Harrogate and its resources : chemical analysis of its medicinal waters : report addressed to the chairman of the Harrogate Water Committee / by A.W. Hofmann.

  • Hofmann, August Wilhelm von, 1818-1892.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Harrogate and its resources : chemical analysis of its medicinal waters : report addressed to the chairman of the Harrogate Water Committee / by A.W. Hofmann. 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.

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    are seventeen springs made available for the public, thirteen of which are within half a mile of ''the Old Well/' the others being at a distance—one at Starbeck, sometimes called the Knaresborough Spa, and three in the grounds at Harlow Car. Class TIL consists of the Saline Chalybeates/' of which there are TWO springs; one in the Montpellier Pump lloom, and another iu the so-called Cheltenham Pump Room, known formerly as Oddy's Saline. Class IV. consists of the Pure Chalybeates/' two of which are on the common in higher Harrogate, another at Starbeck, and a fourth at Harlow Car. The medicinal properties of these waters internally administered may be stated thus : Class I. is stimulant, aperient, diuretic, sedative, and specific. Class II. is diuretic, alterative, resolvent, diaphoretic, sedative, and specific. Class III. is stimulant, tonic-aperient, diuretic, and deobstruent. Class IV. is excitant, tonic, and diuretic. For external administration. Classes I. and II. are used as baths and lotions : Classes III. and IV. as lotions, collyria, &c. The direct aperient, diuretic, and diaphoretic virtues are referable primarily to the various more common saline impregnations; and while these effects must of course be secondarily modified to some extent by the rarer salts, this first powei', per se, is possessed in common with other saline wateis. But this modification of the ordinary action of saline waters, and the prolongation of their effects, are precisely those facts which stamp on these waters their peculiar and specific character. To render the probability of such result apparent, imagine first the influence of so powerful a salt as chloride of calcium, which enters largely into the composition of both classes of the stronger waters. Witness again the modification of common aperient salines by further com- bination with, on the one hand, bromides and iodides; however small in quantity, and on the other hand, in Class III, with nascent car- bonate of the protoxide of iron, this last being in an unusually large proportion. And finally, superadd to Classes I. and II. the sulphide of sodium, the representative of the sulphuretted hydrogen. Here we have, as the result, foui- very powerful medicinal agents, in ad- dition to the more common aperient saline substances. To those who are acquainted with the ordinary effects of these salts, it would be superfluous to say anything; but the uninitiated may imagine that such a combination of valuable agents, effected by Nature herself in E