Amazon.com description: Product Description: The authors of this little work have taken a broad view of their subject, which is one of the most interesting in the range of sanitary science. They give a clear and concise, if occasionally somewhat desultory, account of some of the varying conditions of soil, and their bearing upon health and disease. Geology and mineralogy are first dealt with in outline, and then the physical and chemical conditions of the surface soil, and the microbes found in it, including of course pathogenic and nitrifying organisms. A sketch is given of the ætiology of each of the specific diseases which are credited with a relation to telluric conditions. The connexion between damp and phthisis, and that between the movements of ground water and enteric fever and cholera, are discussed upon the usual lines; as also are thermometric changes in the soil and the composition and movements of ground air. The impurities liable to gain access to water supplies, their sources and their effect upon health, are shortly described. In the last chapter a somewhat disproportionate amount of space is given to a description, and adverse criticism, of Mr. Haviland's well-known views as to the geological and geographical distribution of cancer. The worth of the unwieldy formulae attributed to humic and ulmic acids (page 30) is questionable, since few authorities would at the present day affirm the existence of either as a definite chemical compound.
If there is nothing strikingly original in Messrs. Miers and Crosskey's book, it has distinct merit and utility as a clear and readable account of an important subject, treated from many different points of view.
–The Practitioner, Vol. 52 [1894]