Pilgrimages to the Spas in Pursuit of Health and Recreation / With an inquiry into the comparative merits of different mineral waters: the maladies to which they are applicable, and those in which they are injurious

by James Johnson

CHAUDE FONTAINE.

About six miles from Liege, on the road to Spa, most beautifully situate, lies the little warm spring of the above name. The waters are limpid, inodorous, and tasteless. The temperature is 90½° of Fahrenheit. The specific gravity is that of common water. It contains small quantities of carbonic, sulphuric, and muriatic acid, and also some lime. One hundred pints of this spring yielded 240 grains of saline matters—of which 88 were common salt—91 carbonate of lime—14 sulphate of lime—15 muriate of magnesia—12 alumine—and 15 silice. They are, therefore, very analogous to the waters of Pfeffers, Wildbad, and Schlangenbad—and may be used for the same purposes as their more celebrated contemporaries. They may be reached in nine or ten hours from Ostende, by the rail-road. A young lady from England, who bathed in these waters once, and sometimes twice a day, remarked that she always “felt like eel” after leaving them, and throughout the same day. I do not exactly know what the “eel-feel” is, but I can easily believe that it is not precisely that which the eel itself experiences when it changes its mud-bath for the hands of the cook.

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