If A Little Pixillated

Photographs - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

Of Antisepsis

It was hot last night, and as I brewed myself a

refreshing pot of tea, I reflected that without tea

and alcohol the human race would probably have

perished of its own filthiness centuries ago. Our

modern supplies of cleansing water are a

thing of the last sixty or seventy years, before that

time water was so unspeakably polluted that

nobody in his right senses drank the stuff, and used

it for washing only with the greatest caution. The

nations of the East preserved themselves by

drinking beverages in which the antiseptic herbs had

been boiled; the nations of the West drank enough

alcohol in one form or another to keep themselves

reasonably pure, if a little pixillated. Even today

alcohol is the great sterilizer, and water is used only

it it has been boiled. I pondered on mankind’s debt

to booze for a while, and then pensively added a

noggin of rum to my tea, just to make sure that I

came to no harm.

Robertson Davies – Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

Trilogía Deptford 

Leonardo and Roberston Davies's glasses 

From The CanLit Foodbok - Compiled & Illustrated by Margaret Atwood - 1987