wholesome water in many parts of the world at which they are obliged to remain. A calamity not indeed peculiar to seamen, but to many of our colonies and factories abroad, who are destitute of all other but rain water: whilst in other places, especially on the Guinea coast, the bad waters of the soil are justly suspected to occasion fluxes, the Guinea worm, and various maladies which infest those countries."-Ibid. p. 88.

"Some toasted biscuits put into the water of the river St. Lawrence were found serviceable in preventing the bad effects of it in occasioning fluxes in Sir Charles Saunders's fleet."-Vol. ii. p.

95.

"At Senegal, where the water is extremely unwholesome, unslacked lime has been used to purify it."-Ibid. p. 96.

"The advantages of a method of freshening sea water are not to be confined to those only who live on that element; the trader and the ship of war may indeed be peculiarly benefited by it; but very extensive advantages also result from it to many of our colonies; several of the West India Islands, as Antigua, have no water but what is reserved in tanks from the rains; and that, in a hot season, is not only wholly dried up, but at all times quickly corrupts, and swarms with vermin. Through the whole extent of Guinea the water is extremely unwholesome. To such situations the distillation of sea water must afford the greatest relief.”—Ibid.

p. 129. "The dry belly-ache is the same disease here as in the West Indies, but the Guinea worm seems peculiar to Africa, and a few parts of Asia. As it has been supposed to proceed from a bad quality in the water of the country, I procured the waters of Senegal, Gambia, and Sierra Leon, to be sent me in bottles, well corked and sealed, in order to examine their contents. Upon opening these bottles, I found the water in all of them putrid, but the scent of the Senegal water was the strongest and most offensive. I could not, however, discover by the help of a good microscope the least appearance of any animalcules; nor did any chemical experiment discover uncommon contents or impurities in those waters. All of them, after standing some time exposed to the open air, became perfectly sweet and good."—Vol. iii. p. 56.

"Before the surrender of this place, our distress for want of water became inexpressible: I would have given with pleasure half a guinea for a pint of such distilled sea water as I have frequently drank at your table. Numbers of our men died from a real want of water, and many from drinking water which was unwholesome and poisonous."-Vol. iii. p. 349.

'The water which destroyed our troops at Walcheren looked clear in the glass.

From the "Scelera Aquarum," printed in 1701, and no longer a common book, I make the following extracts.

"Moreover, my surprise was not a little increased, when after a step to Paris I came to understand from the famous Monsieur Patin, that he, together with all the virtuosi of his faculty there, did jointly embrace the opinion of Strabo and Pliny concerning a latent insalubrity in all fountain liquors; and that accordingly they ascribed the late progress of the Parisian Scorbute amongst the poor, to the use they made of their native waters in bread and drink; which is owned by all the inhabitants there to be the reason that hath finally brought country bread (called Pain de Gonesse) into such credit amongst the noblesse and wealthier sort of people, that can spare time and money to send to market for it."

"From these, together with some other useful observations made by me on the insalubrity of the elements in the respective situations of London, Paris, and Amsterdam; and from the waters there, impregnated in part by nature, in part by industry, and unluckily wrought into bread; I presume to be able (and I hope without vanity) to show the origin of all such local diseases as depend on, or are computed branches of, the scorbute."

"I further observed by hints taken from Mr. Graunt on the bills of mortality, how that, since the year 1636, a full third part of the annual christenings had been buried in the cradle, of erosions of the stomach and intestines, called gripes in the guts and convulsions of the bowels: from which familiar symptoms of poison the German scorbute hath his etymon."

"Nor had I attempted it then, unless I had beheld the like ill consequences on ship-board as well as on the terra firma, and withal from the same envenomed hands. But as soon as I observed that dismal effect, anno 1690, that a third part of the equipage of the royal navy to the number of four thousand mariners were swept at a blow from on board the king's ships, by the like erosions of the stomach and bowels, and all buried together in the self-same grave in Torbay; and that I saw the nature of the poison inquired into, together with the manner of its existence in the beer of the mariners, and all this owned by parliament, I thought it high time for every one to open his budget.'

"Rousseus all along in his Tract de Scorbuto, calls the disease by the name of Stomacace and Sceloturbe; (see Pliny's Nat. Hist. lib. xxv. sect. vi. 3.) and amongst the principal occasions of the disease, he ascribes the procatarxis thereof to the insalubrity of air and water, and insists very much on a certain malignity observed by him in the stagnant rivers about Amsterdam and Álcamaar; and surmiseth more than once how that the malignity insinuated by him

is diluted from the earth and absorbed into the water through the long stagnation of the element on the surface of the earth, in the marshy flats betwixt the now mentioned cities." "Therefore, if any one shall consider with himself how useful an element water is to mankind, he need not admire if the nature of diseases do depend on and participate of the quality of the water. For Hippocrates relates that water doth much contribute to the state of health. And it is most certain that, whether we eat or drink, we cannot totally pass by water; for we both boil meats and brew drink with water, and which is yet worse than all the rest, we frequently drink crude water, than which nothing more contributes to the overgrowing of the livers and spleens, and to make those parts exceed their due proportions, if any credit may be given to the testimony of Hippocrates.'

"I had almost forgot to reckon the learned Solomon Albertus amongst those who have wrote on the scorbute; and besides, a man who has made most useful reflections on the insalubrity of waters, especially on the malignity they usually lick in, and absorb, from the clayey strata of the earth; and his dedication before his Treatise de Scorbuto deserves to be perused and re-perused by all practitioners."

The writer of this tract, entitled Scelera Aquarum, names several authors who have noticed the malignity of waters, and their effects in corrupting the blood, besides Hippocrates, Strabo, and Pliny; as, Olaus Magnus, Rousseus, Wierus, Albertus, and Sennertus. He ends with enumerating four sorts of scorbute, or scurvy, and attributes the three first to water, the last to fish and

meat.

