Practical observations on mineral waters and baths; with notices of some continental climates, and a reprint (the third) of the Cold-water cure / by Edwin Lee.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on mineral waters and baths; with notices of some continental climates, and a reprint (the third) of the Cold-water cure / by Edwin Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    28/200 (page 16)
    would seem rather to answer the question in the affirmative as far as Europe is concerned. In the hasin extending from the northern base of the Alps to the mountains of Bohemia and Franconia, and from the Riesengebirge on the east to the Black Forest on the west, no thermal waters whatever exist, and very few mineral springs of any description. The mineral waters of the north of Germany consist merely of a few cold chalybeate brine and sulphurous springs. Italy is remarkable for the number of its thermal, acidulous, and sulphurous waters, and in many situa- tions carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen are discharged from the bowels of the earth uncombined with water at all. They almost all emerge from the valleys at the foot of the different mountain ridges. We have already seen the position of the numerous sulphurous springs of Piedmont, and the same general character continues to prevail in the springs of Lom- bardy, as also in the Apennines. Another remarkable fact is that in the prolongation southwards of the Italian peninsula, all its mineral waters are met with on the Mediterranean side of the Apennines, none on the Adriatic, a phenomenon which we shall afterwards see to be intimately connected with the position of the volcanoes and other manifestations of subterranean fire in this country. The whole north of Russia presents a remarkable deficiency of mineral waters, but the southern parts of this great empire contain a considerable number. One of the most curious circumstances connected with the history of thermal waters is the intimate sympathy which is observed between them and earth- quakes in parts of the earth remote from each other. It has been formerly remarked that great heat, or ex- cessive cold, long drought or abundant ruins, influence very httle the composition of thermal waters, however notable may be their effects on some classes of cold mineral waters. Earthquakes have been remarked to produce the most striking changes to which they