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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    makes its appearance at the surface in natural springs, without being dug for. Spring water then is exposed to the same contaminating and the same purifying agencies as other ground water. We do not now speak of min- eral and hot springs, which may have origin very deep in the earth, and draw their sup- plies from far-distant and complex sources. We must remember that there is no especial mystery about the water which we dig for in the earth or which gushes up spontaneously in the ordinary springs. It may come to us, in- deed, clear, sparkling, cool, out of the dark recesses of the earth, as if new-created for our use, but it is mostly the same old water which shared in the rainbow's arches, pattered on the leaves, or swept the surface of the ground in torrents—yesterday, last week, last month, last year. In the great alembic it has been purified and perhaps, indeed, partly re-created out of elemental combinations, torn apart in the recesses of the soil. In uninhabited regions, in the forests, wherever excessive contaminations of the soil with human or animal or manufacturing waste