Impure Ice As a Cause of Diarrhea.  — the fact that ice is now used by almost all classes to an extent which entitles it to rank rather as a necessity than, as formally, as a luxury of life, renders it important that its purity should be is jealously guarded as the water supply.  It is popularly believed that water freeze itself from dangerous organic matter, as it does to a great degree from certain saline contaminations during the process of freezing, and also that the vegetable or animal germs of typhoid and other fevers are killed, or at least rendered sterile, by congelation of the water in which they exist.  Both these ideas are, however, unquestionably running us, as has been repeatedly proved by the various experiments which ignorant hotel keepers try without the least intending it, upon their guests, on a scale which would have the oldest vivisector stand aghast before the suffering inflicted, even if it were only upon the brutes which form the subjects of his researches.

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.