Pilgrimages to the Spas in Pursuit of Health and Recreation: With an inquiry into the comparative merits of different mineral waters: the maladies to which they are applicable, and those in which they are injuriousJohnson, James
Science
Pilgrimages to the Spas in Pursuit of Health and Recreation: With an inquiry into the comparative merits of different mineral waters: the maladies to which they are applicable, and those in which they are injurious
Johnson, James
Balneology; Health resorts; Mineral waters
The parents of youths going to universities of all kinds, have some
reason for anxiety—if they knew all:—but the VERBONDUNGS of Germany are a
disgrace to civilized Europe!
BADEN-BADEN.
Along almost the whole way from Wisbaden to Baden-Baden, we have Belgium
on our right, and Devonshire on our left. The road, which generally
skirts the bases of the undulating hills to the eastward, has hardly
a rise or fall, the alluvial and fertile plain stretching away to the
Rhine, till the mountains of Alsace arrest the attention on the western
bank of that river. The whole space between the hills and the river, was,
indisputably, a lake, at some remote period, drained by the breaking down
of some obstruction to the stream—probably in the vicinity of the present
Lurley-rocks.
Five or six miles from Rastadt and the Rhine, embosomed in a narrow dell,
and encircled by steep and wooded hills, lies the far-famed BADEN-BADEN.
The comparative localities of Wisbaden and this place, might be imagined
by supposing the former to be a saucer, and the latter an egg-cup. And
yet the air of Baden, though in an egg-cup, is fresher if not purer, than
that of its celebrated rival of Nassau, where there are no eminences of
any altitude within some miles of the town. It is true that the thermal
springs of Wisbaden are a few degrees higher in temperature than those of
Baden, but this is quite insufficient to account for the difference of
atmosphere.
A very few visits to the wells in the morning, the hells in the evening,
and the hotels in the middle of the day, will convince any observant
traveller that three-fourths of the sojourners at Baden, go there to
drink wine rather than water—and to lose money, rather than regain health.
The thermal springs here are of great antiquity. They served to scour the
Roman legions stationed at Baden, in the days of Aurelian, as they now
do to scald the pigs and poultry of the butchers and poulterers of the
same place. The far-famed Ursprung issues from the ruins of an old Roman
structure on the side of a hill overlooking the town, at a temperature
of 154 degrees of Fahrenheit, and in quantities sufficient to wash and
drench the whole town, visitors and all. The water is translucid, and
tastes much less either of the chickens or salt, than its contemporary of
the Kochbrunnen at Wisbaden. It has, however, especially in the baths,
a very faint odour of bear’s grease, or green fat, which I have noticed
when speaking of the Kochbrunnen. The whole of the solid contents in
a pint of the water, are only about 24 grains, of which common salt
makes 16 grains, the other ingredients being chiefly lime, in different
combinations with sulphuric, muriatic, and carbonic acids. There is just
iron enough for the chemists to swear by—but not for the drinkers to
distinguish by taste.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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