The Buxton medicinal baths, either at their natural temperature, or when the water is artificially heated, are, on account of their powerful action upon the human system, quite inadmissible in all cases where there is acute inflamation of any organ. In extensive valvular disease of the heart, especially when accompanied with regurgitation, or advanced degeneracy of that organ, atheromatous degeneration or aneurism of the larger arteries, lung disease, in an advanced stage, especially when connected with the phthisical diathesis, asthma, or amphipneuma, complicated with fatty degeneration or dilatation of the heart, giddiness, vertigo, or sudden faintness consequent upon organic disease, the baths should not be taken, except locally, and even then with the greatest caution. When so used the affected parts may be sponged with the thermal water heated to the prescribed degree. An ordinary compress soaked in the heated water may often be advantageously worn continuously over an inflamed joint, congested liver, inactive kidneys, or irritable stomach. When the thermal water is only prescribed, the most favourable time for drinking it is from seven to eight and eleven to twelve a.m., and from four to five p.m., but when ordered to be taken in conjunction with the chalybeate, the former should be taken in the morning and the latter in the afternoon. It has been customary for some medical men to prescribe the two waters mixed together. My own experience leads me to think that such a mode of using them (in a great measure) destroys the efficacy of the thermal by reducing its temperature, and driving off one of its most active and essential constituents, viz., the nitrogen gas. The water can be drunk with safety in most cases, but there are some in which it is as inadmissible as the use of the baths. In acute cystitis, advanced stage of Bright’s disease, certain forms of dyspepsia, irritation in the urinary passages, either in the male or female, drinking the thermal water should not be resorted to. The mucous membrane under its influence becomes more irritable, and where the urinary passages are specially involved, the impulsive efforts to void urine are extremely painful and distressing, the urine being reduced to mere driblets, and sometimes even to complete retention. Constant sickness, either arising from mucous inflammation or ulcer of the stomach, contra—indicate the use of the thermal water. CHAPTER IV. DISEASES IN WHICH THE WATERS ARE USEFUL. Acute Gout and Rheumatism—Chronic Gout and Rheumatism—Chorea—Paralysis Agitans—Many Forms of Paralysis—Muscular Atrophy consequent upon the Gouty Diathesis—Loco Motor Ataxia—Syphilis—Local Injuries—Neuralgia—Sciatica, Lumbago, &c.—Number of Baths Constituting a Course—Length of Residence Required—Action of Water upon Acute and Chronic Disease—Extract from Devonshire Hospital Report—Inference.