The Bath waters : their uses and effects in the cure and relief of various chronic diseases. / By James Tunstall, M.D.

  • Tunstall, James, -1880.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Bath waters : their uses and effects in the cure and relief of various chronic diseases. / By James Tunstall, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    tirely a matter of scientific hypothesis. It may be affirmed that no purely natural fluid so much resembles, in many of its constituent elements, the composition of healthy blood, as the Bath waters, it being remembered that the salts con- tained in the former are united together by vital heat, with certain animal principles; while the salts contained in the latter are held in solution by thermal heat, and are separated by cooling into solid and fluid portions, as the various parts of the blood are into coagulum and serum by the application of cold. If, then, we seek for a reason why these waters are so grateful to the system of a person debilitated by the action of acute disease, we can, I think, supply an answer. By long con- tinued debility and suffering, want of exercise, and confinement to a room not exposed to the full influence of atmospheric air, the body, more particularly in certain cases of rheumatism, has become charged with blood which wants many of the elements of that fluid in a healthy state. The perspiration is offensive to the nose, and acid in its reaction upon test paper; the blood, if drawn in a full stream, is black, and separates into two distinct portions—a coagulum, with a coating of buff, more or less thick, and a large proportion of watery, or serous matter; and if, as I have in many instances found, that the same individual, after undergoing a course of