In Rousseau's confessions, book the sixth, I find this remarkable account of the effects of common water upon himself. « J'etois languissant; je le devins davantage. Je ne pus supporter le lait, il fallut le quitter. C'etoit alors la mode de l'eau pour tout remede; je me mis à l'eau, et si peu discretement qu'elle faillait me

I beg leave to direct the reader's attention to a publication of Dr. James Gregory's, of Edinburgh, entitled, "Memorial to the Managers of the Royal Infirmary," in which he will see some truths set forth respecting medicine, which may tend to diminish his faith in that art, if he happen to be one of the credulous. After enumerating the leading controversies among physicians, from the Galenists down to our own times, he concludes his paragraph, page 407, with this remark: "Then followed within these hundred years an endless host of Stahlians, Hoffmanians, Boerhaavians, Cullenians, &c. &c. down to Zoonomians and modern Pneumatic Chemists; who, I trust, will keep us all alive and merry for a dozen years at least; and when they have served their time, and their hour is come, nam onneis una manet nox, will give place to others as good in every respect, and especially as fit to amuse the whale."

Tous les matins en me

guerir, non de mes maux, mais de la vie. levant, j'allois à la fontaine avec un grand gobelet, et j'en buvois successivement en me promenant la valeur de deux bouteilles. Je quittai tout-a-fait le vin à mes repas. L'eau que je buvois etoit un peu crue et difficile à passer, comme sont la plupart des eaux de montagnes. Bref, je fis si bien qu'en moins de deux mois je me detruisis totalement l'estomac, que j'avois eu tres-bon jusqu'alors. Ne digerant plus, je compris qu'il ne falloit plus esperer de guerir."

"I was languid, and became more so every day. I could not bear milk, and therefore it was necessary to abandon it. Water, as the only remedy, was then the fashion. I too adopted it; but with so little discretion, that it was very near relieving me, not of my complaint, but of my life. Every morning when I arose, I went to the spring with a large glass and drank at intervals, while I walked about, as much as two quarts. I gave up wine at my meals. The water of which I drank was rather hard and impassable, as is usually that of mountains. In a word, so judiciously did I contrive, that in less than two months I completely destroyed my stomach, which before had been always excellent. Digesting nothing, I concluded there was no longer any hope of recovery."

One would have conceived that the well-known circumstance of many persons being unable to retain on their stomachs particular sorts of food; or if so, not however without a sensation of weight and other immediate ill effects, might have opened the eyes of the world long ago upon this important subject. What Rousseau felt after a breakfast on milk, many others feel likewise; and fish is so disagreeable to live upon entirely, that the servants, who are apt to look a little to the concerns of the stomach, make their bargain in particular places not to have it at dinner more than a certain number of days in each week. At high tables, great care is taken to vary perpetually the bill of fare: the same articles, however exquisite the manufacture, could not be long endured. Had the theory we are arguing upon been known to the founders of our schools and colleges, instead of establishing mutton as the general diet with a view to render the scholars tractable by assimilating their nature to that of the sheep, they would undoubtedly, upon their own prospective principle, have ordered that the young people should live on vegetables and distilled water.

To prove that men do not want strength in countries where, from the abundance of fruit, it may be supposed they do not make so much use of water as elsewhere, I will cite two or three passages from Volney's Travels.

"I have already mentioned the quantity of fruits of every kind produced in Walachia, where it is common to meet with even

whole forests of fruit trees, such as pears, cherries, apricots, &c. The greatest part of the mountains, in this circumstance of the variety of fruit trees, resembles our best cultivated gardens, which undoubtedly will always be inferior to those of Walachia."p. 260.

"The Walachians are in general tall, well-built, robust, and of a very wholesome complexion. Diseases are very rare among them; and the plague, though so frequent in Turkey, has never been known, excepting in times of war, when this disease is brought among them by the troops who came from Asia."-p. 268.

"The manners of the Walachians, as far as I have been able to judge of them, are simple, and neither embellished nor sullied by art.-Temperate in their repasts, they prefer vegetables to fruits, and fruits to the most delicate meats."-p. 271.

When I was in Spain some years ago, the "Introduccion à la Historia Natural de España," was a favorite work, and I read it as all the world was doing. Recollecting lately that it contained some striking remarks on the waters of Madrid and its environs, I turned to the book and found that in the concluding sections the intelligent author considers the most exact analysis of water, which the chemist can make in the present progress of his science, to be imperfect. Speaking of the qualities of the mineral waters in Spain, he falls into the following reflection: "Sin embargo yo pienso que està aun por descubrir lo mas esencial, que es aquel no sé qué qué obra una gran parte de las curas que hacen dichas aguas; porche se ven muchas de estas curas para las quales es necesaria una virtud ó fuerza mui superior à la que sabemos tienen las sales, el hierro, el acido vitriólico volatil, y demas cuerpos que las analisis quimicas manifiestan en las aguas minerales." "I t "I think that undoubtedly the most active property of these waters is yet to be discovered; I allude to that certain something hitherto unexplained which operates much of the benefits experienced from them; for many cures take place to the completion of which a virtue and power are required greatly superior to what is known to reside in salts, steel, vitriolic volatile acid, or any component parts of mineral waters which chemical analysis is capable of exhibiting." In a note on the above passage strongly recommending to men of science to investigate this phenomenon, the Spanish naturalist mentions an experiment which he made of boiling mineral and common water in separate vessels on the same fire, by which he perceived that, of the two, common water boils much sooner, and that mineral water, shortly before it begins to boil, becomes cool again. In the next and last section of his book, the writer, having given at large pretty conclusive reasons for his opinion that those stones of various forms, but always without angles, which abound in the beds of some