The medical properties of the St. Catharines mineral waters.

Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical properties of the St. Catharines mineral waters. 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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    [2] THE HOTEL. The Stephenson House may now claim a favorable comparison with any similar establishment upon this continent In construction, proportions, and general coinmodiousness, it will be found to afford every requisite for the accommodation of all classes of visitors. TH E BATHS The thermal establishment originally constructed to furnish baths for 200 persons daily, has recently been more than doubled in extent, and a variety of douches and vapor baths, after the latest and most approved models.have been introduced. All the important and useful appliances for the employment of water in disease, usually adopted at Hydropathic Institutions, are also provided. THE WELL. Is an Artesian boring, about 000 feet deep, into corniferous limestone, capable of yielding 30,000 gallons per diem. The water is pumped up by a steam engine into reservoirs upon the summit of the bank. In one of these it is heated by a simple contrivance, without injury to its composi- tion, and then distributed by pipes to the cabinets in the bath-house. CHEMICAL COMPOSITION. The silurian rocks of Canada afford a great number of Mineral Waters, reducible into three principal classes—the saline, the sulphurous, and the acid. The first of those divisions, to which this spring belongs, holds generally in solution Alkaline Chlorides, Chlorides, Iodides, and Bromides of Calcium, and Magnesium and Sulphates of the Alkaline earths. The following analysis, by Professor Croft, of Toronto Univer- sity, was effected in the summer of 1853:— Sulphate of Lime 2.3977 Chloride of Calcium 14.8544 Chloride of Magnesium S.3977 Iodide of do 0.004-1 Bromide of do A trace. Chloride of Potassium 0.SSU Chloride of Sodium '29.8034 Chloride of Ammonium, ) A trace. Silicic Acid, ) 50.6075 Losj 1.0670 ~ 51.0745 This analysis establishes a similarity approaching to identity of com- position with some of the most important and fashionable German Spas, those of Kreuznach, the muriated saline waters of Wiesbaden and Kis- sengen, and the waters of Salins, in the Jura, Frauce. In the soureeof these waters we may discover the cause of the complete and thorouoh solution and blending of their constituents, so as to produce a perfect and homogeneous whole; they are filtered through miles of solid rock, subjected to additional atmospheric pressure, and stored up for ages in the chasms and caves in which they originally accumulate. These cir- cumstances may account for the fact now very generally admitted, that no solutions artificially prepared wiW produce equal medicinal effects.