I
Would Propose, Therefore, That An Apparatus Of This Sort Should
Be Provided In Every Ship That Goes To Sea; And In Case There
Should Be A Deficiency Of Fresh Water On Board, The Seawater May
Be Rendered Potable, By Being First Converted Into Ice.
The air of Boulogne is not only loaded with a great evaporation
from the sea, increased by strong gales
Of wind from the West and
South-West, which blow almost continually during the greatest
part of the year; but it is also subject to putrid vapours,
arising from the low marshy ground in the neighbourhood of the
harbour, which is every tide overflowed with seawater. This may
be one cause of the scrofula and rickets, which are two
prevailing disorders among the children in Boulogne. But I
believe the former is more owing to the water used in the Lower
Town, which is very hard and unwholsome. It curdles with soap,
gives a red colour to the meat that is boiled in it, and, when
drank by strangers, never fails to occasion pains in the stomach
and bowels; nay, sometimes produces dysenteries. In all
appearance it is impregnated with nitre, if not with something
more mischievous: we know that mundic, or pyrites, very often
contains a proportion of arsenic, mixed with sulphur, vitriol,
and mercury. Perhaps it partakes of the acid of some coal mine;
for there are coal works in this district. There is a well of
purging water within a quarter of a mile of the Upper Town, to
which the inhabitants resort in the morning, as the people of
London go to the Dog-and-duck, in St. George's fields.
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