Lead cisterns

Four years later, Thomson (1848) described clinical lead toxicity in English residents poisoned from lead-piped and cistern-stored domestic water for general consumption in two close-by villages, Weybridge and Chertsey (Addlestone). He further described some chemical analytical testing of lead in domestic waters. Thomson s case reports were shortly followed by those of Robertson (1851), who described in Lancet a mass lead poisoning of children at a girl s school, traced to a leaded cistern. 

Devonshire colic in England (which was caused by apple cider made with lead apple presses) and the dry-bellyache of the West Indies (which was traced back to lead-contaminated spirits). Third, Fenner presented case-studies of colic-stricken individuals who improved once they stopped drinking city water or lead-contaminated soda water. One particularly unfortunate incident involved a large family on Magazine Street. First reported by another physician in New Orleans, four children in the home died from convulsions, and a fifth developed convulsions and paralysis of the leg. This family used a lead cistern to collect rainwater and a large amovmt of lead was fovmd in the water from the cistern. ... 

In 1839, James Alderson reported two instances of what he described as cases of paralysis from the unsuspected absorption of lead, in consequence of drinking rain water, kept in lead cisterns. These cases were discovered when another physician requested Alderson s assistance with a patient whose ailments baffled him. That patient, a Mr. Thackery, was a sixty-three-year-old man who had long been laboring under paralysis of the upper extremities, and partial paralysis of the lower. He had limited power in his arms and hands, and to move to and from his bedroom, he required the assistance of a servant on each side of him, and then his knees bent under him, and his gait was tottering. Even with the aid of a stimulant, the patient s bowels acted only once every three or four days, causing much abdominal pain and distress. Much like Dr. Porritt, the patient also suffered from melancholy and would frequently shed tears from light causes. At one point, Thackery had a seizure in which he fell out of bed and dislocated his shoulder. ... 

Thomson, Robert Dundas. 1854. Lead Cisterns and Pipes in a Sanitary Point of View. Lancet, ii, pp. 79-80. 

With the fall of the Roman Empire, the ancient water supplies petered out. In early medieval times, people were content to conduct local water in wooden pipes to public cisterns. The first wooden pipelines for water were laid at Liibeck about 1293 and in 1365 at Nuremberg. In 1412 the Augsburg master builder Leopold Karg first used wrought-iron pipes in conjunction with wooden pipes to supply water. Because of their propensity to corrosion, they seem to have proved a failure and a few years later they were exchanged for wooden, lead, and cast-iron pipes. 

It is possible to construct coolers by simply lining a wooden cistern with leadj such are used for crystallizing-various salts but it Is a question whether they can be recommended, inasmuch as the cooling must be very slow, on aooount of the bad conducting quality of the wood whioh forms the coating to the lead. 

Disease occasioned by the Metallic Impurities in Water.—The Editor has known most serious illnesses to arise from water containing lead. Many hard aB weE as soft waters act injuriously upon lead, consequently, as a general rule, water should never be stored in cisterns of this metal. Why use lead when one can have slnte cisterns and enamelled iron pipes A... 

Perhaps no other metal has aroused as much public discussion and attention as lead. It was one of the earliest metals exploited for practical uses the word plumbing comes from the Latin word for lead. The Romans constructed cisterns and cooking utensils from lead. Lead pigments are found in glazes, even those that are used to decorate pottery acidic foods leach the lead from the glaze. Lead permeates our current environment because of its presence in paint and in industrial products such as storage batteries and because of the lead added to gasoline. 

Shot-tow er. A tall building from the summit of > ich melted lead is drop >ed into a cistern of water. See Shot. 

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