ON PUKE WATER. 
BY EDWIN LANKESTEE, M.D., E.R.S. 
P UKE water is as necessary for liealtli as good food or 
fresh air. Yet it is probably more neglected or less 
understood in modern times than either. . I say modern 
times, because there is reason to believe that amongst the 
nations of antiquity, the Romans, at least, took more pains to 
obtain pure water than we do. It may be that our habit of 
taking water with something to flavour it, in the form of tea, 
coffee, sugar, salt, alcohol, or other agent, has rendered us 
less alive to the necessity of pure water than were people who 
had less means of indulging a taste for flavours than we have. 
Whether this be the case or not, terrible have been the in- 
flictions on society from the neglect of a supply of pure water. 
One example by way of introduction. In the year 1854 the 
cholera ravaged the metropolis. Up to August 31st of that 
year not more than twenty cases had occurred in the parish 
of St. James, Westminster. On that night upwards of 
100 cases of cholera occurred in the neighbourhood of Broad 
Street, Golden Square, and more than half died. The next 
day the disease increased, and for four days it went on. 
Never was such mourning and desolation known in London 
since the days of the great plague. Upwards of 600 persons 
were killed in those flve days. What could be the cause of this 
terrible outbreak ? At first all was confusion. In the midst 
of the plague the late Ur. Snow accused the pump in Broad 
Street. It was shut up and the plague ceased. After this 
event the vestry appointed a committee to investigate the 
subject. On that committee were Ur. Snow, Ur. King, Mr. 
Marshall, the Rev. Mr. Whitehead, myself, and others. We 
investigated the whole attack from house to house. At last 
the fact became only too evident that wherever the water had 
been drunk from the pump in Broad Street between the 31st 
of August and the 4th of September there cholera had been 
the result. The pump was afterwards examined, and it was 
found that the well communicated with a cesspool in an 
adjoining house. No evidence can be more convincing* than 
that brought forward by this committee, that the impure 
