In cases where water is injured by the presence of animal or vegetable matter, boiling sometimes removes much of the evil.
Two grains of powdered alum to every quart of water, will often serve to remove many impurities.
Filtering through fine sand and powdered charcoal, removes all animal and vegetable substances which are not held in chemical solution.
Sea water serves both as a cathartic and emetic, and the only mode of obtaining pure water from it is by distillation.
The impure water used often at sea, is owing wholly to the casks in which it is carried. When new, the water imbibes vegetable ingredients from the cask, which become putrid. Water, if carried to sea in iron casks, if good and pure, always continues so. Cistern water is often impure, when held in new wooden cisterns, owing to vegetable matter absorbed by the water.
Dr. Lee remarks, “We are satisfied that impure water is more frequently the cause of disease than is generally supposed. It has been thought that decaying vegetable matter, received into the stomach, was innoxious, owing to the antiseptic properties of the gastric juice. But this opinion is evidently erroneous. An immense number of facts could be adduced, to show that this is the frequent cause of disease. The British army ‘Medical Reports,’ and our own Medical Journals, contain many facts of a similar kind. The fever which carried off so many of the United States Dragoons, on a visit to the Pawnees, was occasioned chiefly by drinking stagnant water, filled with animal and vegetable matter. We know that calculus diseases are most frequent in countries that abound in lime water.”
OTHER LIQUID ALIMENTS, OR DRINKS.
The other drinks in most common use are arranged thus,—
1. The Mucilaginous, Farinaceous, or Saccharine drinks.
These are water chiefly, with substances slightly nutritive, softening, and soothing. Toast water, Sugar water, Rice water, Barley water, and the various Gruels, are of this kind.