Page:Essay on the mineral waters of Carlsbad (1835).pdf/64

 regulated by the medical adviser, to whom they apply at Carlsbad; such instructions, written or printed, which many physicians think proper to give to their patients, are absolutely useless, and often attended with disagreable consequences, if there happens to be diversity of opinions between those instructions and the precepts of the local physician. The worst part of our functions is to be consulted for diseases which Carlsbad can only aggravate, and to find ourselves in the painful necessity of declaring to such patients, that they would have done better to stay at home. Such mistakes, caused by an imperfect knowledge of the effects of our waters, are but too frequent. Supported by hope, the journey to the wells was at least tolerable; but, deprived of all further illusions, the way home is dreadful. More than one arrives here every year to be buried, without having been able to drink a single drop of the water from which he expected recovery, or at least great relief.

They never agree with an inflammatory state, general or partial, nor with symptoms of orgasmus, congestions and vertigo, which must be removed by appropriated means, before the water is administered. Should such accidents take place during the cure, it must be interrupted.

They are decidedly hurtful in every degree of pulmonary phthisis; to individuals disposed to hemorrhagies, and still more during hemorrhagies; they accelerate and increase the pulsations and dilatations, and consequently the rupture, of anevrisms; they