Flies, fingers and filth are what we have most to guard against. Pure food and pure drinks are readily obtainable in Shanghai. It is up to us to keep them pure after we have bought them.
Don't take too much for granted when it comes to your domestic staff. No: around and get facts as to how your sei vants are living. Have a look at the outhouses, at their bedrooms, see that they have adequate washing facilities. Don't allow them to hoard up old clothes and odds and ends in your house. If they want them they should take them home. Din into them the importance of continually washing their hands Give them simple lectures in hygiene. They will probably laugh at hygiene for themselves, but they can at least be made to realize that foreigners are different, that if Master eats dirt he will die and then there will be no more wages for them. Usually they are quite willing to ce-operate in keeping the house in good order. You are the officer of the watch—they are the k and fle of the household gua:
You may give your servants perfectly adequate wages—but you never know what their family responsibilities are. They may have a whole string of unemployed or aged depending on them. The wherewithal to buy the soap and towels necessary for personal cleanliness may be really hard to come by. It may pay you to provide these things for them. Fortunately they are cheap. be washed in boiling water in a clean bucket in the yard before being brought into the kitchen. So frequently you will see cooks washing their vegetables and fruit at the kitchen sink, and blithely distributing any germs which may remain to them from their fertilization. Take heart, however—"the sun shines in China," as a well-known Foochow missionary doctór used to say when people trembled over germs. The sun, though he is rather hateful at present, is a most capable germicide.
You must be absolutely sure of where you buy your lettuce. There is, alas, no known. method whereby it can be sterilized and still remain lettuce within the meaning of the Act. It can be washed in a strong solution of potassium permanganate, and it can have boiling water poured over it, and it can further be very well washed indeed. And having done all, you can put it into the refrigerator to rest and recover its crispness to the best of its ability and you can say, "Well, I should think this is all right now, shouldn't you?" But you can't be sure. Better buy imported lettuce until the intest final diseases season is over.
With fruit you will not be safe if it is cracked, blemished or bruised. Buy it perfect, then wash it well in ordinary water and afterwards dip it into boiling water. Don't attempt to peel any fruit until after it has been washed. Otherwise any germs which are lurking on the skin will be carried through onto the pulp by your knife. Buy bananas by the bunch and don't let ihe Boy separate them. Do it yourself when you want to eat one—they are much more ornamental in the bunch.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.