A guide to the use of the Buxton mineral waters / by William Henry Robertson.

  • Robertson, William Henry, 1810-1897.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to the use of the Buxton mineral waters / by William Henry Robertson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    4/68
    temperature being obtained with less alteration of chemical character than occurs in lowering the tempera- ture of hot natural springs to any heat that can be used as baths; the mineral water of Buxton is at much advantage for medicinal use above other mineral waters of similar character and effects. More recently, the long-continued usage by the Mineral Water Bath Establishment at Aix les Bains, dating it would seem from the time of the Crusades, and used at Aix apparently from that time to the present, has suggested a more methodical and energetic manipula- tion of the surface of the bathers by shampooing or massage; and this has been taken up by the more important mineral water establishments of Europe, and been added to the bathing appliances of Buxton. Douches have been in constant use in the mineral water baths of Buxton during the greater part of the present century, and been found to be of signal value in specially localised spinal, muscular, and joint conditions of rheumatic and neuralgic character; but a more special use of friction, manipulation and massage of muscles, tendons and ligaments was found to hold out curative expectations that douches alone could not obtain; and the full means of massage, &c., were asked for by the principal medical residents of Buxton, and immediately granted ; and have secured an amount of success beyond all expectation. Many hundreds of cases, otherwise apparently intractable, have now been submitted to the massage treatment, in connection with the use of tho Buxton Mineral Water, with conclusively curative results. There are separate rooms and massage bath apparatus for gentlemen and ladies; and good results have been obtained, not only beyond what, in these exceptional cases, have been derived from the use of the baths and douches heretofore exclusively employed, but beyond the benefit obtained at some other important mineral water resorts, confirming and extending the medicinal value of the Buxton thermal water, and justifying most fully this important addition to the mineral water bath appliances of Buxton. The location of Buxton at an elevation of one thousand feet’ above the sea-level, and in the centre of an upland district having a diameter of from twenty to forty miles.