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55
WATER-SUPPLY.
I refrain from dwelling on the economical considerations
which arise in these points of the subject,
as very obvious inferences from the result of chemical
analysis; and I pass to other matters more
strictly within my own province of observation.
Is water thus constituted in any degree detrimental
to the health of those who drink it? It is
not in a single word that this question can be fairly
answered. Almost insuperable difficulty belongs to
it, from the absence of any statistical method by
which we might isolate the water-drinking portion
of our population (a minority not defined in the
census), and might compare them, in regard of the
diseases to which they arc liable, with similar sections
of population in soft-water districts and in
harder-water districts. Obviously, no other method
of comparison can be unobjectionable; and, in arguing
the subject from such materials as I have,
I can pretend to nothing more than a rational approximation
to truth.
Except in the comparatively few instances where
active medicinal agents are naturally dissolved in a
water, its effects (when injurious) would be so slow
as to elude ordinary observation. If, as is exceedingly
probable, the same constitution of water as
impairs its solvency out of the body, do likewise
operate against its being the most eligible menstruum
or dissolvent for processes occurring within
the body—such processes I mean as attend the act
of digestion; if the lime and other hardening in-
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