THE HARMFUL ACTION OF DISTILLED WATER 257 
The development of the more refined methods of physical chemistry 
brought forward evidence which when applied to distilled water as a 
beverage and as a therapeutic agent taken in by way of the stomach, 
aroused much discussion. Koeppe (25) maintained that distilled 
water was a poison when drunk in quantity and exerted its harmful 
action through its powerful osmotic properties. By means of these, 
it was contended that the cells of the stomach membranes were 
injured and salts were extracted from the organism with results serious 
to health. He was supported by Oldham (26) and others. A spirited 
defense by Winckler (27), Kobert (28) and others followed; the long 
and favorable experience of practitioners who had found distilled 
water a harmless and valuable remedy was pointed out. It is clear 
from reading the literature that while Koeppe was speaking of water 
considered pure from the standpoint of the physical chemist, his 
opponents regarded rain water, commercial distilled water and similar 
somewhat contaminated waters as the physiological equivalent of 
Koeppe's medium. The fallacy of this assumption was not realized 
by them. 
The more recent studies of Jacques Loeb (29, 30), A. W. Peters (31) 
and others have been built essentially on the foundation laid by Ringer 
and other predecessors. It is agreed that the extraction of substances 
from the animals used as test objects is accomplished by distilled water, 
the line of argument advanced by Sidney Ringer and Koeppe being 
accepted in so far as the general method of working injury is concerned. 
The advance over their views is found to consist chiefly in the deeper 
penetration into the cellular operations involved. While Ringer and 
Koeppe were content to say that salts essential to the maintenance 
of the integrity of the structure and function of the organism were 
extracted by distilled water, Loeb seeks to relate the salts extracted 
to certain necessary ion-proteid compounds. 
Experimental Evidence 
The results here given were worked out in the winter and spring 
of 1905, and in part in the winter of 1906. The preparation of the 
distilled waters and of the few solutions studied in this connection 
was kindly done at the writer's request by Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, at 
that time soil physicist of the Bureau of Soils, U. S. Department of 
Agriculture. The help of Dr. G. F. Klugh, at that time the writer's 
assistant, was obtained during the winter of 1906. The results and 
