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 injurious effects of hot baths, even of common water, are daily
witnessed at home—and these agents are still more powerful abroad. Their
physiological effects on the normal or healthy constitution, as mentioned
above, by Dr. Granville, I certainly did not experience in my own
person; but this might be from the thickness of my skull, the hardness
of my brain, or the weakness of my circulation. The sensations produced
by these baths were always of the most pleasant kind, with far more
disposition to ruminate than to sleep. In these effects, indeed, consists
much of the danger. There are few diseases, however unsuited for hot
bathing, that do not appear to be soothed or mitigated, at first, by this
agent—and this apparent relief throws the practitioner off his guard, and
leads the patient to extol the remedy, and persevere in the hazardous
experiment, till the mischief actually occurs. There is, in truth, much
less danger from improper drinking of mineral waters, than bathing in the
same. The stomach or other organs are pretty sure to give ample notice of
approaching injury from the imprudent use of mineral waters internally
taken. Not so in the case of bathing. While the train of destruction is
preparing—nay, at the moment when the match is applied to the train,
the victim is lulled into a fatal security, not only by the absence of
painful feelings, but by the positive induction of sensations the most
pleasurable.
It is unnecessary to reiterate the precautions already stated in other
places, as to the use of warm and hot bathing here. Rheumatic, gouty,
paralytic, and cutaneous affections are those which can reap much benefit
from the URSPRUNG—and, in these cases, all inflammatory and congestive
states of the constitution, as well as of particular organs, should be
carefully removed, before the waters are used, either internally or
externally.
It would be easy to resuscitate ample testimonies, lay and professional,
to the _miraculous_ efficacy of the BADEN springs, in all diseases,
curable and incurable. An attendance among the fragments of antiquity
round the Ursprung must convince the most credulous that BADEN, as I
said before, is not the Pool of Bethesda, as far as its healing virtues
are concerned, though its waters are daily “troubled” by angels somewhat
different from those that descended, for benevolent purposes, near the
Holy City. BADEN is, in fine, neither more nor less than a fashionable
place of pleasure, dissipation, vice, and gambling—abounding in
hot-baths, hells, hotels, scandal, and good scenery.
The last item in the above list has been most grossly exaggerated, as any
one will acknowledge who has visited the place and compared its scenery
with the following bombast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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