Note 536 — PHARMACOLOGIA. (continued 4)

In many cases it is essential that the water should be at the boiling point, a few degrees even less than this will often prove a source of failure; this is well exemplified by the familiar fact of the weakness of our Tea, when made by water that does not quite boil. The Monks of St. Bernard, in the Alps, complain that they cannot make good Bouillie; the case is simply this, that from the altitude of their monastery, the water boils before it can arrive at a sufficiently high temperature. Whence we may deduce this important inference, that the solvent powers of water are affected by a very slight range of temperature. See a fuller account of this subject in my work on “Medical Chemistry.”