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17
offensive addition could only be present through some
unknown, and perhaps small, communication with an adjacent
cesspool; and, which is more worthy of observation, a
most destructive disease, no other than Cholera, has followed
the irruption and contamination of a well, the water of
which was so palatable that it was sent for by the ordinary
carrier, for the daily use of certain individuals, residing
at a distance from the spot. Unhappily, in that case four
persons who partook of it were attacked, and two fell victims
to the disease.*
For aliment it is far better, therefore, to use water from
our ordinary supply; the amount of impurity in it is small,
perhaps too small to be hurtful, and it may be always estimated.
During the prevalence of epidemic disease, particularly
of any kind affecting the bowels, the probability of
individual attack may be much diminished by drinking only
water which has been filtered, then boiled and suffered to
become cold.
THE RIVER THAMES.
As our great commercial highway, the Thames, has been
mentioned in these few remarks upon water, I am led to the
• " A gentleman who, with his two brothers, is brought daily by his
business into Broad Street (WesUninster), informs me that his mother, who
resided at Hampstead, being very partial to this particular water, was in the
habit of drinking it daily, having it fetched in a bottle by a cart that went
every day from Broad Street to Hampstead. She was seized with Cholera
on Friday, (September 1st, 1854,) and died the next day. A lady staying with
her at the time also drank of it and died. A servant drank the water and
had a slight attack of diarrhoea.
" He further informed me that one of his brothers who was in the habit of
drinking this water, suffered from diarrhoea, whilst he himself and his other
brother did not drink it, and were not ill."—Report on the Cholera outbreak
in the Parish of St. Jatncs, Westminster, during the Autumn of 1854.