Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1883 — The Value of Boiled Water. [ARTICLE]

The Value of Boiled Water.

In an article in Knoioledge on Scientific Cookery , Mr. W. Mattieu Williams called attention to the danger of using drinking water full of organic impurities. Such water, he says, supplies nutriment to those microscopic abominations, the microeoeei, bacilli; bacteria, etc., which are now shown to be connected with blood-poisoning—possibly do the whole of the poisoning business. These little pests are harmless, and probably nutritious, when cooked, but in the raw and wriggling state are horribly prolific in the blood of people who are in certain states of what is Called “receptivity.” They (the bacteria, etc.) appear to be poisoned or somehow killed off by the digestive secretions of the blood of some people and nourished luxuriantly in the blood of others. As nobody can be quite sure to which class he belongs, or may presently belong, or whether the water supplied to liis household is free from bloodpoißoning organisms', cooked water is a safer beverage than raw water.

“Reflecting on this subject,” says Mr. Williams, “I have been struck with a curious fact that has hitherto escaped notice, viz., that in the country which over all others combines a very large population with a very small allowance of cleanliness, the ordniary drink of the people is boiled water, flavored by an infusion of ieaves. These people—the Chinese—seem, im fact, to have been the -inventors of failed-water beverages. Judging from travelers’ accounts Of the state of the riyfers, rivulets and general drainage and irrigation arrangements in China, its population could scarcely have reached its present density ifChinamen were drinkers of raw instead of cooked water.”