A Good Note by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 27, 1883

A Good Note.

By Editor

THE San Francisco Alta says:—

"The waters of any spring which taste bad are assumed to possess medicinal virtues. If in addition to the odious taste there is a villainous smell, the reputation of the springs as a health resort is made at once, credulity inducing people to believe that they have been benefited by bathing in or drinking from the unpleasant flood. But in Idaho they have a "medicinal" hot spring which has the property of killing people who bathe in it. It has recently claimed two victims, who did not live to get out of the water, and the reputation of the locality as a health resort is probably irretrievably destroyed. The Silver City Avalanche, nevertheless, says that the waters possess 'strong medicinal qualities.' That is the trouble—they are too strong."

There is common-sense truth in this note. We have known persons to visit springs, and leave with apparent disgust when told that the water was pure and cool. We have looked on with wonder, when visiting some of the popular resorts, to see a person gulp down a pint of water which had such a "villainous smell" that we could not bear it near enough to our face to taste of it. Truly, "there is no accounting for tastes."