In general terms water is called pure when it is clear and free from insoluble particles held in suspension and visible to the naked eye, from which it may be freed by filtration through charcoal, sand, or porous (natural or artificial) stones, and when it possesses a clean fresh taste.
It depends on the absence of any taste, decomposing organic matter, on the quantity of air5 and atmospheric gases in solution, and on the presence of mineral substances to the amount of about 300 grams per ton (or 1000 kilograms per cubic metre, or, what is the same, 300 milligrams to a kilogram or a litre of water), and of not more than 100 grams of organic matter.6 Such water is suitable for drinking and every practical application, but evidently it is not pure in a chemical sense.
A chemically pure water is necessary not only for scientific purposes, as an independent substance having constant and definite properties, but also for many practical purposes—for instance, in photography and in the preparation of medicines—because many properties of substances in solution are changed by the impurities of natural waters.
Water is usually purified by distillation, because the solid substances in solution are not transformed into vapours in this process.
Such distilled water is prepared by chemists and in laboratories by boiling water in closed metallic boilers or stills, and causing the steam produced to pass into a condenser—that is, through tubes (which should be made of tin, or, at all events, tinned, as water and its impurities do not act on tin) surrounded by cold water, and in which the steam, being cooled, condenses into water which is collected7 in a receiver.
By standing exposed to the atmosphere, however, the water in time absorbs