Report ... on the supply of water to the Metropolis.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report ... on the supply of water to the Metropolis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    65/340 page 51
    water, but it is derived from deep springs in the red sandstone, and is free from the amount of vegetable and animal matter contained in the Thames water. Having lived for a number of years in Liverpool, a town which has a supply of very hard water for domestic use, my attention has for a length of time been called to the fact, that the continued use of this water has a somewhat peculiar effect on the digestive functions in certain susceptible constitutions. There are so many local causes of disease in the town, which may be left behind by going to other more favourable localities, that it is not very easy to state positively how much injury may be done by the quality of the water alone, but after some experience and observation, both in mvself and others, I arrived at conclusions which I fre- %/ quently expressed several years ago, and which nothing has since occurred to alter, and these are, that in the class of constitutions referred to, the hard water tends to produce visceral obstructions; that it diminishes the natural secretions, produces a constipated or irregular state of the bowels, and consequently deranges the health. I have repeatedly known these complaints to vanish on leaving the town, and to reappear immediately on returning to it, and it was such repeated occurrences, which fixed my attention on the hard selenitic water of the new red sandstone as the pro- bable cause, as I believe it to be, of these affections. Nearly all the leading medical authorities who have in modern times had their attention drawn to the subject, agree in giving a decided preference to pure soft water for domestic use. Haller says— Mountain water, as it is pure and cold to the taste, is also beneficial to the health for drinking. If it cannot be obtained river water may be resorted to. Well water I put in the last place, although everywhere it is agreeable for its coldness. It is almost always hard, unsuitable for dissolving soap and for cook- ing vegetables. The water of lakes, even although they may contain the purest waters, and appear pellucid, nevertheless be- come tepid from their isolation, and are flat and vapid. I know, therefore, no water more fit for the use of man than that from rain, which, distilling by percolation, flows crystalline, and of the lightest quality through quartzose sandy soil or pure rock, even although it be somewhat heavier than rain water; cold but not easily frozen in winter, and even pertinaciously flowing in the midst of a rigid frost: not changeable by rain ; making a lather easily with soap ; boiling vegetables to softness ; not easily becoming putrid; neither collecting greenness nor retaining it; easily allaying thirst. Dr. Todd Thomson, ail eminent physician iately E 2
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