Drinking Water
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p. 59
the well water was so terrible: Koeppel, Water for Gotham, 27.
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“the worse this evil will be”: Blake, Water for the Cities, 46.
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attractive landscaped gardens: Ibid., 13.
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“110 hogheads of 130 gallons each”: Ibid., 13–14.
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how much money could be made: Ibid.
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to fund the public works: Images reprinted with permission from obsoletecurrency.blogspot.com.
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fled to escape the contagion: Blake, Water for the Cities, 5.
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“the corporation of the city Employ”: Ibid., 3.
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powers that the Philadelphia City Council: Ibid., 47.
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Burr is on top and Hamilton: The portraits can be found at Wikimedia, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aaron_Burr.jpg, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hamilton_small.jpg.
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provide free water for fighting fires: Blake, Water for the Cities, 50–51.
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the company would lose its charter: Ibid., 51.
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“any other monied transactions”: Ibid., 50–51.
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the bare minimum to maintain its charter: Finnegan, “New York City’s Watershed Agreement,” 589.
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each additional fireplace: Blake, Water for the Cities, 59.
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“linen happily escapes the contamination”: Ibid., 126.
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“the most outrageous insult”: Ibid., 54.
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“less good water than the Dutch had bequeathed”: Ibid., 101.
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a severe cholera epidemic: Ibid., 133.
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“washing the streets of the whole city”: Ibid., 140.
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the Romans never built aqueducts for London: London: The Greatest City: Medieval London, at http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/i-m/london2.html.
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owners of wharves and stairs: Text of the city ordinance is available at http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/florilegium/community/cmfabr24.html.
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private commerce for water supply: “Water-Related Infrastructure in Medieval London,” WaterHistory.org, http://www.waterhistory.org//histories/london/.
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“the confused state of the national currency”: Blake, Water for the Cities, 165–166.
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a fifty-foot fountain: Elizabeth Royte, Bottlemania (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008), 97.
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their towns drowned: Finnegan, “New York City’s Watershed Agreement,” 14.
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so-called Croton Hydrants: Koeppel, Water for Gotham, 279.
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the father of medicine: Milton A. Lessler, “Lead and Lead Poisoning from Antiquity to Modern Times,” Ohio Journal of Science 88 (1988), 78.
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“water conducted through earthen pipes”: John Scarborough, “The Myth of Lead Poisoning among the Romans: An Essay Review,” Journal of the History of Medicine 39 (1984), 469.
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“you could no more turn off”: Hodge, “Vitruvius, Lead Pipes,” 486.
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“hardens into a crust”: “Lead Poisoning and Rome,” http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html.
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by boiling the mixture: Nriagu, “Saturnine gout,” 660.
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a diet with sapa: A. Mackie, A. Townshend, and H. A. Waldron, “Lead concentrations in bones from Roman York,” Journal of Archaeological Science 2 (1975), 235.
3: Is It Safe to Drink the Water?
p. 72
From discussions with Chinese students, communal drinking fountains have become much less common, in large part because the population is increasingly concerned about drinking water quality. The communal fountain at Po Lin monastery has apparently been replaced with a standard mechanical drinking fountain since I visited in 2006.
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an article by a Lafayette College biology professor: “Dixie Cup Company History,” http://academicmuseum.lafayette.edu/special/dixie/company.html.
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the dangers of common drinking cups: Ibid.
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plenty of minerals and bacteria: Royte, Bottlemania, 100– 101.
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“Water, by its very nature”: Chapelle, Wellsprings, 10.
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visitors to Paris that drinking the water: A. Lynn Martin, “The Baptism of Wine,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 3 (2003), 21–22.
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international travelers suffer from diarrhea: “Travelers’ Di-arrhea,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last modified Nov. 21, 2006, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/travelersdiarrhea_g.htm.
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“suggesting shrunken rawhide”: W. J. McGee, “Desert Thirst as Disease,” Interstate Medical Journal 13 (1906), 279, 283.
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springs and wells are found: C.E.N. Bromehead, “The Early History of Water Supply,” Geographical Journal 99 (1942), 142.
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“Lack of good water”: Royte, Bottlemania, 21.
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historian Karl Wittfogel: Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (Vintage, 1957).
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“bad water is like poison”: Joshua I. Barzilay, Winkler G. Weinberg, and J. William Eley, The Water We Drink: Water Quality and Its Effects on Health (1999), 10.
