Drinking-Water and Disease 57 



ties, while other waters were known to be poisonous to 

 man and beast. These observations were, however, 

 for the most part, purely local in character, and could 

 not, in the nature of things, lead to broad views on the 

 general relation of water to health. No general concep- 

 tion could arise then as to the significance of color, 

 hardness, taste, and turbidity, nor as to the more deep- 

 seated distinctions revealed to us by modern research. 



Individuals, as Hippocrates, who lived four hundred 

 years before the beginning of our era, pointed out the 

 dangers of pollution, and even advised boiling and filter- 

 ing contaminated drinking-water; yet such views met 

 with no general acceptance. In the centuries following, 

 if any relation was observed between the character of 

 the drinking-water and the great epidemics of cholera 

 and typhoid, which broke out in Europe from time to 

 time, the popular views and the methods of sanitation, 

 such as they were, were not sensibly affected thereby. 

 In the early centuries of the present era, and through 

 the period of the Dark and the Middle Ages, there pre- 

 vailed a vague belief that the outbreak of disease had 

 some connection with the use of water from wells and 

 springs, and many a reputed ^^^ * 

 witch lost her life for the alleged 3 



poisoning of drinking-water. p ^ ^ 



Relation of drinking-water and /^ \ 

 disease discovered. — Slowly the re- -^^ t^ 

 lation of drinking-water to dis- ■* ^ — ^ ^ 



ease began to be better under- ^^^ria'tSta'/rcurTn 

 stood. In the early part of the ZT^^,ooo^t%aomt 

 nineteenth century, repeated ref- |Sf^erlin/)'°°°' *^""' 



