The Waters of Pfeffers are led from their sombre source in the cavern, along the narrow scaffold before described, into a series of baths scooped out of the rocky foundation of this vast hospital, each bath capable of accommodating a considerable number of people at the same time. The thermal waters are constantly running into and out of the baths—or rather through them, so that the temperature is preserved uniform, and the waters themselves in a state of comparative purity, notwithstanding the numbers immersed in them. The baths are arched with stone—the window to each is small, admitting little light, and less air:—and, as the doors are kept shut, except when the bathers are entering or retiring, the whole space not occupied by water, is full of a dense vapour, as hot as the Thermæ themselves. The very walls of the baths are warm, and always dripping with moisture. Such are the SUDATORIA in which the German, Swiss, and Italian invalids indulge more luxuriously than ever did the Romans in the Baths of Caracalla. In these they lie daily, from two, to six, eight, ten—and sometimes sixteen hours![45] The whole exterior of the body is thus soaked, softened—parboiled; while the interior is drenched by large quantities swallowed by the mouth—the patient, all this while, breathing the dense vapour that hovers over the baths. The Waters of Pfeffers, therefore, inhaled and imbibed, exhaled and absorbed, for so many hours daily, must permeate every vessel, penetrate every gland, and percolate through every pore of the body. So singular a process of human maceration in one of Nature’s cauldrons, conducted with German patience and German enthusiasm, must, I think, relax many a rigid muscle—unbend many a contracted joint—soothe many an aching nerve—clear many an unsightly surface—resolve many an indurated gland—open many an obstructed passage—and restore many a suspended function. The fervid and detergent streams of the Pfeffers, in fact, are actually turned, daily and hourly, through the Augean stable of the human constitution, and made to rout out a host of maladies indomitable by the prescriptions of the most sage physicians. The fable of MEDEA’S revival of youthful vigour in wasted limbs is very nearly realized in the mountains of the Grisons, and in the savage ravine of the TAMINA. Lepers are here purified—the lame commit their crutches to the flames—the tumid throat and scrofulous neck are reduced to symmetrical dimensions—and sleep revisits the victim of rheumatic pains and neuralgic tortures. HYDROPATHY, HYDRO-SUDO-PATHY—OR HYDROTHERAPEIA.