Page:Essay on the mineral waters of Carlsbad (1835).pdf/86

 of warmer or cooler; innumerable patients attribute to them different effects, and are afraid to loose time so long as they drink what they call the mild or weak waters. Those erroneous opinions are easily rectified at Carlsbad by their medical adviser; but they may be attended with the most serious consequences, if foreign physicians, taking for granted that we have weaker and harmless springs, send us patients, who very soon experience that neither one spring nor the other can agree with them. Certain individuals have, no doubt, a kind of elective attraction for one source or for the other, and obtain from that spring all sorts of good effects, whilst another one will act perhaps differently. Such individualities must be attended to and particularly respected, but the closest attention to the effects of our various wells is insufficient for classing them a priori, according to the diseases in which they prove more or less useful. The great question, in sending patients to Carlsbad, is not to decide which source they should drink, but whether our waters are indicated or not. I have treated at full length this important subject, in the Almanach, for 1832, ch. III.

I have met with a few ignorant hypocondriacal patients, afraid of the green stuff surrounding our wells (Confervae thermales), because they suppose it to be vert-de-gris. We hope that such a fancy never can perplex any one who has read, in the present opuscule, of Mr. Corda upon those remarkable animal creatures.