Public water-supply : with special reference to the requirements of Perth / by W. Lauder Lindsay.

Date:
[1876]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public water-supply : with special reference to the requirements of Perth / by W. Lauder Lindsay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    itself over and over again in the interim, even in money, by the supply of water to houses in Bridgend. But this would not have been either my first or main object. A. Physician has nothing to do directly with mere “pay, ’’though none knows so well as he that everything conducive to indi- vidual and public health is the truest—and, indeed, the only real—Economy. It is also nearly twenty years since, under the auspices of the late well-known Professor Gl-eorge Wilson, of Edinburgh—one of my old Teachers of Chemistry—I had occasion to expose certain serious errors in domestic Water-supply before the ChemicaijSection of the British Association. The investigation on which the said exposure and denunciation were founded was made in Perth, and the details were fully published, and have been amply quoted by i writers on Sanitary Science. Moreover, some of the practical illustrations of the grave errors committed by architects and plumbers in regard to Water-supply, as eliminated in the course of the inquiry in question, have long been numbered among the curiosi- ties of the National Museum of Science and Art in Edinburgh. It so happened that among the pleasant and profitable results of that Investigation—its Publication and Discussion, —I was brought into contact or communi- cation with two of our foremost sanitary authorities— Professor Parkes, of the Army and Navy Medical School at Netley, near Southampton, the author of the very best Text-Book on Public and Personal Hygiene ; and Dr Richardson, of London, whose sketch of a model Hygeia attracted so much notice lately at the Social Science meeting in Brighton, and who is the author of a work on the “ Diseases of Modern Life,” and of many other important works. Thus I know that the views to be hereinafter expressed are not singular, and that the lan- guage in which I express them is far from being so strong as the facts of the case might warrant. (4.) I venture to add that the Water-supply of Perth and its suburbs is a question on which I have a right to speak out as a resident for upwards of twenty-one years in the neighbourhood, and as a sufferer from the ignorance, apathy, or incapacity of the authorities — whoever they may be—and they are various—who are or have been charged with the great responsibility of providing the city and its environs with suitable Water for domestic and other purposes. I have had ample personal experience of several different kinds of Water-supply in and near Perth, having resided in Marshall Place, Perth, as well as in various localities on the slope of Kinnoull Hill. I have thus had the opportunity of tasting and testing for myself the Perth town supjdy; the Muirhall Quarry water, as provided to the villas at Kinnoull; various well waters on Kinnoull Hill; besides certain surface and rain waters. All of these waters are bad in quality—though in various degrees—both absolutely and comparatively—even assuming their quantity to be satisfactory. Absolutely, in so far as they contain salts or decomposing organic matter that render them for certain uses objectionable. And stil