REPORT ON MINERAL AND THERMAL WATERS. OO 



This is scarcely candid criticism. It may be admitted, in- 

 deed, that an artificial mineral water can at best be only a near 

 approximation to the natural one, and that we can never be ab- 

 solutely sure of having arrived at a knowledge of all the contents 

 of the latter. 



Yet even if we take the very case of the Carlsbad waters, 

 which are quoted against Struve, how minute is the difference 

 between the analysis of Berzelius, and that of Klaproth, which 

 he had previously taken as his guide. 



Struve* indeed calculates, that during a month's use of these 

 waters, an individual who drank ten glasses full of them each 

 day, would not have consumed quite five grains of those ingre- 

 dients, which Berzelius's analysis shows to have been over- 

 looked, namely. 



Of fluate of lime 2*58 grains 



Carbonate of strontia 0*77 )> 



Phosphate of lime 0*18 „ 



Carbonate of magnesia 0*67 „ 



Subphosphate of alumina , ... 0*26 „ 



Total . . 4-46 „ 



When, therefore, we have a mineral water prepared by art, 

 which possesses the same apparent j)hysical properties belong- 

 ing to the one which it is intended to imitate, and when the 

 best analysis, which the existing state of chemical science ad- 

 mits, confirms this identity, there is surely no such antecedent 

 improbability, in the idea of its possessing similar medicinal 

 virtues, as should indispose us to receive the reports of medical 

 men, when they assure us that in this latter respect also the 

 same correspondence subsistsf . 



Still, however, as the natural spring will always deserve a 

 preference, I cannot think that Dr. Struve is happy in fixing, 

 as the main seat of his operations, upon Dresden, a city lying 

 not very remote from any of the springs which it has been his 

 business to imitate. 



It is rather in the branch establishments which have been set 

 up under his auspices, at Moscow, Warsaw, Konigsberg, and 

 Brighton, that the value of his method will be appreciated, 

 since the carbonated waters which he prepares are scarcely to 

 be met with in these countries, lying as they do beyond the 

 range of those volcanic phaenomena, which extend from the 



* Ueber kunstlich. Miner alwasser. 



f Half the substance of Struve's work consists of the statements of different 

 physicians as to the efficacy of his artificial -waters. 



