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57
WATER-SUPPLY.
discharge of the natural process of digestion (such
a discharge of it as a lecturer would describe to be
the exact type and intention of Nature) is exceptional
and rare. Unquestionably, in large numbers
of cases, wine, and beer, and spirits, have more
than water to do with this effect. Unquestionably,
other influences of metropolitan life—and, not least,
the mental wear and tear which belong to its large
excitement, contribute immensely to this chronic
derangement of health; but there are reasons likewise
for believing, that the quality of water consumed
is not a matter of indifference to the result.
We cannot but give it an important place among
those influences of health or unhealth which we
consider local; and we cannot refuse to recognise
the fact, that in recommending our patients (as we
do often recommend them) to try "change of air"
for complaints which baffle us by their obstinacy,
so long as the subject of them remains in London,
the course on which we rely for success implies
"change of water," equally with that other change
to which more popular importance is attached.
In illustration of this view, I may quote to you
the experience of two other towns. Dr. Sutherland
stated, in evidence before the General Board of
Health, that having lived for a number of years at
Liverpool (where the water is said to be of about
the same degree of hardness as ours) he had long
entertained a conviction that "the hard water, in
a certain class of constitutions, tends to produce