While examining the waters, the baths, and the internal economy of the vast valetudinarium that stands in this savage locality, the bell announced the approach of the second, or superior dinner, which happened that day to be rather later than usual. The Salon, overlooking the torrent of the Tamina, was soon replenished with guests of the better order; the canaille, or swarm of inferior invalids having dined two hours or more previously, in the common Salle a Manger. It needed but little professional discrimination to class and specify them. The majority proclaimed the causes of their visits to the Pfeffers. Rheumatism, scrofula, and cutaneous diseases, formed the prominent features in this motley assemblage. Invalids, with chronic complaints, real or imaginary, such as abound at all watering places, foreign and domestic, were mingled in the group; while a small portion, including our own party, evinced anything but corporeal ailments—unless a “canine appetite” at a genuine German table-d’hôte may be ranked among the evils to which English flesh is heir. Some monks, from the neighbouring monastery, (to which the Baths belong,) took rank, and indeed precedence, in this small division. The mountain breeze and fervid sun of the Convent of Pfeffers had bronzed them with much of that nut-brown complexion, which travelling exercise in the open air had conferred on their British visitors; while their sleek cheeks and portly corporations proved, almost to a demonstration, that the holy fathers descended into the profound ravine of the Tamina to give their benediction to the waters, rather than to drink them—and to add a sacred zest to the viands of the Refectory, by the alacrity with which they swallowed them. Their appearance illustrated the truth of the adage—“What will not poison will fatten.”
Waters of Pfeffers.
The Waters of Pfeffers have neither taste, smell, nor colour. They will keep for ten years, without depositing a sediment, or losing their transparency. But we are not to infer that they are destitute of medicinal powers, because they possess no sensible properties. In their chemical composition, they have hitherto shewn but few ingredients; and those of the simpler saline substances, common to most mineral springs.[43] It does not follow, however, that they contain no active materials because chemistry is not able to detect them. Powerful agents may be diffused in waters, and which are incapable of analysis, or destructible by the process employed for that purpose. The only sure test is experience of their effects on the human body. It is not probable that the Baths of Pfeffers would have attracted such multitudes of invalids, annually, from Switzerland, Germany, and Italy; and that for six centuries, if their remedial agency had been null or imaginary.[44] Their visitors are not of that fashionable class, who run to watering-places for pleasure rather than for health—or, to dispel the vapours of the town by the pure air of the coast or the country. Yet, as human nature is essentially the same in all ranks of society, I have no doubt that much of the fame acquired by the Baths of Pfeffers, has been owing to the auxiliary influence of air, locality, change of scene, moral impressions, and the peculiar mode of using the waters. Their temperature—100° of Fahren.—certain physical phenomena which they evince, and the nature of the diseases which they are reported to cure, leave little doubt in my mind that their merits, though overrated, like those of all other mineral springs, are very considerable.
The disorders for which they are most celebrated, are rheumatic and neuralgic pains, glandular swellings, and cutaneous eruptions. But they are also resorted to by a host of invalids afflicted with those anomalous and chronic affections, to which nosology has assigned no name, and for which the Pharmacopœia affords very few remedies. As the Baths belong to the neighbouring Convent of Pfeffers, and, as the holy fathers afford not only spiritual consolation to the patients, but medical assistance in directing the means of cure, there is every reason to believe, or, at least, to hope, that the moral, or rather divine influence of Religion co-operates with mere physical agency, in removing disease and restoring health.
