The water of Bruckenau, then, like all pure tonics, is a powerful engine in skilful hands; but a dangerous weapon when wielded without judgment. Debility, or at least a feeling of debility, attends almost every disease, whether acute or chronic. To remove this symptom is the constant prayer of the patient, and the great embarrassment of the practitioner, who knows that those remedies which augment the general strength, too often increase the activity and danger of the local disorder. It must be owned that in medicine, as well as in other professions, there are individuals who, for the sake of ill-got fame and sordid pelf, will pander to the appetites, prejudices, and ignorance of the public, and, through the agency of food and physic, force, as it were, the general strength beyond the level at which the local malady can be safely remedied. The fire is smouldered but not extinguished, and is sure to break out, sooner or later, with redoubled violence. But the object of the doctor is attained—the fees are secure, and his skill is already attested by the deluded victim, who is ashamed afterwards to recall the testimony. The attempt to restore general health or strength by tonics or chalybeates, where there exists a local disorder of any organ or structure, is not merely illusory, but prejudicial or even dangerous. Hence the necessity of an accurate examination of all the organs, before a course of tonics is entered on at home, or a journey to a chalybeate spa abroad. Much expense, fatigue, and disappointment would be saved by such a preliminary investigation. It is in cases where the general health and strength are breaking down under _functional disorder_, and where this disorder is corrected by other spas or proper medicines, that the chalybeates of Spa, Schwalbach, Bruckenau, or Bocklet, act like a charm in restoring energy to the constitution, taken internally and used externally. The chalybeate bath requires caution and attention, as well as the drinking of the waters. Although much of the iron is lost by the escape of the carbonic acid gas, still the corrugation, redness, and roughness of the skin produced by immersion in the chalybeate bath indicate a powerful agency, and when lassitude, drowsiness, head-ache, or sense of exhaustion follow the bath, the patient should be on his guard, and either desist, or report to the bath physician. There must be an especial freedom from all organic disease, and even from functional disorder—especially disordered function of the liver or digestive apparatus, attended with morbid secretions, where such a pure and powerful chalybeate as Bruckenau can be safely employed.