t are found in many of the common foods.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Good foods for giving the body power and heat.]

Water is one of the most important of the mineral foods because it helps
the body use all the other foods. Most people drink too little water to
enjoy the best health. The body needs more than two quarts of water
every day. There is much water in our foods. More than one half of eggs,
meat, and potatoes is made of water, and more than three fourths of
tomatoes, green corn, onions, cabbage, and string beans is composed of
water. We should drink one quart or more of water daily. It should not
be used ice cold, and very little should be taken at meal time.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Diagram showing how the drainage from a house
with a sick person caused one hundred and twenty cases of typhoid
fever at Mount Savage, Maryland.]

=Water and Health.=--One of the common causes of sickness is bad
water. Water from shallow wells within a hundred feet of barnyards,
pigpens, or other outhouses is usually unsafe to drink. At Newport,
Rhode Island, more than eighty persons were made sick with the fever
by drinking the water from a well only ten feet deep. The impure
water from one spring at Trenton, New Jersey, gave the fever to
nearly a hundred persons in one season. At Mount Savage, Maryland, a
hundred and twenty persons were made ill by using the water from a
spring near a house drain.

Water from rivers and streams running near where many people live is
likely to be made impure and is sure to bring sickness and death to
some of those who use it. Water from a small stream at Plymouth,
Pennsylvania, running past a house occupied by a typhoid patient, gave
the fever to over a thousand persons in one month. The water from a
small stream at Ithaca, New York, gave the fever to over thirteen
hundred people in one season, and an almost equal number caught the
fever in a few weeks at Butler, Pennsylvania, by drinking water from a
small creek along which some sick persons lived.

=Preventing Sickness from Bad Water.=--It is better to go thirsty than
to drink water which is likely to cause sickness. Any water can be
made safe by boiling it one minute. Boiled water is the most healthful
kind of water to use. The people of China and Japan seldom use water
that has not been boiled.

Many cities using water from rivers run it through a layer of sand and
gravel to remove the tiny things that cause so much sickness and death.
T