The injurious effects of hot baths, even of common water, are daily witnessed at home—and these agents are still more powerful abroad. Their physiological effects on the normal or healthy constitution, as mentioned above, by Dr. Granville, I certainly did not experience in my own person; but this might be from the thickness of my skull, the hardness of my brain, or the weakness of my circulation. The sensations produced by these baths were always of the most pleasant kind, with far more disposition to ruminate than to sleep. In these effects, indeed, consists much of the danger. There are few diseases, however unsuited for hot bathing, that do not appear to be soothed or mitigated, at first, by this agent—and this apparent relief throws the practitioner off his guard, and leads the patient to extol the remedy, and persevere in the hazardous experiment, till the mischief actually occurs. There is, in truth, much less danger from improper drinking of mineral waters, than bathing in the same. The stomach or other organs are pretty sure to give ample notice of approaching injury from the imprudent use of mineral waters internally taken. Not so in the case of bathing. While the train of destruction is preparing—nay, at the moment when the match is applied to the train, the victim is lulled into a fatal security, not only by the absence of painful feelings, but by the positive induction of sensations the most pleasurable.
It is unnecessary to reiterate the precautions already stated in other places, as to the use of warm and hot bathing here. Rheumatic, gouty, paralytic, and cutaneous affections are those which can reap much benefit from the Ursprung—and, in these cases, all inflammatory and congestive states of the constitution, as well as of particular organs, should be carefully removed, before the waters are used, either internally or externally.
It would be easy to resuscitate ample testimonies, lay and professional, to the miraculous efficacy of the Baden springs, in all diseases, curable and incurable. An attendance among the fragments of antiquity round the Ursprung must convince the most credulous that Baden, as I said before, is not the Pool of Bethesda, as far as its healing virtues are concerned, though its waters are daily “troubled” by angels somewhat different from those that descended, for benevolent purposes, near the Holy City. Baden is, in fine, neither more nor less than a fashionable place of pleasure, dissipation, vice, and gambling—abounding in hot-baths, hells, hotels, scandal, and good scenery.
The last item in the above list has been most grossly exaggerated, as any one will acknowledge who has visited the place and compared its scenery with the following bombast.
“The surpassing grandeur of the scenery has been so constantly dwelt upon, that the hopeless task of description is unnecessary. Should you love all that is awful, sombre, wild, and grand in scenery, wander but half a mile from town, and you may be lost amid the dark valleys that wind through the pine-covered mountains.”—Mrs. Trollope.
Now I most positively deny that there is anything either grand, or awful, or sublime, in the scenery of Baden. The valley is picturesque, romantic, or even beautiful—and the view from the ruins of the old castle (rather more than half-a-mile, by the way, from the town) is extensive and very fine; but the sublime and the awful do not enter into the composition of Baden scenery. You must wander among the Alps for these.
LINES
Written at the Vieux Chateau, August, 1834.
The pine-clad mountains boldly rise
Round Baden’s hot and healing spring;