Interim report by the Works Committee of the Edinburgh and District Water Trustees.

Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Interim report by the Works Committee of the Edinburgh and District Water Trustees. 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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    time of my visit of inspection, was very exceptional, a long continued drought having dried up all surface drainage, and left nothing but spring water to feed them; but from the cha- racter of the ground around them, I have no doubt that, after heavy rain, these rivers are filled with water of a very different quality (indeed I was informed, on good authority, that it is on such occasions frequently muddy and coffee coloured). In- stead of clear, colourless, and tasteless spring water, they would then yield a turbid, brownish, peat-flavoured beverage. Such flood waters lose much of their objectionable qualities by storage in large lakes, especially if these be deep natural lakes with pebbly beaches. The water of such lakes is also likely to be of more uniform quality than that stored in smaller and shallower artificial reservoirs, the soft beaches of which, unless protected at great expense, are constantly being lashed into mud by the waves breaking upon them. On these grounds, and also because the samples of St Mary's Loch water were likely to represent, more nearly than the river samples, the average quality of the supply from this source, I came to the conclusion that the St Mary's Loch scheme was preferable to the Talla or Heriot scheme, although the water of these rivers was, at the time the samples were taken, of markedly superior quahty. In truth, the ultimate decision of the Edinburgh and District Water Trustees must have been rendered difficult by a veritable embarmsdes richesses,SiS the quality of each of the sam- ples is excellent for every domestic purpose, including drinking. Whilst I thus agree in principle with A Physician's first ground of objection to the water of St Mary's Loch, I entirely dissent from his second—that it is soft and therefore unwhole- some. The question of the comparative wholesomeness of soft and hard waters has of late years received the earnest atten- tion of our highest medical and chemical authorities, and whilst, on the one hand, opinions have differed considerably as to the wholesomeness of hard water, on the other there has been and now is an almost complete unanimity as regards the wholesome- ness of soft water. During the recent sittings of the Rivers Commission in Scotland, the almost unanimous testimony of the medical officers of the chief Scotch cities and towns has been in favour of soft and opposed to hard water. The Board of Health also