Drinking-water and ice supplies and their relations to health and disease / by T. Mitchell Prudden.

  • Prudden, T. Mitchell (Theophil Mitchell), 1849-1924.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Drinking-water and ice supplies and their relations to health and disease / by T. Mitchell Prudden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    over, after the foundations were laid, a cer- tain amount of matter, mostly in the form of gases and fluids, which has assumed, as the world's history has gone on developing, a most important, if not a dominant, role. When the chemists pull this residual world- matter to pieces, they find that it is largely made up of a few simple elementary sub- stances, which they call carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,—partly free, but mostly in varying combinations with one another. One of the most abundant and widespread of these combinations is that of oxygen and hydrogen in water—now invisible as gas or steam, again taking form in clouds, or linger- ing most willingly as the fluid which we know so well, or growing hard and cold in ice. Before the new old earth, self-luminous then, had cooled, the water, far diffused in space as a gas, was invisible. But when the temperature had sufficiently fallen, it began to assume the form of vapor—visible as condensing steam or clouds, had there been eyes to see it. These clouds grew denser and denser, wholly veiling the sun, no doubt, and forming a lurid