Water and water-supplies : and unfermented beverages / by John Attfield.

  • John Attfield
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Water and water-supplies : and unfermented beverages / by John Attfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    WATER AND WATER-SUPPLIES; AND UNFERMENTED BEVERAGES. \W:ER and WATER-SipPLIES. CHAPTER I. WATER—ITS RELATION TO HEALTH—COMPOSITION—NATURAL HISTORY, Water is the basis of all beverages. Even when used as a vehicle for carrying alcohol into the system, or for con- veying the stimulating principles of tea and coffee into the body, or as a medium for nourishing matter, the water of the resulting beverages, in so far as they are beverages, is what satisfies thirst; it is the water that supplies the wants which assert themselves in the desire termed thirst. In dwelling on this fact for a moment, let us take an illustration from the class of stimulating beverages. A tea-cupful of tea, as poured from the tea-pot, is almost wholly water. It does not contain more solid matter dissolved from the leaves of the tea than would add a wafer-like covering to a shilling. No doubt that wafer is extremely potent, and has important stimulating functions to perform, as will be pointed out presently ; but so far as the cheering cup is a beverage, so far water makes it a beverage and gives it properties not imparted by any other fluid. Another illustration, this time from nourishing beverages. In half a pint of genuine milk all but about a table-snoonful is water. That table- [h. 12.] B
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