THE HARMFUL ACTION OF DISTILLED WATER 
261 
Leaching Action of Distilled Water. — It has long been known that 
seeds, when soaked for long periods in water, give up salts to the water 
in quantities sufficient to permit analysis by the ordinary methods. 
This work has been repeated and extended by Andre (35, 36) to 
include potato tubers as well as seeds, and it seems clear that all of 
these structures give off salts to relatively pure water. Sachs (37) 
at an early date showed that this conclusion should be extended to 
include leaves also. 
Physiologists working on animals have made it appear probable 
that distilled water is able to withdraw salts from animal tissues also, 
and have advanced the view that harmful results seen to follow a pro- 
longed stay in distilled water are due to the leaching of salts required 
for the maintenance of normal conditions in the tissues. 
The responsibility of distilled water for certain untoward catarrhal 
conditions of the stomach supposed by some to be associated with the 
prolonged use of distilled water has been much debated. It is stated 
by Findlay (38) and others that when copiously used, distilled water 
leaches the salts and perhaps other materials from the stomach linings 
with resulting injury to the membranes. On the other hand, distilled 
water has found active defendants who contend that it is harmless 
when thus used. 
Since it seemed doubtful in the course of the above investigations 
that the harmful results produced by distilled water on lupine seedlings 
could be laid at the door of impurities dissolved in the water, attention 
was given to the alternative possibility that the water was harmful 
because of its lack of dissolved substances. Again, the electrical 
conductivity of the water was used as a means of ascertaining the 
degree of purity. Of course, it need hardly be pointed out that this 
test is at best but an imperfect one, since non-electrolytes might be 
present in the solution and remain undetected. Indeed Knop (2) 
has shown that distilled water extracts some organic as well as in- 
organic constituents from seeds of peas and corn. Since, however, 
there was no better method available, it was accepted as affording 
valuable data. 
Accordingly, a series of cultures was set up which were designed to 
test the supposition that salts might be leached from the roots. It 
seemed likely that if leaching takes place, a greater amount of salts 
would be withdrawn into an outside volume of 150 c.c. of distilled 
water from several roots than from a less number. 
