Page:Essay on the mineral waters of Carlsbad (1835).pdf/52

 plan. Another beautiful bath-house was erected, in 1831, near the Sprudel, and the Hospital-Baths, without speaking of those which every one can take in his own lodgings, prepared with Sprudel water, pure or mixed with the river water, according to medical prescription. Every house owner is provided with a bathing-room, a bathing-tub, and buckets to carry the water.

According to comparative experiments made last year by Dr. Romberg of Berlin and myself, in order to ascertain a point contested by many, the Sprudel water lost 21½° R., and common water, artificially heated, 33° R, in half an hour.

The advantages of steam-baths had long been praised, and patients at Carlsbad had now and then imagined some imperfect mode of applying vapour in various ailments, rheumatism, gout, contractions of limbs, but without any methodical principles. Fabian Summer, a native of Carlsbad, speaks, in 1571, off Sudaria communia, without describing that sweating establishment, so that now no body knows whether they were, like russian baths, prepared with the vapour of common water, or composed of the Sprudel vapour, which requires another mode of application, on account of its effects upon the organs of respiration. Enormous clouds of vapour rose, during: ages, from our hot wells, lost in the wide atmosphere. The first impulse was at last given to vaporous medecine by the celebrated Mr. d’Arcet and Dr. Galès, of Paris, who invented boxes for sulphurous fumigations.