Sewer Gas Poison.  -- it had obviously absorbed sewer gas, which it ascended through the overflow pipe, and that this had been the real cause of the disease was indicated by the fact that the diarrhea disappeared almost as rapidly as it had broken out, when the cistern was emptied and the pipe efficiently trapped.

Diarrhea in Country Districts.  -- Dr. Wilson declares that, according to his experience, much of the diarrhea which prevails in country districts during the summer and autumn amongst children is due to polluted water, drunk either as it is drawn from the well or when mixed with milk, fraudulently or by accident.

I combined these two sections as they are both relatively short and again lend to my hypothesis that the author was paid for not only word count, but important (and unnecessary ) ‘important’ section count.  Now , that said, I find this interesting also from the perspective that I myself in doing home improvement projects from installing PVC pipe, toilets and bathroom faucets and systems, I  have worked through problems and with plumbing systems that benefited from this knowledge.  Although when I was taught how to install pipes and instructed in things about sewer gases and vents I was led to believe that these things were done primarily to help with the pressure and dynamics of making things flush and the possibility of what the gas might do in and of itself didn’t really come up, and was treated almost like something that was obvious.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• 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.

• Illustrations & Charts
  
  

  Under this category of images we will create several subsections providing access to the images from the Library of Health.  it will be our goal to name the page is of this website with the same name utilized in the book.  Typically a group of images in the book is referenced as a “chart” it is also given a numerical ordering such as “chart 1″.

  We will attempt to follow the same organizational approach as we go through the book and hopefully we won’t run into a change in the method used to label the images.

• Travels of the History of the Book of Medicine
  
  

  I have mentioned that I purchased the Book of Medicine years ago.  The Book of Medicine has traveled quite a bit since I picked it up.  It moved with me from Central Illinois to South Florida and then up to the Atlanta area.

  Those two moves were managed by GMAC’s moving specialists.  It was part of a fringe benefit of working for Motorola.  They provided a number of benefits from setting us up with a real estate broker, job placement and moving expense money. It was a good fringe benefit and enabled us to move what seemed like trivial things such as the Book of Medicine, which we might have thrown out in other circumstances.  All in all I’m glad I kept it and didn’t off load it at a garage sale or a recycling bin.