p. 189 | IMPURE WATER by Dr. E. F. Mack

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 24, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 12.

IMPURE WATER.

By Dr. E. F. Mack

It is a common belief that when a well is dug pure spring water, oozing from the ground, is obtained; that is true in the case of artesian wells; but, although possible, is rarely the case with ordinary surface wells, and under this name are embraced all wells not more than fifty feet deep. The water obtained from these wells is merely the water which has fallen on the surface of the earth in rains, and has percolated the soil and become collected in this excavation. It is called ground water. Even granting that some of the water may be spring water, some of it must be drainage, and the amount of this will depend upon the rainfall, and the character of the soil.

A moment's reflection will show that wells must act as drains to the surrounding soil. Just as a wet field may be drained by digging one or more trenches into which the water may flow and be carried away, so, when a deep trench or well is dug, the water in the surrounding soil will necessarily tend to drain into it. This is not only a matter of reasoning, but a matter of experience. The following case is reported: "In consequence of the escape of the contents of a barrel of petroleum, or benzine, which had been buried, a circuit of wells, sixty feet below, and two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards distant, became so affected that the occupiers of fifteen houses, containing eighty-two inhabitants, were for ten days unable to use the water for cooking or drinking."

When wells are first dug in rural districts, the water is pure and may remain so for a long time. Fortunately, the soil possesses some power of purification, and although the water may receive polluting matter on the surface of the ground, some of this matter is detained, mechanically, by filtration, and other portions may be decomposed and taken up by growing plants and trees. But this power of the soil is limited. When the sources of pollution are constant and numerous, as in cities, from privies, cess-pools, slop-water, offal, and the manure of domestic animals, and, sometimes, from leaky and imperfect sewers and drains, the soil becomes "filth sodden," and the filth is carried deeper and deeper, until finally it appears in our drinking water.

Sanitary literature is full of instances of the outbreaks of epidemics of diarrhea, typhoid fever, and cholera, which have been traced to the drinking of well water thus polluted; and, even though the city may go through one or more years' epidemics, it is not a pleasant thought for the inhabitants to indulge in, that they are drinking the drainage of their privies and cess-pools. And yet they must realize the idea that their wells are, and must be, drains for the surrounding grounds, with all its contents that are capable of solution in water. Science cannot tell us that in a given water is charged the poison of a definite disease, but it can tell us that it has received the product of decaying matter from animal sources, and, again, that such water is dangerous to health.