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56
WATER-SUPPLY.
gredients which waste soap in our laundries, and
tea in our parlours, do similarly waste within us
those organic agencies by which our food is dissolved
and converted; any result arising from this
source would be of gradual operation, would not
easily admit of being traced to its source, and (except
in susceptible persons) would rarely produce
such symptoms as might immediately draw attention
to their cause. The ill effects (whatever they
may be) arising from the use of hard waters must
be looked for in chronic impairment of digestion,
and in those various derangements of nutrition in
distant parts (the skin and teeth particularly) which
follow as secondary results on such chronic disorder.
It would be ridiculous to look for the operation
of an ill-chosen water, after its habitual use
during two centuries, as though one were inquiring
for the symptoms of an acute poison. The signs
that are to be ascertained among a population, if
such signs exist, are those which would evidence a
premature exhaustion of the power of digestion,
and would testify that the machine on which we
depend for that power had been exposed to unnecessary
and avoidable fatigue. This, I believe, is the
utmost which Medicine, proceeding from theoretical
grounds, would venture to say on the subject.
Perhaps I need not inform you that indigestion,
with all that follows from it, is so frequent in the
metropolis, in persons after the first strength of
youth, that, for large classes of society, a perfect