of the standing puzzles of
human nature. They practically _all consist of from ninety to
ninety-eight per cent_ of water, the food elements that may be added to
them being in such trifling amounts as to be practically of no value.
They serve no known useful purpose in the body, save as a means of
introducing the water which they contain; and yet mankind has used them
ever since the dawn of history.

We Have no Natural Appetite for Beverages. It is a most striking fact
that, although these beverages have been drunk by the race for
centuries, we _have never developed an instinct or natural appetite for
them_! No child ever yet was born with an appetite or natural liking for
beer or whiskey; and very few children really like the taste of tea or
coffee the first time, although they soon learn to drink them on account
of the sugar and cream in them. Thus, nature has clearly marked them off
from all the _real_ foods on our tables, showing that they are not
essential to either life or health; and that they are absolutely
unnecessary, and almost always harmful in childhood and during the
period of growth. If no child ever drank alcohol until he really craved
it, as he craves milk, sugar, and bread and butter, there would be no
drunkards in the world. Our other food-instincts have shown themselves
worthy to be trusted--why not trust this one, and let these beverages,
especially alcohol, absolutely alone?

Statistics from the alcoholic wards of our great hospitals show that of
those who become drunkards, nearly ninety per cent _begin to drink
before they are twenty years old_. Of that ninety per cent, over
two-thirds took their first drink, not because they felt any craving for
it, or even thought it would taste good, but because they saw others
doing it; or thought it would be a "manly" thing to do; or were afraid
that they would be laughed at if they didn't! Whatever vices and bad
habits our natural appetites, and so-called "animal instincts," may lead
us into, drunkenness is not one of them.

This striking hint on the part of nature, that alcoholic beverages are
unnecessary, is fully confirmed by the overwhelming majority of hundreds
of tests which have been made in the laboratory, showing clearly that,
while these beverages may give off trifling amounts of energy in the
body, their real effects and the sole reason for their use are their
stimulating, or their discomfort-deadening (_narcotic_) effect. And the
more carefully we study them, the heavier we find the price that has to
be paid for any temporary relief or enjoyment which they may seem to
give.

Tea, Coffee, and Cocoa. The "weakest" and most commonly used of these
beverages or amusement foods, are tea, coffee, and cocoa. These have an
agreeable taste, mildly stimulate the nervous system, and, when used in
moderation by adults, seldom do much harm. To a small percentage of
individuals, who are specially sensitive to their effects, they seem to
act as mild poison-foods, much in the same way as strawberries, cheese,
or lobsters do to others.

Tea is made from the green leaves of a shrub growing in hilly districts
in China, Japan, and Southern India. The finer and more delicately
flavored brands are from the young leaves, shoots, and flowers of the
plant; while the coarser and cheaper are from the old leaves, stalks,
and even twigs--the latter containing the most _tannin_, which, as we
shall see, is the most injurious element in tea.

Coffee is made from the seeds of a cherry-like berry growing upon a
shrub, or low tree, on tropical hillsides. The bulk of our supply comes
from South America, and is known as "Rio" coffee, from Rio Janeiro, the
port in Brazil from which most of it is shipped. That from the East
Indies is known as Java, and that from Arabia as Mocha; though these
last two are now but little more than trade-names for certain finer
varieties of coffee, no matter where grown.

Cocoa and chocolate are made from the bean-like seeds of a small tree
growing in the tropics and, in cake, or solid, form, contain
considerable amounts of fat, and usually sugar and vanilla, which have
been added to them to improve their flavor. As, however, only a
teaspoonful or so of the powdered cocoa, or chocolate, goes to make a
cupful, the actual food value of cocoa or chocolate, unless made with
milk, is not much greater than that of tea or coffee with cream and
sugar. They contain less _caffein_ than either tea or coffee, but are
liable to clog rather than to increase the appetite for other foods.

Effects of Tea, Coffee, and Cocoa. Though the flavors of tea, coffee,
and cocoa are so different, they all depend for their effect upon a
spicy-tasting substance, called caffein from its having been first
separated out of coffee. The caffein of tea is sometimes called _thein_,
and that of cocoa _theobromin_; but they are all practically the same
substance. Part of the taste of these beverages is due to the caffein,
but the special flavor of each is given by spicy oils and other
substances which it contains. Caffein acts as a mild stimulant both to
the nervous system and brain, and to the heart; as is shown by the way
in which tea or coffee will wake us up or refresh us when tired, or, if
drunk too late at night, keep us from going to sleep. If used in large
amounts, especially if taken as a substitute for food, tea and coffee
upset the nervous system and disturb the heart, and produce an
unwholesome craving for more.

