The Waters of PFEFFERS have neither taste, smell, nor colour. They will keep for ten years, without depositing a sediment, or losing their transparency. But we are not to infer that they are destitute of medicinal powers, because they possess no sensible properties. In their chemical composition, they have hitherto shewn but few ingredients; and those of the simpler saline substances, common to most mineral springs.[43] It does not follow, however, that they contain no active materials because chemistry is not able to detect them. Powerful agents may be diffused in waters, and which are incapable of analysis, or destructible by the process employed for that purpose. The only sure test is EXPERIENCE of their effects on the human body. It is not probable that the Baths of Pfeffers would have attracted such multitudes of invalids, annually, from Switzerland, Germany, and Italy; and that for six centuries, if their remedial agency had been null or imaginary.[44] Their visitors are not of that fashionable class, who run to watering-places for pleasure rather than for health—or, to dispel the vapours of the town by the pure air of the coast or the country. Yet, as human nature is essentially the same in all ranks of society, I have no doubt that much of the fame acquired by the Baths of Pfeffers, has been owing to the auxiliary influence of air, locality, change of scene, moral impressions, and the peculiar mode of using the waters. Their temperature—100° of Fahren.—certain physical phenomena which they evince, and the nature of the diseases which they are reported to cure, leave little doubt in my mind that their merits, though overrated, like those of all other mineral springs, are very considerable. The disorders for which they are most celebrated, are rheumatic and neuralgic pains, glandular swellings, and cutaneous eruptions. But they are also resorted to by a host of invalids afflicted with those anomalous and chronic affections, to which nosology has assigned no name, and for which the Pharmacopœia affords very few remedies. As the Baths belong to the neighbouring Convent of Pfeffers, and, as the holy fathers afford not only spiritual consolation to the patients, but medical assistance in directing the means of cure, there is every reason to believe, or, at least, to hope, that the moral, or rather divine influence of Religion co-operates with mere physical agency, in removing disease and restoring health.