The Waters of Pfeffers are led from their sombre source in the cavern, along the narrow scaffold before described, into a series of baths scooped out of the rocky foundation of this vast hospital, each bath capable of accommodating a considerable number of people at the same time. The thermal waters are constantly running into and out of the baths—or rather through them, so that the temperature is preserved uniform, and the waters themselves in a state of comparative purity, notwithstanding the numbers immersed in them. The baths are arched with stone—the window to each is small, admitting little light, and less air:—and, as the doors are kept shut, except when the bathers are entering or retiring, the whole space not occupied by water, is full of a dense vapour, as hot as the Thermæ themselves. The very walls of the baths are warm, and always dripping with moisture. Such are the Sudatoria in which the German, Swiss, and Italian invalids indulge more luxuriously than ever did the Romans in the Baths of Caracalla. In these they lie daily, from two, to six, eight, ten—and sometimes sixteen hours![45] The whole exterior of the body is thus soaked, softened—parboiled; while the interior is drenched by large quantities swallowed by the mouth—the patient, all this while, breathing the dense vapour that hovers over the baths. The Waters of Pfeffers, therefore, inhaled and imbibed, exhaled and absorbed, for so many hours daily, must permeate every vessel, penetrate every gland, and percolate through every pore of the body. So singular a process of human maceration in one of Nature’s cauldrons, conducted with German patience and German enthusiasm, must, I think, relax many a rigid muscle—unbend many a contracted joint—soothe many an aching nerve—clear many an unsightly surface—resolve many an indurated gland—open many an obstructed passage—and restore many a suspended function. The fervid and detergent streams of the Pfeffers, in fact, are actually turned, daily and hourly, through the Augean stable of the human constitution, and made to rout out a host of maladies indomitable by the prescriptions of the most sage physicians. The fable of Medea’s revival of youthful vigour in wasted limbs is very nearly realized in the mountains of the Grisons, and in the savage ravine of the Tamina. Lepers are here purified—the lame commit their crutches to the flames—the tumid throat and scrofulous neck are reduced to symmetrical dimensions—and sleep revisits the victim of rheumatic pains and neuralgic tortures.
Hydropathy, Hydro-sudo-pathy—or Hydrotherapeia.
These are the titles given to a system of healing human maladies by means of perspiration and cold water. It is making rapid progress in Germany, that land of ideality—and the tribe of other pathys. Homœopathy—allopathy—and even spa-pathy are in danger. Although it is no new system, being practised for a long time by the Russians, yet it is only about fifteen years since Priestnitz, a Silesian peasant, introduced it amongst his native mountains, and in a shape and manner differing somewhat from the Russian practice.
There can be no doubt that the application of cold water to the surface of the body, whether generally or locally, is a powerful agent, when skilfully managed. The chill that is painfully felt on the first plunge—the recoil of the circulation from the surface to the great central organs and vessels—the shrinking of all external parts—the rapid abstraction of animal heat—the hurried respiration—and last and most important of all—the reaction which follows the bath—are all important phenomena, that may work much good or evil in the animal economy, according as they are watched and regulated. The reaction after the cold bath is not less curious than the recoil. The heart and great internal organs seem overwhelmed and stunned, for a time, by the first shock. But soon after emerging from the bath, they begin to recover energy, and to free themselves from the volume of congested blood, under which they laboured. They then drive the circulation to the surface with increasing force, filling and distending the vessels of the skin beyond the normal or medium condition. With this distension comes a glow of heat all over the body, and a feeling of elasticity, or bien-être, which it is difficult to describe. A third series of phenomena now commence. All the glandular organs of the body now take on an augmented degree of activity, and their secretions become more copious than before the bath. Contemporary with this increase of secretion internally, the skin itself acts more vigorously, and not only the insensible, but the sensible perspiration becomes more copious. In fact, the cold bath gives rise to a series, or rather three series of phenomena, very closely resembling a paroxysm of ague—viz. the cold, hot, and sweating stages. After a few hours all the functions return to their normal or usual routine of duty.
But things do not always run thus smoothly. If any particular internal organ be much disordered in function, or at all changed in structure, it is very apt to be so overpowered by the recoil or first shock of the cold bath, that when reaction comes on, it is only partial and imperfect, in consequence of the weak organ or organs remaining in a state of congestion, and incapable of freeing themselves from the overplus of blood determined upon them by the retreat of the circulation from the surface. Then we have headache, lassitude, drowsiness, general malaise, or local uneasiness, imperfect reaction, scanty or disordered secretions, with many other uncomfortable feelings, instead of that elasticity and buoyancy which have been already noticed.