|  There is no safety in belonging to the select few, for minority people or anybody else. If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors’ prosperity and good will and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we are sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities – and not the communities simply of our human neighbors, but also of the water, earth, air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared. We would be looking too for another kind of freedom. Our present idea of freedom is only the freedom to do as we please: to sell ourselves for a high salary, a home in the suburbs, and idle weekends. But that is a freedom dependent upon affluence, which is in turn dependent upon the rapid consumption of exhaustible supplies. The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other.
— Wendell Berry Long-term wilderness or survival living is similar in many ways to living and surviving in the Third World. There is a lack of – and a need to innovate – the basic sanitary and medical services that we take for granted in the industrialized environment. Under such conditions, ordinary tasks, such as dental hygiene and the safe disposal of feces, change from being routine to being problems to be solved. In primitive, survival, or long-term wilderness living situations, infections and parasites are probably a greater threat to general wellbeing than trauma. Many such illnesses can be prevented by proper sanitation, especially the proper disposal of human waste, the provision of clean water, and the development of housing that does not harbor disease vectors. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, these books may be of some use.
 Joseph William Bastien, The Kiss Of Death: Chagas’ Disease in the Americas (Salt Lake City UT: The University of Utah Press, 1998), ISBN 0-87480-559-7. This book is about South American trypanosomiasis, a debilitating and ultimately fatal disease caused by a protozoan parasite and spread among the poor by a nocturnal biting insect called a vinchuca. The central part of the book deals with the way doctors and local healers can work together, in a way consistent with local resources, to alleviate the environmental conditions in which the vinchuca flourishes.
 A. August Burns, et al., Where Women Have No Doctor: A Health Guide For Women (Berkeley CA: The Hesperian Foundation, 1997), ISBN 0-942364-25-2. This is one of four texts on this page that are published by the Hesperian Foundation; all of them are simply written and profusely illustrated textbooks designed for village health care workers in Third-World countries, both for their own training and for the teaching of basic health care and sanitation to rural villagers. All are absolutely outstanding. This is the most recent text in the Hesperian library, focusing on women’s health, which, in the Third-World context, includes not only nutrition, infection, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and menopause, but also sexual assault, domestic violence, and genital mutilation, all of which are defined as women’s health issues.
 Max Burns, Cottage Water Systems: An Out-of-the-City Guide to Pumps, Plumbing, Water Purification, and Privies (Toronto ON: Cottage Life Books, 1993), ISBN 0-96969-220-X. This book is a comprehensive guide to designing and building water systems for homes that are not on a municipal water system. It explains in a clear, straightforward style how each component of the water system – pumps, toilets, filtration – works, and it discusses the benefits and problems of the various options and solutions available. Chapters cover finding water, putting together a pump system, plumbing, alternative toilets, water testing and purification, outhouses, and winterizing. It also includes tips on installation and repair, extensive troubleshooting guides, a look at local government regulations, and approaches to minimizing environmental impact. Although designed primarily for rural properties in industrialized countries, much in this book can be usefully adapted to third-world and village environments.
 Sandy Cairncross, et al., Environmental Health Engineering in the Tropics: An Introductory Text (Chichester UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 1993), ISBN 0-471-93885-8. This is the single best practical book I have seen on building all kinds of pit toilets, creating watercourses, and eliminating insect disease vectors. Do you want to know how to build a really solid well-ventilated latrine? Then this is the book for you. It is down-to-earth, straightforward, and clearly based on lots of experience. Very highly recommended.
 Murray Dickson, Where There Is No Dentist (Palo Alto, CA: The Hesperian Foundation, 1990), ISBN 0-942364-05-8. This book is another of the outstanding texts from the Hesperian Foundation designed for village health workers in Third World countries. There is no other book like this. The book gives detailed information, with lots of pictures, not only on dental hygiene and nutrition, but also on using dental equipment, placing fillings, and taking out teeth. Highly recommended for any survival medicine library.
