Excursions to the principal mineral waters of England, in pursuit of health and information / by James Johnson.

  • Johnson, James, 1777-1845.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Excursions to the principal mineral waters of England, in pursuit of health and information / by James Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    34/182 (page 20)
    infinitely more efficacious than larger and more potent doses of the same ingredients exhibited in draughts and pills at home. Thus a quarter of a grain of iron in a pint of mineral water, held in solution by carbonic acid, will act more efficiently on the human constitution than ten times that quantity taken in pills, powders, or potations, as prepared by the chemist. I have little doubt that all the solid and gazeous contents of mineral waters follow the same rule. Thus, we know that 30 or 40 grains of Epsom or Glauber salts dissolved in a pint of water by the pro- cess of Nature in the bowels of the earth, will act more efficiently, or, at all events, more beneficially on the bowels, than four or six times that quantity dissolved, as it usually is, in one-fourth of a pint by the apothecary. In minute division and extended solu- tion, the saline particles irritate the mucous membrane of the sto- mach and bowels less, and permeate through the whole circula- tion more, than when concentrated in smaller compass in the laboratory of the chemist. In almost all the spas of celebrity we find a considerable num- ber of ingredients—often ten or a dozen—besides those which chemistry has not been able to detect. Now these, instead of neutralizing or impairing the qualities of each other, co-operate, in my opinion, to exalt the remedial efficacy of the whole com- position. Modern physicians have greatly erred by simplifying too far the forms of their prescriptions—few of the scientific (in contra-distinction to the practical) among them venturing on more than two or three efficient articles in one formula. This is not the practice of Nature, as the chemical analysis of any spa will shew. Nor is it the practice to be imitated by those who wish to effect the speediest cure of human afflictions. There are a great many other circumstances attendant on a course of waters at a spa, which increase their medicinal efficacy, but the foregoing are the chief, and the others require no enume- ration. . . . Before returning to the specific complaints against which the Harrogate waters are considered efficacious, I may just allude to a curious malady to which certain spa-doctors themselves are sub- ject at Harrogate, and at almost all the mineral watering-place,.