Arsenic in Water. -- arsenic, copper and mercury are rarely found in drinking water is in America, except in streams flowing near chemical works, or unless they are introduced designedly with some murderous intention. These metals may, therefore, be practically ignored in the consideration of water from a hygienic point of view.

Last night, I was watching a rerun of Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp. I mention it only because of the reference to Arsenic, which I believe was the poison that Todd's wife (in the movie) took to kill herself while Todd was in Prison. The movie was set right around the time this book was written, and I suspect that a spouse going to prison back then for a 'white collar' crime was much more serious than today, when you could probably expect a wife to spend 2-4 years travelling around on Mediterranean cruises rather than taking arsenic to be done with the world.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Transformation of Food Into Flesh
  
  

  Transformation of Food Into Flesh.– How strange this is — the transformation of food into human flesh, into human thoughts!  We eat a meal; it is composed of meat, bread, vegetables and liquids.  The more solid part is ground by the teeth, mixed with the different juices, dissolved, changed, organize and is swept through the body and the circulation of the blood.  Each organ sees as its own particular food as it passes.  Within the cells of the various tissues it is transformed into the soft, sensitive brain, or the hard, callous bone; here into the nerve of sight, there into gristle or tendon; here briny tears are formed, they are bland saliva; in the stomach, acid juice; in the skin, acrid perspiration; bile for digestion, oil for the hair, nails for the fingers, muscle for the strong arm of toil, and flesh and fat to give shade, form and beauty to the face.

   

  I think the previous section prepared me actually for this section.  In the previous set action the author sounded like he was speaking gibberish.  In this section the author or marbles at the ability of the body to turn one type of matter into another matter which is part of the human body or system.  Today I look at this process as a function, a program if you will run by the programmed DNA of the human system and control by the major organs.  In some ways my own interpretation is only slightly less obscure than the authors interpretation.  The other marvels at something that is relatively new and highly misunderstood where is I take it for granted.

   

  Neither one of our perspectives in that regard are more accurate than the other or may be a better way to say that is that we both have a perspective that equally valuable or valid.  The author doesn’t actually offer up any interpretation as to how the systems work or how it performs any of these items that they discuss, instead the author chooses just to remark on the fact that the actions are interesting even amazing.

  In many ways almost any system that we talk about today might have appeared equally as amazing to the author a hundred years ago.  Some of those systems could be interpreted better back then than they could stay such as the workings of kitchen faucets possibly as opposed to the workings of a Turing machine or computer neither of which had been invented as of the writing of this book, but both of which had been speculated on for many years.

   

  In many ways it’s these types of remarks it illustrates that the book is filled in large parts with what I might call science fiction or scientific interpretation or even a scientific editorial and not scientific fact.

• Typhoid Poison from a Well
  
  

  Typhoid Poison from a Well.  — in a report of the American public health Association, Dr. Austin Flynn gives an account of an outbreak of typhoid fever in Vermont which it was possible to trace, in the most circumstantial way, to the poisoning of a well in some such method as has been described.  The young man traveling through the region by stagecoach was taken ill, and, when he could go no further, was left in a tavern and a little hamlet to be cared for, his illness soon proved to be typhoid fever.  A small watercourse, a shallow valley, by the village into two portions, each of which consisted of half a dozen houses or less.  In a few days new cases of the fever made their appearance in that part of the hamlet which the tavern along — every house, in fact, but one was invaded with this disease — whilst on the other side of the stream not a case occurred.  It appears that the tavern well, which was the only one up on that side of the village, furnish the water supply to all the families belonging there but one.  That one family had had a quarrel with the landlord of the hotel, and consequently deserted the tavern well for a more distant supply of drinking water, and so escape swallowing the specific poison of typhoid fever in the water by which all their neighbors were stricken down.

   

  In case you’re wondering, typhoid fever is spread by people that shed typhoid bacteria area this can happen when they handle food or drinking water that other people consume, or when the bacteria is exhausted into a sewage system that contaminate the water supply.  So it is possible that the people that became sick from typhoid fever in this example, became sick from close proximity with a very sick traveler, in addition to the pollution of that traveler with the water supply.  We rarely think of these problems today when we book time in las vegas suites or at a beech cottage, but the bacteria could still be propogated by people handling food. This is one of the prime reasons why people should wash their hands. Due to water treatment procedures, we are currently fortunate to have less exposure to contaminated drinking water, however when sewer lines break in coastal areas and people swim in the ocean near these breaks, the risk could go up.

  It is also very interesting to note, that in this passage a health association that Dr. Flynn worked with was noted as opposed to just a name.  This is a distinct improvement, and I think the first time it has occurred in 158 pages!

• Diseases Caused by Alkaline Waters
  
  

  Diseases Caused by Alkaline Waters. — the symptoms referral to an excess of alkalinity, rising from the presence of these earthy salts in a drinking water, and mainly those of a dyspeptic nature. At first the employment of hard water by persons who are unaccustomed to it produces diarrhea. Which is occasionally serious or even dangerous in its character. But the long continued use of such a drinking fluid is thought to cause habitual constipation, with the heavy training of evils, including piles and liver complaint, which depend upon it. Calculus, or stone in the kidney or in the bladder, which gives rise sometimes to the most horrible agony human beings are ever called upon to endure, is believed to be due, in many instances, to an excess of lime and magnesia salts in the drinking water.

  This section is definitely interesting. And as I read this section, I distinctly heavy memory of watching an old Clint Eastwood movie. Clint Eastwood’s trek across the desert somewhere in the southwest of the United States, and of course the bad guys are chasing him. Clint Eastwood is smart enough to recognize that the water in one pool that he comes to has an alkalinity level far too high to drink. He has a sidekick, who initially attempt to drink the water but Clint Eastwood stops him knowing better. Then the bad guys come by sometime later and drink the water and one of them croak’s. This particular section highlights the fact that you may not die instantly from drinking this water but it can definitely make you very ill in the short-term afterwords, or very ill in a chronic way if you consume this type of water over a long period of time. Plus I’m sure that there is some water that is poisonous right from go. 

  This section also reminds me of a water purification straw that was handed out at a trade show that I attended a few years back. The water purification straw was handed out like personalized pens are handed out at most trade shows, but this was a bit of a outdoorsman tradeshow focusing on hunting tools and guns and stuff like that. I’m under the impression that water purification straw’s or tablets even only work to essentially remove microbes are things that might trigger Montezuma’s revenge, but now I have to wonder if maybe they had the ability to cancel out our alkalinity and balance the pH a bit.