I have already stated that some of the philosophic spa doctors have broached the doctrine, that mineral waters are merely secretions from one great watery being residing deep in the bowels of the earth! As the secretions from the human body are very various, so the secretions from the mother Spa are almost innumerable, and thus the infinite variety of mineral waters is readily explained and accounted for. Q. E. D.[72]
The situation of Carlsbad is very picturesque—I might say romantic. It might be pretty well characterised by a single line, descriptive of a very different locality—the valley of the Upas tree:
“Rocks rise on rocks and fountains gush between.”
The town is built partly in the valley, partly on the ledges of granite rocks that rise abruptly behind it, to a height of 1500 feet, while the lazy Teple—
“Slow as Lethe’s stream,”
creeps at a snail’s space through the vale, contrasting remarkably with the boisterous, foaming, upheaving, and boiling Sprudel, that gushes from unknown and unfathomable depths in the bowels of the earth, carrying health and life to its unnumbered votaries.
Carlsbad cures, as a matter of course, nine-tenths of human maladies; but as King of the Spas, it has a royal prerogative of a curious and important nature—namely, the power of curing those diseases which resist the virtues of all other spas and all other remedies! In answer to a question, “why Carlsbad sustained its reputation undiminished?” Hufeland replied—“C’est qu’il guérit des maux rebelles a tout autre moyen curatif.” It is true that, if we take the testimonies of the other spas, none of which admit their fallibility in any case, this prerogative of Carlsbad would be little more than a sinecure; but the promises of spa doctors, like the waters which they prescribe, must be taken cum grano salis; and we may safely conclude that some maladies present themselves at the Sprudel which have resisted the Cockbrunnen, as well as many other brunnens between the Rhine and the Danube.[73]
The attestations to the power of the Carlsbad prerogative would fill a volume. One just before me, as recorded by Dr. Granville, on the authority of a British nobleman, well known in the world of wit, is worthy of notice. Lord A——, it appears, through the efficacy of the Carlsbad waters, “had lost a pleuritic adhesion under the sternum (or breast bone) the consequence of neglected inflammation in the chest, which had annoyed him for a long time, and resisted all curative means. The complaint made him short-breathed in ascending hills, and gave him a dragging sensation whenever he sneezed—all which symptoms have since disappeared.”