Medicinal mineral waters, natural and artificial : their efficacy in the treatment of chronic diseases, and rules for their employment : especially those of Carlsbad, Ems, Vichy, Kissingen, Marienbad, Pyrmont, Egra, Pullna, Seidshutz, and Heilbrunn / by S. Hanbury Smith.

  • Smith, Samuel Hanbury, 1810-1894.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medicinal mineral waters, natural and artificial : their efficacy in the treatment of chronic diseases, and rules for their employment : especially those of Carlsbad, Ems, Vichy, Kissingen, Marienbad, Pyrmont, Egra, Pullna, Seidshutz, and Heilbrunn / by S. Hanbury Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    fluids: and upon them the active principles of mineral waters exert great modifying influence. These princi- ples are so well combined with adjuvants, and so com- pletely dissolved, that they readily penetrate into the circulation, impressing upon the entire organism a far more salutary influence than results from the use of most pharmaceutical substances. The amendment takes place slowly, with appreciable crises, and may not become complete until some time after the employment of the waters has ceased. M. Patissier believes that the doctrine of metastasis has undeservedly fallen into discredit, and he finds the reports full of instances of the production of functional disturbances by the metastasis of gouty, rheumatic or syphilitic principles. These affections often, indeed, as- sume the mask of neuroses, visceral neuralgia, &c, and the diagnosis may be difficult to establish—the maxim, naturam morborum ostcnclit curatio, often finding its ap- plication. Many pathologicul distinctions, to all appear- ance very serious, and which have resisted the most ra- tional treatment, are dissipated by provoking to the surface the rheumatic, gouty, or S}rphilitic principles, or reproducing a dartrous eruption inconsiderately repressed. In diseases of the skin much good or harm may result according as the mineral waters are selected, with due regard to the cause of the affection and amount of irrita- tion, and the perseverance with which they are employed. In scrofula, their use is rarely continued long enough to exert a curative influence on lesious springing from so deep-seated an infection of the economy. It is by no means rare to find syphilis, that had long remained lat- ent, becoming unmasked and amenable to treatment un- der the influence of mineral waters. They are not in themselves anti-syphilitic; but they are useful adjuvants