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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    things by crowding too much filthy material into one place, or by drawing too heavily upon the supplies which should slowly accumulate, or by cutting off the forests which shelter large regions from too rapid water losses, he is very apt to find that he has upset the bal- ance of things and usually suffers for it, sooner or later, by those personal punishments for ignorance or folly, which we call disease. A great deal of thought and research have been expended in trying to make out the nature and details of this marvellous cleansing power of the soil. Aside from the more ob- vious alterations in the chemical constitution of the foreign ingredients of the water, the chemists used to be disposed to sum up the nature of the process by saying,—oxidation. This was very well for its time, but we shall presently see that a very subtle and very curi- ous agency is at work here, which until re- cently has been nearly wholly ignored. It happens in many regions that the water, as it soaks into the earth or runs over the rocks, not only gives up some of its foreign ingredients, but actually takes up others, In