The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

202 GALVANIC ACTION ON WATER PIPES.

any kind. "They have the dysentery and bilious
fever over the other side, a few miles off, and the
mosquitoes are awful;" but he has none of these
troubles.
Ask a man, as I did, who had always lived on the
Mississippi River, and always drank water so thickened
with organic and inorganic impurities that it looks like
gruel more than like water, why he did not filter the
vile stuff, and he will tell you, as he told me, "There
was never sweeter, or better, or more healthy water
drank in the world; it is much better without filtering, as it has more body to it." I asked him if in his
neighborhood they were not subject to dysenteries,
bowel complaints, bilious fevers, and the like. He
said, Yes; but the water had nothing to do with such
troubles.
Ask the Cochituate Water Board about Boston water,
and they will tell you truly that it is the purest water
used by any large city on the face of the earth; that,
according to Prof. Benjamin Silliman, it is capable of
dissolving only forty-six hundredths of a grain of lead
in a gallon, and therefore cannot corrode leaden-pipes;
but they will not tell you that, open any cistern or any
pipe that is not all the time full, and you will find the
lining coated with carbonate of lead, and that near the
soldered joints a galvanic and chemical action is constantly going on, so that the pipes are eaten off and
burst very frequently (in my house the pipes are eaten
off and burst five or six times a year, and always near
some soldered joint).