OF HARD AND SOFT WATER. 107 



considerations seem to show that it is air, not water, which mainly 

 determines the death-rate of a town; that so long as a water suffi- 

 ciently free from organic impurities is provided, it makes veiy little 

 difference whether the water be hard or soft. (See ' Report Brit. 

 Assoc, for 1894,' p. 37.) 



It is generally admitted that when a change has been made in 

 any town fi'om a hard-water to a soft-water supply, beneficial 

 results have followed, and it has been argued that this proves that 

 soft water is the most wholesome ; but this does not necessarily follow. 

 In the first place the soft water is usually more plentiful, and 

 purer irrespective of hardness, than the water previously supplied, 

 the change not as a rule beiug made merely to obtain soft water, but 

 owing also to the scarcity or contamination of the old supply ; and 

 in the second place with an improved or increased supply of water 

 other sanitary improvements have usually been introduced. One 

 of these is the substitution of a constant for an intermittent 

 supply of water, a change which is always conducive to health, 

 ami which, if properly carried out, by lessening the waste, reduces 

 the consumption. To be wasteful with almost anything is bad for 

 our health as well as for our morals ; and there can be no doubt but 

 that a plentiful and constant supply of water, whether hard or 

 soft, with provisions for using it to the best advantage generally 

 understood and appreciated, largely conduces to health of body and 

 morality of mind. 



The general opinion of experts appears to be in favour of soft 

 water for drinking purposes. Of thirty witnesses who gave 

 evidence before the Duke of Richmond's Commission on Water 

 Supply, twenty-eight expressed an opinion in favour of soft water, 

 some of them very strongly, one was decidedly in favour of hard 

 water, and one expressed a qualified opinion in favour of it. The 

 question was also fully discussed before the Rivers Pollution 

 Commission, and the Commissioners state that the general result 

 of the attention given to it by the highest medical and chemical 

 authorities is that "whilst, on the one hand, opinions have 

 differed considerably as to the wholesomeness of hard water, on 

 the other there has been, and now is, an almost complete unanimity 

 as to the wholesomeness of soft water." ('Report,' p. 184.) A 

 still more decided opinion in favour of soft water was expressed 

 by the Metropolitan Sanitary Commission of 1850. "On the 

 whole," the Commissioners say, "we cannot doubt that the 

 presence of lime and otlier mineral matter deteriorates the 

 wholesomeness and value of water for the purposes of drinking." 

 (' Report of the General Board of Health on the Water Supply 

 of the Metropolis,' pp. 59, 60.) 



The statement of the Duke of Richmond's Commission, that there 

 is "a great want of exact evidence on the subject of the dietetic 

 value of soft and hard waters," is still true; we know very little 

 of their phy.siological action upon the human system. Even so 

 recently as the year 1892, Mr. Hawksley, who appears to be 

 9,lmost alone in his advocacy of hard water, in his evidence before 