[Illustration: A MILK STATION IN A CITY PARK

Many cities have established such stations, where people can buy, for a
cent or two, a drink that is far better than soda water or any other
beverage.]

Their chief value lies in the hot water they contain, which has been
sterilized by boiling, while its heat assists the process of digestion;
and in the fact that their agreeable taste sometimes gives us an
appetite and enables us to eat more of less highly flavored foods, like
bread, crackers, potatoes, or rice, than we would without them. They
are, also, usually taken with cream, or milk, or sugar, which are real
foods and bring their fuel value up to about half that of skimmed milk.
So far as they stimulate the appetite and increase the amount of food
eaten, they are beneficial; but when taken as a substitute for real
food, they are most injurious. A cup of coffee, for instance, makes a
very poor breakfast to start the day on; for although it gives you a
comforting sense of having eaten something warm and satisfying, it
contains very little real food, and soon leaves you feeling empty and
tired; just as an engine would give out if you put a handful of shavings
into its fire-box, and expected it to do four hours' work on them.

The most disturbing effects of tea and coffee upon the digestion are due
to the tannin which they contain if boiled too long, especially in the
case of tea. This tannin, fortunately, will not dissolve in water except
by prolonged boiling or steeping; so that if tea is made by pouring
boiling water over the tea leaves and pouring it off again as soon as it
has reached the desired strength and flavor, and coffee by being just
brought to a boil and then not allowed to stand more than ten or fifteen
minutes before use, no injurious amounts of tannin will be found in
them. Tea, made by prolonged stewing on the back of the stove, owes its
bitter, puckery taste to tannin, and is better suited for tanning
leather than for putting into the human stomach.

Boys and girls up to fifteen or sixteen years of age are much better off
without tea, coffee, or cocoa; for they need no artificial stimulants to
their appetites, while at the same time their nervous systems are more
liable to injury from the harmful effects of over-stimulation. If the
beverages are taken at all, they should be taken very weak, and with
plenty of milk and cream as well as sugar.


ALCOHOL

How Alcohol is Made. The most dangerous addition that man has ever
made to the water which he drinks is alcohol. It is made by the action
of the yeast plant on wet sugar or starch--a process called
_fermentation_. Usually the sugar or starch is in the form of the juice
of fruits; or is a pulp, or mash, made from crushed grains like barley,
corn, or rye. As the spores of this yeast plant are floating about
almost everywhere in the air, all that is usually necessary is to let
some fruit juice or grain pulp stand at moderate warmth, exposed to the
air, when it will begin to "sour," or ferment.

Wine. When the yeast plant is set to work in a tub or vat of grape
juice, it attacks the fruit sugar contained in the juice, and splits it
up into alcohol and carbon dioxid, so that the juice becomes bubbly and
frothy from the gas. When from seven to fifteen per cent of alcohol has
been produced, the liquid is called wine. It contains, besides alcohol,
some unchanged fruit sugar, fruit acids, and some other products of
fermentation (known as _ethers_ and _aldehydes_), which give each kind
of wine its special flavor.

Beer, Ale, and Cider. If the yeast germ be set to work in a pulp or
mash of crushed barley or wheat, the starch of which has been partly
turned into sugar by malting, it breaks up the sugar into alcohol and
carbon dioxid. When it has brewed enough of the starch to produce
somewhere from four to eight per cent of alcohol, then the liquid, which
still contains about three or four per cent of a starch-sugar called
_maltose_, is called beer, or ale. It is usually flavored with hops to
give it a bitter taste and make it keep better. If the same process be
carried out in apple juice, we get the well known hard cider with its
biting taste.

Whiskey, Brandy, and Rum. When left to itself, the process of
fermentation in most of these sugary or starchy liquids will come to a
standstill after a while, because the alcohol, when it reaches a certain
strength in the liquid, is, like all other toxins, or poisons produced
by germs, a poison also to the germ that produces it. The yeast-bacteria
probably produce alcohol as a poison to kill off other germs which
compete with them for their share of the sugar or starch. So even the
origin of this curious drug-food shows its harmful character. We should
hardly pick out the poison produced by one germ to kill another germ as
likely to make a useful and wholesome food.

