I shall endeavour to shew in other places, that these crises, spa-fevers, bad-sturms, and re-actions, described by the foreign writers on the Spas, are often attributable to the want of combining some mild mercurial alterative and aperient with the use of the waters. Many cures are prevented or rendered ineffectual by the dread of mercury entertained by the German physicians.
The following auxilio-preservative (if I may so term it), will be found of essential service every night before taking the morning waters.
| ℞. | Extr. Col. Comp. |
| Pil. Rhei. Comp. aa ℈ij. | |
| Pil. Hydrarg. gr. x. | |
| Ol. Caryoph. gt. vj. | |
| Ft. pil. xx. capt. j. vel. ij. hora somni. | |
We shall now advert to the remarks of Dr. Richter, who has published a very sensible little treatise on the Wisbaden waters, in the year 1839.
Group of Disorders in which the Waters, either Internal or External, or both, are likely to be useful.
1. Complaints having their seat in the abdominal organs, and especially in the biliary apparatus.—The signs or indications of these are—acidities—eructations—furred tongue—troubled digestion—loss of appetite—sense of tightness or oppression about the stomach and bowels, after food—costiveness, or relaxed bowels—congestion about the liver, with or without enlargement of that organ—hypochondriasis and hysteria—hæmorrhoids and their consequences—irritations about the kidneys and bladder—sequences of residence in tropical climates.
2. The various forms of gout and their sequences.—Besides the regular or periodical gout, Dr. Richter enumerates the multitudinous forms which it assumes when latently preying on different organs and structures. There is no end to the proteian features of masked gout—extending as they do from the terrific lacerations of tic douloureux down to the most anomalous morbid feeling, whether internal or external. “In all these,” D. R. avers, “the waters and baths of Wisbaden are eminently beneficial.” The baths, when assisted by the internal use of the waters, bring anomalous and latent gout into its proper place and form—into the extremities, thus relieving the interior.
3. Paralysis, general or local—the sequence of apoplectic attacks, or the consequences of metastases of gout, rheumatism, or cutaneous eruptions from the surface to the brain or spine—also those paralytic affections occasioned by the poisons of lead, arsenic, mercury, &c. or contusions or other injuries of the head and back. Dr. Richter cautiously observes that, during the use of the Wisbaden waters for the foregoing class of complaints, it will often be necessary to bleed, cup, or leech, as well as to take aperient medicines from time to time, under the guidance of the medical attendant.
4. Scrofulous complaints, of all kinds and degrees.
5. Rheumatism, with its various consequences. Of course it is chronic rheumatism that is here meant, with enlargements of joints, contractions, effusions into the capsular ligaments, &c. which attend on and follow that painful class of diseases.