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42
but in any particular case it is the merest chance,
whether the glass of water raised to the mouth shall
be fraught only with saline results of decomposition—in
itself an objectionable issue—or shall
contain organic refuse in the active and infectious
stage of its earlier transformations. Some recent
cutting of a trench, or breakage of a drain in the
neighbourhood may have converted a draught,
wliich before was chronicly unwholesome, into one
immediately perilous to life. Such facts ought to
be known to all persons having custody of pumps
within urban districts; and it ought likewise to
be known that this infiltrative spoiling of springs
may occur to the distance of many hundred yards.*
In final reference to the quality of water, whether
supplied by our trading companies or derived
from springs within the City, I think it expedient to
mention that, against its lesser impurities, great protection
is given by filtration through animal charcoal,
as in various "filters and purifiers" which are
before the public. These protective means do not
lie within reach of the poorer classes; nor whatever
their accessibility to individuals, can any such
personal arrangements render it less important to
* For a fact strikingly illustrative of this, I am indebted to
my colleague, Dr. R. D. Thomson, Lecturer on Chemistry at
St. Thomas's Hospital. At Liverpool—in three wells which he
examined, distant severally 7G0, 800, and 1050 yards from the
Mersey, he found the water brackish from marine soakage,
containing four or five hundred grains of solid matter per gallon,
and totally unfit for consumption.