Effect of Metallic Impurities.-- the effects of minute traces of metallic substances in drinking water have not yet been ascertained with sufficient accuracy, but it is quite possible that the entire sanitary condition of the district may depend in some measure on impurities of this description. Mr. Wanklyn suggests that the well-known salutary effect of what is called change of air may be, in reality, partly due to the escape from some extremely small metallic impurities in the water of the section of country from which removal takes place.

Well today, people know that heavy metals and water can be extremely poisonous or problematic for people to consume water with these impurities in place. It is somewhat remarkable that this had not been figured out as few as 100 years ago, and that what is relatively common knowledge today was only hypothetical esoteric pseudoscience 100 years back.  It's no wonder that so many developed countries today have so many heavy metal messes to clean up around the world.  Today people are looking for the best fat burners that they can buy so they can load up on McDonald's french fries and eat all that they want, we'll just a few years back they are looking for safe water to drink, and not even knowing what safe was.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Who Were the People that wrote the Book of Medicine?
  
  

  I haven’t had a lot of time to look into the authors of the book of medicine. One of the side projects I’d like to tackle with this book is identifying, who these people were that authored and edited the book, identify where they lived and worked and where they came from. Fortunately utilizing the powers of sites such as ancestry.com I can actually trace and get access to public records such as census records that might indicate who they were where they lived and what their lives were like. If they were recent immigrants to the United States or if they lived in the United Kingdom or whether they were from Germany or Ireland, etc.

  I’d like to also determine where they went to school to learn medicine, I will admit that I have no idea how to go about the second part but I’m hoping that the first inquiry provides more background information that might lead to information on the second part.

  Who knows it could even be possible that I will be able to find some people that knew them, maybe some relatives that will be able provides a personal perspective on the authors of this book. Who knows I might even come across these people running a Pigeon Forge vacation rentals company, or teaching at a university today or maybe they’re even somebody I know I just haven’t made the connection.

• Avoiding Cholera
  
  

  Avoiding Cholera. — a first and highly important warning, therefore, which these and many other similar occurrences give us is never to drink any water which, by any possibility, could have become contaminated with the smallest particle discharge from the bowels of a person suffering from cholera or choleraic diarrhea.

  This ending on Cholera, is slightly confusing at first as the 100 year old grammar is slightly odd.  However, the general lesson seems to be coming across.  Its a lesson talking about germs essentially, Cholera specifically.  But the author is painting a picture for the lay person that small particles can contaminate water and make everyone sick.

• THE PUBLIC TOWEL.
  
  

  THE PUBLIC TOWEL.

  The towels in toilets, bedrooms of hotels and boarding houses can spread disease unless they are thoroughly boiled and laundered after use, Most hotels, railroad stations, Pullman cars, etc., have done away with the public towels in toilets and use a heavy tissue paper, either as a single towel or in rolls and torn off as needed, which is not expensive and is thrown away after use.

  In Pennsylvania the State Board of Health has urged saloonkeepers, etc., to do away with the forks and spoons which are placed in a tumbler of water and are used by all comers at the free lunch counter and then replaced in the tumbler of dirty water for the next victim to use.

  Disease can be controlled better when our proprietors of saloons, restaurants, hotels, soda fountains, etc., employ only healthy employees, free from disease and take pains to boil or scald every public glass and chinaware used by not only dirty, but disease-spreading persons. The barroom towel which hangs in front of the bar in the cheaper saloons for customers to wipe their mouth and hands upon, must not be permitted.

  Maybe in a few years, we will even have our own personal lighting systems or lasik eye procedures that install night vision and public outdoor lighting will become a thing of the past.