The water supply in ships from its beginning to the present time / Henry G. Beyer.

  • Beyer, Henry Gustav, 1850-1918.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The water supply in ships from its beginning to the present time / Henry G. Beyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    36/38 page 34
    With these two improvements attached, the French ministry of marine has made new trials which have proved unusually satisfactory, according to Le Mehaute, and the report made to him by Dr. Plagneux, the medi- cal director at the depot at Cherbourg. According to these, the sterilizer has worked already for six months without needing any cleaning. The preceding summary of the water question on board ships contains all the more important features of hygienic interest to-day. The proposed substitution of sterilized for distilled water may seem new to some of us, but it is a question which can not be evaded and which must be answered squarely in the near future. With such a system as has been proposed by Le Mehaute, we might even question altogether the neces- sity of sterilization, except perhaps when the water in the tanks or in the pipes or fountains had from some cause been subject to infection or was under suspicion of being infected. With tanks lined with cement, closed on top and connected with a closed and clean system of pipes, pouring their water into a fountain provided with individual and sterilized pipettes, the chances of any possible infection of the water, as well as its transmis- sion from man to man, seems infinitesimal and reduced to a negligible minimum. It is, however, just this neg- ligible minimum which an exacting and consistent hy- gienist must try to eliminate. There is no subject within the whole range of naval hygiene in regard to which the prospects for the near future appear as bright and as promising; none con- cerning which we are as near a satisfactory solution as with the water question on shipboard. At the same time there is no other problem the study of which would lend itself so well for illustrating the slow but sure and progressive influence of hygiene and sanitation on hu- man affairs, near and remote, as does the story of the gradual evolution of the water question on shipboard from the earliest to the present time.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3