[Illustration: PROPORTION OF ALCOHOL

IN LIGHT WINE IN BEER IN WHISKEY

The liquid shows what part of a tumblerful of each is alcohol.]

If man had been content to leave this fermentation process to nature, it
is probable that many of the worst effects of alcohol would never have
been heard of. But these lighter forms of alcoholic drinks did not
satisfy the unnatural cravings which they had themselves created. Some
people never can leave even bad-enough alone. So man, with an ingenuity
which might have been much better used, sought a way of getting a liquor
which would contain more alcohol than nature, unaided, could be made to
brew in it. A little experimenting showed that the alcohol in fermenting
juices was lighter than water; so that by gently heating the fermenting
mass, the alcohol would evaporate and pass off as vapor, with a little
of the steam from the water. Then, by catching this vapor in a closed
vessel and pouring cold water over the outside of the vessel, it could
be condensed again in the form of a clear, brownish fluid of burning
taste, containing nearly fifty per cent of alcohol, instead of the
original five or six.

This evaporated or distilled mixture of alcohol and water, if made from
a mash of corn, wheat, rye, or potatoes, is called whiskey; if from
fruit-juice, brandy. A similar liquor, made out of fermented rice, is
known as _arrack_ in India, or _sake_ in Japan; and the liquor made from
fermented molasses is called rum.

Alcohol not a True Food, but a Drug. The much disputed question as to
whether alcohol is a food or not, is really of little or no practical
importance. It is quite true, as might be expected, from its close
relation to sugar and the readiness, for instance, with which it will
burn in an alcohol lamp or stove, that alcohol, in small amounts, is
capable of being burned in the body, thus giving it energy. This may
give it a certain limited value in some forms of sickness, as, for
instance, in certain fevers and infections, when the stomach does not
seem to be able to digest food. But here it acts as a medicine rather
than as a true food and, like all other medicines, should be used only
under skilled medical advice and control. For practical purposes, any
trifling food value it may have is more than offset by its later
poisonous and disturbing effects and, secondly, by its enormous
expensiveness.

The greatest amount of alcohol that could be consumed in the body at all
safely would barely supply one-tenth of the total fuel value needed; and
if any one were to attempt to supply the body with energy by the use of
alcohol, he would be blind drunk before he had taken one-third of the
amount required. From the point of view of expense alone, to take
alcohol for food is like killing buffalos for their tongues and letting
the rest of the carcass go to waste, as the Indians and pioneer hunters
of the plains used to do. It never has more than a fraction of the food
value of the grain or fruit out of which it was made; and the amount of
nutriment that it contains costs ten times as much as it would in any of
the staple foods.

Moreover, when it is taken with an ordinary supply of food, it is found
that, for every ounce of alcohol burned in the body, a similar amount of
the other food is prevented from being consumed, and probably goes to
waste, owing to the harmful effects of alcohol upon digestion.
Therefore, to talk of alcohol as a food is really absurd.

The Effect of Alcohol on Digestion. It has been urged by some that
alcohol increases the appetite, and enables one to digest larger amounts
of food. The early experiments seemed to support this claim by showing
that alcohol, well diluted, and in moderate amounts, increased appetite
and the flow of the gastric juice. When the experiments were carried a
little further, however, it was clearly shown that its presence in the
stomach and intestines, in such amounts as would result from a glass of
beer, or one or two glasses of claret-wine with a meal, interfered with
the later stages of digestion, so that the later harmful effects
overbalanced any earlier good effects.

Its Effect on the Temperature of the Body. Another claim urged in its
favor was that it warmed the body and protected it against cold. It
ought to have been easy for any one with a sense of humor to judge the
value of this claim by the fact that it was equally highly commended by
its users as a means of keeping them cool in hot weather. Its supposed
effects in the case of both heat and cold were due to the same fact: it
deadened the nerves for a time to whatever sense of discomfort one might
then be suffering from, but made no change whatever in the condition of
the body that caused the discomfort. Any drug which has this deadening
effect on the nerves is called a narcotic; and it is in this class that
alcohol belongs, together with the stronger narcotics, _opium_,
_chloroform_, _ether_, and _chloral_.

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