406 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



stomach so rebelled at the "grain of salt" 

 that nobody else seemed to notice, that I used 

 to travel to the ice-plant in order to get dis- 

 tilled water to drink. In Bermuda I was great- 

 ly delighted, as you may remember, to find 

 that everybody in the island drank only rain 

 water. But the roofs of the houses are all 

 whitewashed; and my digestion pretty soon 

 began to rebel against the faint taste of lime 

 in all the drinking-water. Hard well water 

 I have been unable to drink — that is, right 

 along — ever since I was a boy; and although 

 people have laughed at me again and again, I 

 have all my life saved up rain water, or else 

 traveled miles to soft- water springs when I be- 

 came very thirsty. 



I have been using the sanitary still consider- 

 ably over a year; and the distilled water is 

 like bread and butter ( I mean good bread and 

 butter); I never tire of it. It never makes a 

 bad taste in my mouth; and it never induces 

 my digestive apparatus to begin to " kick " 

 after I have taken a big drink. Why, the 

 Natiotial Druggist and the German scientists 

 (I do not care how big the latter, nor how 

 many there are) might just as well tell people 

 in the country that pure air is not wholesome, 

 and advise them to go into the thickly popu- 

 lated cities, and breathe smoke and poisonous 

 gases, together with putrid smells, and call 

 the latter more wholesome. I should not 

 wonder a bit if some of these " big " scientists 

 should tell us next that bathing once a week 

 is found to be unwholesome, and that a man 

 will live longer if he never bathes at all and 

 never washes his clothes. God made the pure 

 air and the pure water, and wholesome food, 

 for the use of man; and the man himself, or 

 some miserable excuse for mankind, who in- 

 vented the stupid yarn that pure water is not 

 wholesome —the scientist or any other man 

 who tells you that water may be too pure to 

 be good — probably would object to a man who 

 always tells the truth, and would persuade you 

 that a man who would deliberately lie a part 

 of the time is a better member of community 

 than a truthful one. 



If the soda-fountains in most of our drug- 

 stores would furnish a glass of distilled water 

 at the same price as their other drinks, I for 

 one would take the distilled water in prefer- 

 ence to any thing that any druggist can con- 

 jure up or mix up; and I presume there are 

 thousands like myself. But the distilled wa- 

 ter should be furnished for a cent a glass. 

 Every druggist has to keep it for compound- 

 ing medicines; and pure water certainly ought 

 to be furnished at a moderate price to people 

 who are willing to pay for it. 



On page 355 of our last issue, Mr. A. J. 

 Wright suggests that, if God intended people 

 to drink pure water, he would have provided 

 it instead of hard water, such as is so often 

 found in springs and wells. Permit me to ask 

 what kind of water is provided by Nature 

 most abundantly — the pure water that comes 

 down in the form of rain, or the water under 

 the ground, that we have to dig for as a rule ? 

 In many countries rain water is almost the 

 only source of drinking-water ; and even in 

 the United States a very large portion of the 



people use rain water for cooking and drink- 

 ing purposes. Rain water is distilled water 

 from Nature's own apparatus ; and nobody 

 would ever think of distilling rain water if it 

 could be taken direct from the clouds, with- 

 out being contaminated by the smoke and 

 dust that are found even on a slate roof, or the 

 impurities found in the average cistern.* Dis- 

 tilled water is a most powerful solvent, as the 

 chemist or even the manufacturer will tell 

 you ; and it will grasp hold of and dissolve a 

 multitude of substances that ordinary water 

 from wells will not. It is this powerful sol- 

 vent property that makes it so valuable in dis- 

 solving and removing impurities that must be 

 taken from the human body day by day, if we 

 would remain in perfect health. Even the 

 patriarch Job regarded snow water, which is 

 the same as rain water, as a perfect cleanser 

 of the hands. Perhaps I should apologize for 

 the amount of space I have taken in this mat- 

 ter ; but when men who lay claim to scientific 

 attainments tell us that pure water is not 

 wholesome, it becomes a serious matter. 



STIEE LATER. 



One of our medical -friends has been kind 

 enough to forward me a clipping from 

 Deutsche Medicinische IVocheusc/irift, a Ger- 

 man medical journal, to the effect that "dis- 

 tilled water taken into the stomach causes 

 swelling of the gastric epithelium, followed 

 by desquamation and even inflammation. 

 The addition of enough chloride of sodium 

 (table salt) to distilled water to produce just a 

 faint saline taste obviates the difficulty. 

 The various pure spring and mineral waters, if 

 not too highly charged with mineral contents, 

 are much better for therapeutic use than dis- 

 tilled water, unless salt is added to the latter." 



So it seems the whole scare, when summed 

 up, amounts to this: One who drinks distilled 

 water may not get sufficient common salt, un- 

 less he salts the water he drinks, or, what 

 amounts to the same thing, takes a little more 

 salt with his daily food. For more than a 

 year back I have drank a quart or more of dis- 

 tilled water every day; and while at home, 

 nothing but distilled water. I have not seen 

 any thing yet of "desquamation" nor " in- 

 flammation." 



THE DANGER AND HARMFULNESS OF PATENT 

 MEDICINES. 



It affords me great pleasure to notice that 

 the W. C. T. U. is backing me up with some 

 heavy testimony along this line, or perhaps I 



* No objection has been made, that I notice, to cis- 

 tern water; hence the inference would be that rain 

 water is better after it has in solution a certain 

 amout of nastiness than when absolutely pure. Fil- 

 tering is, of course, a great advantage; but no filter as 

 yet invented can take out soluble matters so perfectly 

 as the distiller. 



Perhaps I might mention that the water found in 

 our fruit is soft; that is, it has none of the minerals 

 found in water from wells; and in many countries 

 where the water is strongly alkaline, and where fruits 

 are very plentiful and cheap, many people eat fruit 

 when thirstv. and drink almost no water at all. The 

 water in milk is also soft. The animal economy of 

 the cow, acting like a sanitary still, removes the min- 

 erals from the water she drinks. This, however, does 

 not do the work so perfectly that a cow may be safely- 

 permitted to drink any kind of water. 



