When the thermal water is only prescribed, the most favourable time for drinking it is from seven to eight and eleven to twelve a.m., and from four to five p.m., but when ordered to be taken in conjunction with the chalybeate, the former should be taken in the morning and the latter in the afternoon. It has been customary for some medical men to prescribe the two waters mixed together. My own experience leads me to think that such a mode of using them (in a great measure) destroys the efficacy
of the thermal by reducing its temperature, and driving off one of its most active and essential constituents, viz., the nitrogen gas.
The water can be drunk with safety in most cases, but there are some in which it is as inadmissible as the use of the baths.
In acute cystitis, advanced stage of Bright’s disease, certain forms of dyspepsia, irritation in the urinary passages, either in the male or female, drinking the thermal water should not be resorted to. The mucous membrane under its influence becomes more irritable, and where the urinary passages are specially involved, the impulsive efforts to void urine are extremely painful and distressing, the urine being reduced to mere driblets, and sometimes even to complete retention. Constant sickness, either arising from mucous inflammation or ulcer of the stomach, contra—indicate the use of the thermal water.
CHAPTER IV.
diseases in which the waters are useful.
Acute Gout and Rheumatism—Chronic Gout and Rheumatism—Chorea—Paralysis Agitans—Many Forms of Paralysis—Muscular Atrophy consequent upon the Gouty Diathesis—Loco Motor Ataxia—Syphilis—Local Injuries—Neuralgia—Sciatica, Lumbago, &c.—Number of Baths Constituting a Course—Length of Residence Required—Action of Water upon Acute and Chronic Disease—Extract from Devonshire Hospital Report—Inference.
The following are amongst the principal diseases for the relief of which the Buxton medicinal thermal water is deservedly celebrated: Acute gout and rheumatism (in neither of which can the baths be taken with advantage until the acute or inflammatory stage has subsided), the water may be used locally, either by sponging or wearing a compress over the affected parts, and also internally, two or even three quarts, being drunk in the twenty-four hours.
In the acute stage of gout or rheumatic fever, when the water is drunk in large quantity daily, profuse perspiration of a critical nature takes place about the sixth day, and is usually succeeded
in twenty-four hours by a measly eruption over the whole surface of the body and extremities, quickly followed by a total subsidence of all the acute symptoms, leaving the patient free from pain and on the high road to convalescence. Under its influence the urine becomes copious, the muddy brickdust deposit disappears, and the normal specific gravity and action upon litmus paper is restored. The sudorific glands over the whole cutaneous surface receive a fresh stimulus, thus assisting to eliminate the materies morbi, and making the skin cool and moist, which prior to drinking the water was dry, hot, and parched. A direct action upon the liver is also obtained, as indicated by the relaxed condition of the bowels, and the perceptible increase of bile in the motions. Such being the action of the Buxton thermal water, it will be readily understood how the distressing and excruciating pains of an attack of acute gout or rheumatism are so quickly relieved, and the sufferer restored to comparative comfort.
Chronic gout and rheumatism: These diseases are much more common than the acute forms,