62 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Professor Horsford presented the following commnnication, 

 embodying the results of his investigations and experiments on 

 the chemical action of water of various kinds upon the mate- 

 rials ordinarily employed for its transmission and distribution. 



" Materials for the transmission of water, to be used as a beverage in 

 any form, should be strong and durable, should admit of ready repair 

 and replacement, be sufficiently cheap to permit general use, and, 

 above all, should impart no deleterious property to the waters served 

 through them. The safety of using water supplied through wooden 

 aqueducts, and the certainty of their rapid decay, are too well known 

 to require more particular mention. Pipes of iron, tin, of tinned iron, 

 tinned copper, tinned lead, glass, and gutta percha, are of comparative- 

 ly recent introduction. They are believed, so far as experience has 

 shown, to impart few or no deleterious properties to water as a bever- 

 age, though all of them are wanting in some of the essential attributes 

 just mentioned. 



" As pipes of lead have been long in use, and possess in an eminent 

 degree most of the properties required for aqueduct service, and as the 

 following researches have been more especially directed to ascertain the 

 true value of leaden pipes for the distribution of water, a brief his- 

 torical sketch of the opinions that have been entertained with regard 

 to the safety of employing them may not be without interest. 



" The period of the first employment of lead for transmitting water 

 is unknown ; but the fact that it was condemned by Vitruvius, a Roman 

 architect believed to have lived about nineteen hundred years ago, is 

 evidence of its having at that time been long enough in use to furnish 

 the experience which led to its rejection as a material for aqueducts.* 

 Galen, a physician of Amsterdam, who wrote in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, coincided with Vitruvius. Both had observed the formation of 

 white lead in water-pipes, and attributed to it the illness which was 

 known to affect those who drank certain waters served through leaden 

 pipes. Notwithstanding these strongly expressed opinions and occa- 

 sional fatal consequences from drinking water containing lead in solu- 



* Leaden pipes may be seen at this day among the ruins of the Coliseum, and 

 leading to the baths and fountains of Herculaneum and Pompeii. 



Kopp thiniis lead as a metal was known to the Israelites. Geschichte der 

 Chemie. It is certain tliat it was known and in use 400 years before the Chris- 

 tian era. 



