In appropriate cases, the use of the bath should not be too long
deferred. I have had frequent occasion to become cognizant of the fact,
that cases have been sent by physicians to take the baths only after
prolonged ineffectual treatment of another nature had been gone through
with, and where negative or at best tardy results took the place of the
brilliant results that might have been obtained, had the cases been sent
earlier. I do not mention this in a fault-finding spirit; to do so would
be unjust. The remedy under consideration has up to the present time
been too little known, the indications for its employment—in the
absence of statistics—on too uncertain a basis, to expect from any but
specialists the early realization in any case of its appropriateness. I
trust however that in the future, from being a “dernier ressort,” it
will come to take its proper place among other remedies, to be
administered “when it will do the most good.” When this comes to pass,
the results obtained, satisfactory as they are even now, will become as
brilliant and well-authenticated as those of every other remedy from
which experience has taught us how to reap the greatest advantage.
In the following “clinical record” I shall not omit to cite cases where
the baths were unsuccessful, wherever it shall appear to me that the
citation of such cases may be of assistance in arriving at a true
estimation of the therapeutic value of the remedy.
In giving the histories of cases, it will scarcely be necessary to enter
very minutely into details; the demands of the present work will be
fully met if sufficient is said of a case to illustrate the effects of
the baths in the class of cases that it represents.
Finally, I wish it understood that in a few of the conditions in which
I shall advise the employment of the baths, I have had no personal
experience in their use, but base my opinions on what I know of their
effects, together with what is known of the results obtained in
analogous conditions by local electrical methods.
SPECIAL DISEASES.
RHEUMATISM.
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