Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/532

516 (a.) For uric-acid gravel.

(b.) For vesical catarrh.

(c.) For enlargements of the prostate gland.

(d.) For gout, especially when it is hereditary, but occurs in a subject not individually predisposed by his way of life to the disease.

In all these categories of chronic disease the waters of Contrexéville, when supplemented by the kindly care of Dr. Brongniard, Dr. Thiery, or some other of the excellent physicians to be found at this station, will usually bring either cure or material relief.

6. is a quiet place in a rolling plain of the Vosges, 1,272 feet above sea-level. The train voyages through this placid upland country almost like a steamer upon the long swell of the Pacific Ocean. You get off at a little station in the midst of the wheat and scarlet poppies that are blowing together in the summer wind, and enjoy the brilliant color which gives such a charm to the French wheat-growing districts during the summer; taking the stage, you are set down in front of a fine new establishment—brand-new, indeed, and scarcely yet completed—where groups of well-dressed people are gathered in the newly planted park, waiting for the dinner-hour to strike. The dining-room, by-the-way, is hardly large enough for the company. A larger dining-hall was in process of building when I was there last summer, and also a promenade for exercise during rainy weather. An excellent reading-room is a feature of the establishment.

The waters are calcic, and are substantially the same as those of Vittel and Contrexéville, but purge less than the latter. There are two springs, both cold, besides a "saponaceous" spring, so called from the unctuous feel or texture of the water, and from its milky appearance; of this, however, little use is made. Dr. Bridou, the physician in charge, is a serious and competent physician, a young man, but well versed in the complex subject of mineral waters in general, and of those of Martigny-les-Bains in particular. He makes no extravagant claims for their virtues. "Gout and gravel—c'est tout" he said to me with decisive frankness; "but surely it is much to cure these two grave complaints." Gravel in its most frequent form, that which depends upon the uric-acid diathesis, and gravel in many of the severer cases even, are relieved or cured by these most efficient waters. Regimen is carefully attended to, as at all of the best French spas; and while I will not say that regimen is exceptionally necessary in the treatment of gout and gravel, it is a part of the treatment that can not be dispensed with safely in any disease that depends upon mal-nutrition. The mistake of many patients is that when once they are arrived at a spring they think that the waters will do all. The contrary is especially true of chronic diseases, and chronic diseases are almost the only ones that are treated at mineral springs. For in chronic diseases a cure is not wrought by a succession of powerful remedial impacts, as in acute diseases it is often wrought. In chronic