The queries transmitted to the medical officers were directed to ascertain the sufficiency of the supplies for the purpose of cleansing, but the returns frequently advert to the bad effect of inferior supplies upon the health of the population; and it is scarcely conceivable to what filthy water custom reconciles the people. Yet water containing animal matter, which is the most feared, appears to be less frequently injurious than that which is the clearest, namely, spring-water, from the latter being oftener impregnated with mineral substances; but there are instances of ill health produced by both descriptions of water. The beneficial effects derived from care as to the qualities of the water is now proved in the navy, where fatal dysentery formerly prevailed to an immense extent, in consequence of the impure and putrid state of the supplies; and care is now generally exercised on the subject by the medical officers of the army. In the Dublin Hospital Reports, for example, we have the following statement, which is still more important, as showing the extent to which the nature of the water influences health:— “Dr. M. Barry affirms that the troops were frequently liable to dysentery, while they occupied the old barracks at Cork; but he has heard that it has been of rare occurrence in the new barracks. Several years ago, when the disease raged violently in the old barracks, (now the depôt for convicts,) the care of the sick was, in the absence of the regimental surgeon, entrusted to the late Mr. Bell, surgeon, in Cork. At the period in question the troops were supplied with water from the river Lee, which, in passing through the city, is rendered unfit for drinking by the influx of the contents of the sewers from the houses, and likewise is brackish from the tide, which ascends into their channels. Mr. Bell, suspecting that the water might have caused the dysentery, upon assuming the care of the sick, had a number of water-carts engaged to bring water for the troops from a spring called the Lady’s Well, at the same time that they were no longer permitted to drink the water from the river. From this simple, but judicious arrangement, the dysentery very shortly disappeared among the troops.”—_Dublin Hospital Reports_, vol. iii. 11. Paper by Dr. Cheyne “On Dysentery.” _Parent du Chatelet_, the most industrious and able of modern investigators into questions of public health, gives the following instance, which in like manner demonstrates the amount of disease generated solely by the use of bad water, as well as the difficulty of detecting the specific effects produced by it:—