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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    ibeing naturally-medicated saline waters ; from which, being both mild and strong, and that too in great variety, we are enabled tomakeselec- itions for administration according to the requirements of each indi- vidual case. And, besides these, we have the various richly impreg- nated chalybeates, possessing many of the pecuHarities of the former, and otherwise more appropriate to feeble constitutions. It is true, I these latter have not nearly so much of the free carbonic acid gas, so [inviting, so agreeable, so exciting, and yet so evanescent, of which the I waters of Kissingen and other places on the continent can boast; but, in more important ingredients (to say no more of their proximity to our other mineral waters), they are even superior to the waters of the great majority of those places. An inspection of the Analytical Tables shows, moreover, that these stronger waters are not very much less impregnated with saline ingredients than sea-water itself; whereby much of the advantage of salt-water bathing is aflForded by them. Indeed, as Professor Phillips has suggested, it may well be that sea- water, deeply traversing the bowels of the earth, is itself the men- struum for all the additional minerals which are derived from our own more immediate strata. Add, then, to these results, the fact that all our waters are so variously impregnated in kind and degree, and the following affirmation must seem more than probable:—That, it is as wrong to deem them only useful in skin diseases as that their aperient properties are their greatest value. These are, in fact, not only the most ordinary, and therefore the least peculiar of their virtues, but they are also quite secondary in importance, as we have pointed out, to their alterative, corrective, tonic, and specific opera- tions. As to the former error, enough has been said to show the great extent to which these waters can be made available in the treatment of chronic diseases in general, as well as skin diseases. And, probably there are few such cases, if unconnected with organic internal disease, which may not be either relieved or cured. In general terms we may specify two or three great and important classes of disease to which they are especially applicable. One of these is dyspepsia, in almost all its numerous and varied phases, and whether arising from derangement of the functions of the stomach, the duodenum, the liver, or the bowels. Next to this, may be named as peculiarly appropriate for treat- ment by some of the waters, those diseases of the blood arising from primary or secondary mal-assimilation, which are the fruitful source of so much suffering and ulterior disease—as gout, rheumatism, chorea, chlorosis, anEemia, and the like.