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contain no impurity, except what they dissolve in falling through the
air, as rain and snow-waters, have never been largely used by mankind
when others could be procured. The latter (snow-water) even
has been said to have been found irritating to the lips, gums, and
mouth of arctic travellers, who have been forced to drink it for any
length of time. Men have in all ages always preferred for general
use, where they could procure them, the waters of brooks, streams,
and rivers (of course, they should be untainted by drainage).
Exposed to the light of day and the atmosphere, and beaten about
by the winds, they contain more air than other waters, which imparts
to them briskness and freshness, as the very small proportion of
salts of lime and soda imparts flavour.
The chemists would render a service, were they to tell us what
quantity of these latter, good drinkable water ought to contain,
that we might take such as a standard of comparison as well as
distilled water.
As to the organic matter, a little of it also exists in all stream
water, but when we find as in one of the tables, only about half a
grain to a gallon of fluid, we must not be over fastidious, but congratulate
ourselves on the immense improvement in this matter
which has taken place of late. Only a few years ago, the water
forced into our dwellings by the Southwark Company, abounded
(particularly during the summer months,) with organic matter, dead
and living, not with hard-named microscopic and infinitesimal
animalculi, but with insects as big as fleas, with red worms half an
inch long, with shrimps and occasionally, small eels, which were dexterous
enough to wriggle themselves through the Company's filtering
apparatus.
The public at large, and the medical profession more particularly,
owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. It. D. Thompson, for his useful
analysis.
Until of late, in Rotherhithe, many persons used, and even now,
some use well-water. Superficial springs in large cities, are apt to
be contaminated by sewage from dunghills, ditches, sewers and
churchyards, and thereby become dangerously unwholesome. Facts
proving this statement have recently occurred; it is even said, that a
certain spring in London, renowned for its refreshing coolness in the
summer-months, owes its properties to the nitrate of potass washed
into the spring by the rains from the organic remains in a neighbouring
churchyard. An example from our own neighbourhood will
better illustrate this subject. Some years ago, a large mass of the
refuse matter from the fabrication of oil gas, was buried in a hole on
the Tunnel Company's premises in Rotherhithe-street. The oily
and tarry matter of this refuse, soon found its way into a neighbouring
spring, which supplied the houses from 316 to 327, Rotherhithestreet.
The water acquired a horrible taste of tar, which it retained