Read before the American Public Health Association, at the meeting in St. Louis, October 16th, 1884.
The condition of health and probable duration of life of a people may be correctly measured by the quality and quantity of their water-supply. Indeed, good health can as little be supported without pure water as without pure air; therefore, of all the diversified and complex relations which man bears to surrounding influences, none are more important than that which relates to the water-supply of the locality in which fortune has placed him.
Considered either in his physical, social, moral, industrial, or political relation, the subject is of transcendent importance, for it involves the main questions of success in life. If he take up his abode in the midst of unsanitary surroundings, the inevitable sequence will be a correspondingly unfavorable influence upon his destiny—a check upon his prosperity, and a blight, more or less