Well I'm glad you reply to me and not rafowells' tardy post! :-)
(my quick mention of galton beat his lengthy exposition by 9 seconds)

Some things never change. Medieval Europeans noticed that people who ate unheated food or water got sick. So beer was the staple drink and potage (take anything and boil it a long time) the staple food.
Not sure why people were dying in the 1800s from unboiled water.

One of galtons tips was get a surgeon to insert some diamonds under your skin. Then no matter what happens you have funds. A modern day equivalent would be memorising your account numbers and passwords then you can always get money, or buy a ticket home on-line.
qjs