2. Preparation.—Dr. B. gives us some advice on this point, which we can seldom follow—namely, to dismiss all care, before we visit Kissengen!—to bring with us a statement of our case from the physician in ordinary—to bring warm clothing, adapted to Winter as well as Summer—not to bring unnecessary family and servants—to travel leisurely from home to Kissengen—to rest a few days after the journey, before the waters or baths are taken, and consult with the physician of the place.
3. Mode of taking the waters.—The time is from six till eight o’clock in the morning. The quantity of the waters taken must depend on the capability of the stomach to digest them. As there is much carbonic acid gas in the waters, they ought to be drunk quickly, each portion. The Ragoczy and Pandur are generally taken cold; but, in particular cases, the chill may be taken off them. Ten or twelve minutes should intervene between each goblet of the waters. The first glasses are more easily digested than the later ones. Easy walking between the glasses is beneficial. All persons disposed to congestions about the head or chest, as evinced by giddiness, or oppression in the act of breathing, should be very cautious and moderate in the use of these waters. In the period of re-action, the symptoms should be marked by the patient and communicated to the physician. Breakfast may be taken in half an hour after the last goblet of water. If the waters are taken in the evening, it should be four or five hours after dinner. These regulations apply chiefly to the Ragoczy and Pandur. The Maxbrunnen spring is generally drunk with a moderate proportion of whey or milk.
THE BATHS.
The waters of the Maxbrunnen remain clear when heated. The others become a little turbid by the heat. Patients are recommended not to bathe in any of these waters for three or four days after their arrival. They should be taken for some days internally, before the baths are used, in order that the bowels may be free, and the secretions improved. They ought to be employed to the point of saturation—which generally takes place in a shorter time than by the drinking of the waters. The baths are taken before noon, and after drinking the waters, before breakfast—or in the evening. The baths, however, may be taken two hours after a light breakfast—and are more agreeable to most people at this time than before the repast. Once a day is often enough. They are generally raised to 96° or 98° of Fahrenheit—and half an hour is the usual period of immersion. It is prudent not to stay in more than ten or fifteen minutes at first, and to gradually increase the period, till it comes to thirty or forty minutes.
“Patients who are disposed to convulsions, vertigo, faintings, or fulness about the head, should not use these baths but with extreme caution. Such people ought to keep the head covered with cloths wet with cold water during immersion.”[58] These baths are absolutely prejudicial, if the patient goes in when heated, perspiring, or excited by passions of the mind. The bather ought not to plunge at once into the bath, but first to sponge the chest and stomach with the warm water. It is hurtful to read in the bath, and more so, to go to sleep. On the contrary, the bather should keep in constant motion, to use friction with his own hands over the chest and abdomen. “If, during immersion, the patient be seized with feverish heat, chilliness, shivering, head-ache, oppression on the chest—or any kind of malaise, he should immediately quit the bath, and examine whether or not the temperature has been too high or too low. He should dress himself quickly on leaving the bath, and take some turns in the dressing-room before going into the open air. Gentle exercise after the bath is very beneficial.”
The point of saturation from the baths is considered by Dr. Balling as a matter of great importance. This point is not attained till the morbific matters are expelled from the constitution, and all the secretions have become healthy and natural—especially those from the intestinal canal. The time necessary for attaining this desirable condition will be different in different constitutions—and in different diseases. Generally speaking, it requires two weeks of the bath. After this period the patient and physician should be on their guard, and watch well the phenomena as they occur.
The effects of these waters on the human organism do not cease when the drinking and bathing are left off. They often continue for a long time, and complete the cure which was left incomplete at the spa. It but too frequently happens that, when patients experience no relief at medicinal spas, they are told to hope for a cure from the consecutive effects of the waters. They are often disappointed. In respect to the Kissengen springs, we are informed by Dr. Balling, that unless they produce the reaction already described, during the time the patient is using them, no consecutive effects are to be expected. But, on the other hand, if the reaction clearly shews itself at the springs, considerable consecutive effects, of a salutary nature, may be confidently looked for—and the remainder of the cure may be safely trusted to nature at the patient’s own home. The system of diet enjoined by the Kissengen physicians, and Dr. Balling in particular, is nearly as rigid as at most of the other spas, where certain doctors have hobbies which they ride to death beyond the Rhine as well as in this country.
ORDER OF THE DAY.
At six o’clock in the morning the band marches and plays through the middle of the town to the garden, summoning the sick to their morning potations. “It is here,” says Dr. B. “that a most curious scene presents itself to the musing eye. Eight hundred or a thousand invalids (for comparatively few others go to Kissengen) are quickly assembled in the walks of the “Jardin de cure,” of all conditions and ages—the prince by the side of the tradesman—the queen by that of the peasant girl—all having but one object in view, the recovery of health. Nothing can be more interesting than the general physiognomy which characterises the whole moving mass of human beings.
The great spas present a morbid physiognomy each peculiar to itself. Carlsbad exhibits the yellow and earthy—Ems the pallid and hectic—Pyrmont, the pale chlorosis—the “green and yellow melancholy” of the love-sick maiden. Kissengen has its peculiar physiognomy—but it is a deceitful one—a countenance of morbid fulness and floridness, little indicative of the grave maladies which lie concealed.”