A hand-book of the Peak of Derbyshire, and to the use of the Buxton mineral waters / by William Henry Robertson.

  • Robertson, William Henry.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A hand-book of the Peak of Derbyshire, and to the use of the Buxton mineral waters / by William Henry Robertson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    11/310 (page 5)
    Aix les Bains, Mont Dore, etc., a still more partial external use of mineral water has been resorted to ; and jets, or streams, or showers, or sprays, have been directed, more or less specially, to the parts affected, instead of any immersion in the water at all; and these adaptations of treatment have been introduced for most of the greater health-resorts of Great Britain, and so are allowed to be added to the Buxton means of treatment. How far this may be necessary, or may be fcund to be useful or expedient, time only can determine. But it is only fair, that this great curative mineral water should be given every means that can be asked for, to satisfy medical requirement. The only anxiety allowable may be, lest total or partial immersion of the body in the water, which has produced and maintained the name and fame of Buxton through successive centuries, by the relief or the cure of a large proportion of those who have resorted to it for rheumatic infirmities, should be less trusted to and made use of, or needlessly neglected ; a number of bathers which, through the centuries, must have been well nigh beyond the guesses of imagination; and which, year by year, must have amounted to many thousands, of whom there is no record; but a fraction of whom, under the action of the Buxton Bath Charity, and more recently of its Devonshire Hospital, have been recorded during the last sixty-five years, and give a total of 78,921 cases, of which 70,563 derived more or less substantial relief or cure, and 8,358 appeared to have derived no relief. But, all this long continued and favourable result notwithstanding, as to the curative effect of immersion in the Buxton mineral water, it may well be that exceptional or complicated cases may require special and exceptional means, as to the use or application of the water; and these means may be of value, either as to