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disease killed eight times more: G. C. Cook, “Influence of Diarrhoeal Disease on Military and Naval Campaigns,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 94 (2001), 95.
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diarrhea and dysentery claimed: “Civil War Medicine: An Overview of Medicine,” eHistory.com, http://ehistory.osu.edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/introduction.cfm.
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commanding the North African theater: Cook, “Influence of Diarrhoeal Disease,” 97.
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“drink of the subaltern classes”: Squatriti, Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, 41.
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punished for drunkenness: Ibid., 38.
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“drink no water”: Chapelle, Wellsprings, 102.
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“to drinke colde water”: Ibid., 1.
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All quotes are from Chapelle, Wellsprings, 102, 1-2. 2.
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foiled the plot: Squatriti, Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, 38.
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“all Europeans agreed on”: Chapelle, Wellsprings, 102.
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The drink of choice in Egypt: Tom Standage, A History of the World in Six Glasses (New York: Walker, 2005), 104.
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constructed in Plymouth Plantation: Ibid., 105.
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Beer was routinely added: Chapelle, Wellsprings, 103.
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The mixtures elevated the status: Squatriti, Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, 40.
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“high ground and hills”: “Airs, Waters, Places,” in Hippocratic Writings, trans. J. Chadwick and W. N. Mann (London: Penguin Classics, 1983), 148, 153.
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aqueducts to segregate drinking water: Evans, Water Distribution in Ancient Rome, 136–137, 140.
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drinking melted snow: Squatriti, Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, 37.
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“so much filthe”: Andrea Cast, “Women Drinking in Early Modern England” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Adelaide, 2001), 2, quoting Bullein, The Gouernement of Healthe (1558).
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“Flowing water is regarded safe”: Eva-Marita Rinne, “‘Seeing is Believing’: Perceptions of Safe Water in Rural Yoruba,” in A History of Water: The World of Water, eds. Terje Tvedt and Terje Oestigaard (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 269, 277, 281.
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a complex social hierarchy: Singh, “Water Management Traditions in Rural India.”
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prepared with water by a non-Brahman: J. Abbott, Keys of Power: A Study of Indian Ritual and Belief (2003), 162.
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A drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn: John Vachon, “A Drinking Fountain on the County Courthouse Lawn” (1938), http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/085_disc.html.
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the balance of four humors: Logan Clendening, Source Book of Medical History (Toronto: General Publishing, 1942), 39.
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slowing the flow of humors: Cast, “Women Drinking in Early Modern England,” 1, quoting Bullein, The Gouernement of Healthe (1558).
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phlegmatic in the upper left: The drawing can be found at Wikimedia, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Lavater1.jpg/220px-Lavater1.jpg.
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the agent of disease: Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998), 3.
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get sick from drinking certain types: Robert D. Morris, The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster and the Water We Drink (New York: HarperCollins, 2007) 32.
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tanneries, slaughterhouses, cemeteries: Ibid.
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other waste from streets: “What Was Life Like in Medieval London?,” Museum of London, http://www.museumoflondon.org/.uk/Explore-online/Pocket-histories/Medieval-life.
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a fire near a waterhole: Deborah Rose, “Fresh Water Rights and Biophilia: Indigenous Australian Perspectives,” Dialogue (Mar. 2004), 35, 37.
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“washing clothes near the drinking water”: Rinne, “‘Seeing Is Believing,’” 280–281.
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her well covered with a rock: Barzilay, Weinberg, and Eley, The Water We Drink, 8.
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“excrementation of the Metropolis”: Gleick, The World’s Water, 129.
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Houses of Parliament bearable: “Parliament and the Thames,” UK Parliament, http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_publications_and_archives/parliamentary_archives/archives_parliament_and_the_thames.cfm.
p. 87
“increasing industrialization, urbanization”: Martin, “The Baptism of Wine,” 21–22.
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typhoid had killed more than 50,000: Michael C. Finnegan, “New York City’s Watershed Agreement,” 577, 590.
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John Snow, 1813–1858: The photograph can be found at Wikimedia, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/John_Snow.jpg.
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the first royal to give birth under anesthesia: Morris, The Blue Death, 55.
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distillation apparatus in his lodgings: Ibid., 36.
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a report written by Snow in 1855: John Snow, “Report on the Cholera Outbreak in the Parish of St. James, Westminster, During the Autumn of 1854” (1855), 100, http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/pageturner/viewer.html?PID=nlm:nlmuid-34721190R-bk.