 S. Blackwell Duncan, Wells and Septic Systems (Blue Ridge Summit PA: TAB Books, 2nd edition, 1992), ISBN 0-8306-2136-9. Finding and tapping into a clean and reliable water supply can, in some environments, be a matter of life or death. This clearly written and well illustrated book provides detailed procedures and methods for locating and evaluating water sources and creating a variety of wells – driven, bored, jetted, dug, and drilled. The book also discusses everything you could want to know about septic tanks. It describes how these systems work, how to make them, and how to maintain them. Especially helpful are the discussions of percolation tests and water contamination.
 J.C. Jenkins, The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure (Grove City PA: Jenkins Publishing, 1999), ISBN 0-964425890. This is a classic text, emphasizing minimum technology and maximum hygienic safety, which thoroughly answers the question, “If you can’t flush it, what can you do with it?” Filled with humor and illustrations, the book gives detailed analysis and discussion of the best ways to compost human excrement, including running social commentary on why we don’t behave sensibly about our own waste. The book begins, “The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in drinking water and those who don’t. We in the Western world are in the former class.” We are not the only ones, of course; getting water free of human fecal contamination is a challenge in many parts of the world. This book tells how to go about it.
 Susan Klein, et al., A Book for Midwives (Palo Alto, CA: The Hesperian Foundation 1983), ISBN 0-942364-22-8. This book is another of the outstanding texts from the Hesperian Foundation designed for village health workers in Third World countries. It is written for midwives, traditional birth attendants, health care workers, and lay people who deal with pregnancy and childbirth in Third-World conditions. The book emphasizes prevention, nutrition, family planning, breastfeeding, and low-cost homemade equipment as well as childbirth and its complications.
 Eileen Stillwaggon, Stunted Lives, Stagnant Economies (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), ISBN 0-8135-2494-6. I include this book for its central thesis – that health in the Third World is not a matter of medicine but of economics. Most important for our purposes, the author provides a new perspective on the health implications of basic life activities – housing, sleeping, cooking, eating, drinking, excreting – and expands the reader’s awareness of the considerations necessary for long-term wilderness or survival health. In wilderness or survival situations, the layout of your kitchen can have an impact on your health.
 Sym Van Der Ryn, The Toilet Papers: Recycling Waste And Conserving Water (Sausalito CA: Ecological Design Press, 1995), ISBN 0-9644718-0-9. This is another widely distributed and popular book on human waste composting methods. It begins with a truly fascinating illustrated history of toilets, discourses on the virtues of squatting, and then gives detailed descriptions and plans for building an appropriate dry composting toilet. Although relatively brief, it is very clear and informative, with photographs, diagrams, and detailed drawings of rural toilets. If you are planning on long-term wilderness living with a garden, this book will serve you well.
 Michael VanRooyen, et al. Emergent Field Medicine (New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 2002), ISBN 0-07-135142-6. This is an outstanding single-volume resource for building emergency care programs in medically underserved and developing regions. The first five chapters provide guidelines for evaluating community needs, implementing preventive medicine, assessing refugee health situations, creating health education programs, and dealing with the impact of cultural issues; the remainder constitute a reference text of virtually all areas of primary and emergency care, including chapters on trauma management, childbirth, infectious diseases, gynecology, dermatology, environmental illnesses, ophthalmology, wound care, parasites, anesthesia, and – uniquely – dental emergencies. There are also discussions of such practical questions as travel preparation, clinic set-up, and establishing a field laboratory. The book is heavy and thick – 900 pages long – so it is not something you toss in your backpack; but, if you had to carry just one book to set up a primary aid station for, say, sick and malnourished refugees, or victims of a natural disaster in a third-world country, this is the one. One thing to bear in mind, however – the discussion assumes the availability of relatively sophisticated equipment and supplies, including antibiotics, and gives little guidance on substitution or improvisation in the field.
 David Werner, Where There is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook (Palo Alto CA: The Hesperian Foundation, 1992), ISBN 0-942364-15-5. This book, the first published in the Hesperian Foundation series, is probably the most widely used health care manual in the world, using numerous simple pictures and clear language to set forth the diagnosis, treatment, and – most important – the prevention of the most common Third-World diseases. In my opinion, this book is indispensable for any long-term wilderness or survival situation.
|
