A treatise on the various modes of bathing : with the analyses of the mineral springs of Scarborough, and all their medicinal uses. Part second.

  • Alexander, William.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the various modes of bathing : with the analyses of the mineral springs of Scarborough, and all their medicinal uses. Part second. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Although the improved chemical analysis of the present day enables us to determine with sufficient accuracy, the quantities and essential constituents of mineral springs, yet it supplies only for them what a knowledge of anatomy is for the human body,—it constitutes the basis of our acquaintance with their composi- tion ; and when regarding them as medicinal agents, it should not be forgotten, that analysis dissolves the bond of connexion between the different substances, as they are associated in the secret laboratories of nature, distinct from the arbitrary, imperfect, and often hypothetical combinations of the chemist. A knowledge of the proportion of acids and bases contained in a mineral water, enables the physician to form a general estimate of its medicinal virtues, from its synthetical resemblance to one, with the exact effects of which he is already well acquainted, and it is, therefore, through this means, that he would found a rational theory of its operation. But, nevertheless, experience should go hand in hand with the chemist, in judging of the real effects of every spring.