182 
REVIEW, 
tlie case, the oxide of calcium, which constitutes its base, is 
converted into carbonate by union with the carbonic acid 
held in solution by the water, and is precipitated along with 
binoxide of manganese and sulphur. There then remains 
a fluid of very remarhable purity, which, so far as organic 
matters are concerned, surpasses even ordinary distilled 
water, which is seldom entirely free from impurities of an 
organic nature. As it is owing to organic substances 
undergoing decomposition in water and air that these 
pabula become empoisoned, and are productive of disease, so 
that which destroys the former necessarily becomes the 
means of purifying the latter and rendering them conducive 
to health. The author is also anxious to demonstrate that 
the compound patented by him is not only most efficacious 
for this purpose, but nothing deleterious is superadded, 
while at the same time it is an admirably delicate test for 
the presence of all impurities. Few facts in sanitary 
science,^"' he asserts, are better established than the inju¬ 
rious effects which are produced on the health by impure 
water, when used for dietary purposes.^^ Of this proofs are 
adduced from numerous observations made by the Metro¬ 
politan Medical Officers of Health and other competent 
authorities; and the records of adventurous travel, military 
expeditions, and naval explorations, afford abundant examples 
of the mortality which is occasionally entailed by the use of 
polluted water.^^ 
“ All kinds of impurities or foreign matters, whether organic or inorganic, 
to which water is subject, may justly be regarded as injurious to health; 
but it is especially the former class of substances which, on meeting with 
unwholesome atmospheric or other influences, give rise to those sudden 
visitations of disease which, under the forms of diarrhoea, fever, cholera, 
&c., carry off so many victims. Some inorganic impurities in the long run 
undoubtedly prove prejudicial to health, but they seem to be incapable of 
producing the serious symptoms which characterise zymotic diseases. To 
defects in the composition of water, as regards its inorganic constituents, 
have been ascribed various chronic and constitutional affections, of which 
the ‘Aleppo button’ and goitre are two of the most remarkable examples. 
Such evil effects are, however, slow and insidious compared with those 
caused by organic contaminations, which, under certain circumstances, act 
very much like poisons, or those emanations from organized beings on which 
contagion depends. Like the latter, whose morbid influence Liebig has so 
clearly shown to be the result of a certain state of transformation, which 
acts on the blood—itself an extremely complex compound, in a condition of 
constant metamorphosis—after the manner of a ferment, organic impurities 
must be regarded rather as exerting a certain amount of morbific force. 
