Essay on the mineral waters of Carlsbad/Preface
PREFACE.
WHEN I left Vienna, after thirty-three years practice, in the spring of 1826, to recover at Carlsbad my health totally impaired by gouty affections, and to pursue there my medical career, the english visitors scarcely amounted to twenty, and the greater part of those came not directly from England, but were sent by continental physicians, whom they had consulted in the course of their travels. A great change has since taken place. Excellent roads, quicker stage-coaches, steam-boats, better accommodations, useful improvements in the town itself, successful treatments, have increased the fame of our hot springs, upon which, since 1521, innumerable latin and german books have been published, some of them by physicians of universal renown, such as Frederick Hoffmann and Tralles in the eighteenth century, Hufeland and Kreysig in the nineteenth. Impressed with the utility of giving an account of the nature and effects of these waters, in a language universally understood among the higher orders of society and learned men of all nations, I published in French: Carlsbad, ses eaux minérales et ses nouveaux bains à vapeurs. Carlsbad, 1827; with an Appendix since 1829; and later, the Almanach de Carlsbad, ou Mélanges médicaux, scientifiques et littéraires, relatifs à ces thermes et au pays. Prague, 1831, 1832, 1833, 1834, 1835. Though the booksellers, who have the copy-right, take no trouble whatever to sell them beyond the place, the good effect of these publications, bought by english visitors, and occasionally read in England by physicians and invalids, has been, conjointly with the above enumerated causes, so manifest, that the List of strangers, published during the last season, presents the names of 153 british ladies and gentlemen, amongst whom are to be found their Royal Highnesses the duke and duchess of Cambridge, an ambassador, an envoy extraordinary, six lords, four baronets, a field-officer, a consul, an exlord mayor of London, a gentleman of His Majesty’s privy-chamber, two doctors of medecine, a surgeon, two clergymen and several military and naval officers, most of them with their families.
The establishment at Brighton, where the various german mineral springs, and also those of Carlsbad, are imitated by a chemical process, has drawn the attention of the public more towards them than the best publications. The patients, who came over to us, after having drunk Carlsbad at Brighton, held all the same language. Those who thought themselves benefited by the imitation, said: “We come to you to accomplish our cure;” and those whom Brighton had not restored, regretted their having placed confidence in artificial preparations. Far from attempting to depreciate those imitations, or examining in what respects art and nature may agree or differ, my sole object is to point out the causes of the increase of english visitors at Carlsbad. Knowing that hepatic, splenetic, dyspeptic, gravelly, herpetic and gouty cases abound in Great Britain, as indeed more or less every where, many of those invalids have encouraged me to publish an english description of the place, and a short account of the nature and effects of our waters, and of the various ways of using them, either by drinking, bathing or steam. It will be perhaps considered as a bold undertaking, to write in a language which I learned nearly half a century ago, during my medical studies at Edinburgh. My only wish is to be understood, and I shall never take it amiss, if my reader now and then smiles at a gallicism or a germanism.
As far as I know, the english medical litterature has no other writings to produce upon Carlsbad, but
1. A Letter of James Mounsey. M. D., Physician to the Czarina’s army, to Mr. Baker. F. R. S., on the hot springs of Carlsbad. Riga, 1 July 1749. Philos. Trans, vol. 46, p. 217.
2. J. Milles. Relatio de aquis mineralibus Carolinis in Bohemiâ. Ibid, vol. 50. P. 1, p. 25.
3. Robert Whytt’s works. Edinb. 1768. 4.
4. A translation of Dr. Kreysig’s (of Dresden) german work, under the title of Treatise on the use of the natural and artificial waters of Carlsbad, Ems. Marienbad, etc. London, 1824. Sold at Brighton.
Though the nature of our springs has not been altered, since the three english physicians, just mentioned, wrote upon them, medical and chemical doctrines have undergone as many changes as the place itself and its institutions. Such writings, beside, inserted in scientific collections, are known but to some learned physicians, and treat only of a few questions concerning our waters. As to Dr. Kreysig’s work, the greatest praise is due to Dr. Gordon Thompson and Mr. F. W. Bekenn, whose translation is far more lucid and intelligible than the theoretical part of the original. Much, but not the same, can be said on natural and on artificial mineral waters, and the medical world has not yet understood how such a celebrated physician as Dr. Kreysig, could so completely assimilate art and nature, both in the text and title of his work.
PRAGUE, 12th January 1835.