Barely Water Or Tea
Has been consumed for ages along with other "grain teas". Sometime around the Victorian era (or maybe before) it started popping up ready made in bottles. Prior to that you made your own.
Barely water was a commonly given to infants and children both for nutrition and hydration purposes.
You have to remember that access to safe and clean drinking water in what is now the UK and Europe was not always a given. It would not until the work of Pasteur and others that established the clear cause between germs and illness, but people did know that consuming suspect water lead to illness. This is one reason behind the heavy consummation of tea, beer, lager, etc.... Drinks made from boiled water were safer than what you got out of the well, river, pumps or taps until modern water treatment systems came along. Ditto for fermented bevvies such as beer (the alcohol kills off the "bugs".
In the film "Death in Venice" there is a scene where an older Englishman tourist is warning members of his party off eating fruit that had been washed in local water. Of course the back story of that film (besides the older man chasing after that young Polish noble kid), was that there was an epidemic of cholera running through Venice at that time. That disease is spread by consuming or coming into contact with suspect water. Even today the canals of Venice serve one of the functions they have historically, that of a sewer.
Even in the best of areas on both sides of the pond you had frequent and vast outbreaks of typhoid, cholera and other diseases caused by consuming water contaminated with human and or animal waste not to mention God only knows what else from domestic and industrial waste.
Obviously you shouldn't serve children and infants vast amounts of regular teas because of caffeine (dehydrating), and you aren't going to be giving them spirits or beer/lager (though some slattern mothers would have), hence barely water.
In Downton Abbey when the Countess Grantham's mother visits from the United States her maid informs the housekeeper and cook that her mistress only drinks water that has been boiled. Obviously the very grand American woman did not trust the water even on the estate of a peer. *LOL*[this post was last edited: 5/1/2014-18:51]
We are in the health-conscious era. So obsessed we are about our health and fitness that we don’t mind reading even disputed theories about health benefits for all we want is to somehow be fit and fine.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
