A SACRED WELL.
? The water from the sacred well of Mecca oiight have been supposed (writes the St. James Gazette) to be beyond the need of sanitary supervision. At least, we are acouitomed to look upon the pollution of wells as an incident of our imperfeot civilisation rather than of the healthy barbarism of Arabia. Professor Frankland, however, tells a different story. He has analysed the water, and found it not merely to bo polluted with sewage, not merely to be sewage, but to be sewage of a peculiarly vicious kind — " seven times as concentrated as London sewage'" As this water is sent in large quantitiea to all Mahommedan countries, it becomes a ready vehicle for the distribution of any disease that happens to be prevalent at Mecoa, and is capable of being conveyed in water. It is, in faot, nothing less than bottled cholera. As suoh, it i 3 the most fatal liquor that can be used in the East. Whether it is possible to do anything te improve the character of the well we do not know ; but it is plain that aB regards India, sanitary improvement must not willingly be a stayer at homo. If vie oanaot either improve the Mecca water or stop the drinking of it, the prevention of cholera and similar diseases in India must remain an impossibility.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 131, 3 December 1881, Page 4
Word Count
224A SACRED WELL. Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 131, 3 December 1881, Page 4
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