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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    tifarious particles which compose the dust, —bits of coal and soot, particles of iron and stone and lime and various fabrics, tiny frag- ments of plants, and the numberless forms of life, called germs, etc. All these foreign things are gathered in when rain-water is col- lected in cisterns for household use. When the water reaches the earth and washes its more or less dirty surfaces and its people, with their houses and streets and the animals and plants, it takes up a good many more impurities, notable among these being the broken-down remnants of things once alive, now called organic matter. A portion of this soiled water evaporates into the air, leaving its dirt accumulations behind. A por- tion is taken up by plant rootlets, while the re- mainder either clings in the pores of the soil, or slowly sinks to deeper depths, until it reaches the ground water. Now, a very significant thing has been ob- served in regard to this water which sinks into the soil charged with all kinds and all degrees of foreign material, partly in solution, partly in suspension. That is, that if the layers of 3