Editorial October 15, 1904 Issue

Changing Opinions

The following article is copied from the Boston Transcript :—

"Now comes a Paris physician who says that it is all wrong to boil drinking water, as the municipal doctors direct when there is danger of a typhoid fever epidemic. Professor Charrin of the College of France is the learned authority who is quoted as denouncing the popular theory that the fever germs being destroyed by cooking them well, the danger of sickness is avoided. Professor Charrin's doctrine is that in boiled water not only is the deadly microbe destroyed, but also the microbe which even more than the dog or horse deserves to be called the friend of man. The beneficent microbe is that which assists at the digestion of such substances as cellulose and albumen. If he is boiled out, these intractable substances set up irritations which end in enteritis and other maladies. Another eminent French authority, M. Pages, agrees with M. Charrin in saying that boiled water seriously impedes digestion and attacks the assimilative organs. 'It may,' he says, 'save you from typhoid, but the risk of typhoid is in any case very small, while if it does save you, it exposes you to a host of other ailments no less mischievous.' 'If you do boil drinking water,' says M. Pages, 'expose it before you drink it for some hours to the open air, and agitate it.' "

Our purpose in copying this article is not to enter into a discussion of the comparative merits of the different theories regarding the proper sanitation of drinking water, but rather to call attention to the fact that medical theories seem to offer no permanent settlement of questions of this kind. What was considered almost a specific yesterday is discredited to-day and will be discarded to-morrow.

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