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remove the pump handle at Broad Street: This story is related in Chapelle, Wellsprings, 81–82.
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boasted a pump handle as its symbol: Morris, The Blue Death, 86; Chapelle, Wellsprings, 82.
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John Snow’s map of cholera: Snow, “Report on the Cholera Outbreak,” 100.
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the same germs reproduce: Tomes, The Gospel of Germs, 33.
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“Foul effluvia”: Morris, The Blue Death, 41–42.
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a cesspit directly adjacent: Chapelle, Wellsprings, 83.
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the most effective politician: Morris, The Blue Death, 44.
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attention to drainage, clean drinking water: The photograph of Chadwick can be found at Wikimedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SirEdwinChadwick.jpg.
p. 92
Report of the Sanitary Condition: Edwin Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, 1842, ed. M. W. Flinn (Edinburgh University Press, 1965).
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“habitual avidity for sensual gratifications”: Morris, The Blue Death, 50.
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calls for improved sanitation: Julia Twigg, “The Vegetarian Movement in England, 1847–1981: A Study of the Structure of its Ideology” (unpublished PhD dissertation, London School of Economics, University of London, 1981), http://www.ivu.org//history/thesis/medicine.html.
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sanitary reform as the “Will of God”: Strang, The Meaning of Water, 30.
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the miasmatic theory of disease: Morris, The Blue Death, 46.
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designed to drain rain from the streets: Ibid., 48–49, 51–52.
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a shocking seventeen years old: Marq de Villiers, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 104–105.
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similar stories for Chicago, Philadelphia: See, e.g., History of Public Works in the United States, 1776–1976, ed. Ellis Armstrong (Washington, D.C.: American Public Works Association, 1976), 399.
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“animal food at their tables”: Blake, Water for the Cities, 9.
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fresh from designing the water system: This story is recounted in Morris, The Blue Death, 137–138.
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reversed the flow: Robert Glennon, Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009), 209.
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too many potential intervening factors: Missouri v. Illinois, 200 U.S. 496 (1906).
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jewels in England’s colonial crown: This story is recounted in Gleick, The World’s Water, 129.
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fever still claimed thousands: Chapelle, Wellsprings, 181.
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Sanskrit writings from approximately 2000 BC: Kathy Jes-person, “Search for Clean Water Continues,” On Tap, Summer 1996, 6, http://www.nesc.wvu.edu/ndwc/pdf/OT/OTs96.pdf.
p. 98
the range of treatment technologies: Ibid.
p. 98
the common practice was light boiling: Cast, “Women Drinking in Early Modern England,” 2.
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purifying water by passing it: “History of Drinking Water Systems,” Department of Engineering, Mercer University (2005), http://egrweb.mercer.edu/eve406/eve406rom/documents/History-Water.pdf; Baker, The Quest for Pure Water, 19, 118.
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first municipal plant was not built: “History of Drinking Water Systems,” 2.
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tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs: M. N. Baker, The Quest for Pure Water (Denver: American Waste Water Association, 1948), 2.
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“water did not cause typhoid”: Joel A. Tarr & T. F. Josie, “Critical Decisions in Pittsburgh Water and Wastewater Treatment,” in A History of Water: The World of Water, eds. Terje Tvedt and Terje Oestigaard (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 206.
p. 100
adoption of chlorinated water: Patrick Gurian and Joel A. Tarr, “The First Federal Drinking Water Quality Standards and Their Evolution: A History from 1914 to 1974,” in Improving Regulation: Cases in Environment, Health, and Safety, eds. Paul S. Fischbeck and R. Scott Farrow (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2001), 43, 53.
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more than five thousand water treatment systems: Chapelle, Wellsprings, 15.
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the bottled water sector collapsed: Ibid.
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any other technological advance: Ibid.
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“horses and other animals refuse”: Joseph Race, Chlorination of Water (1918), 63.
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“delivered to Jersey City pure”: The Mayor and Aldermen of Jersey City v. Jersey City Water Supply Company 79 N.J. Ct of Chancery Reports 212, 214 (July 11, 1911). See also Race, Chlorination of Water, 12.
p. 101
“as pure as mountain spring water” Morris, The Blue Death, 161.
p. 102
fortified cities fell: Raymond P. Dougherty, “Sennacherib and the Walled Cities of Judah,” Journal of Biblical Literature 49, no. 2 (1930), 160, 162-63.
p. 102