CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 103 



sists of " Popular Considerations on the Use and Power of Mineral 

 Waters/' and his considerations are arranged under distinct heads. 

 Under one of these he endeavours to expose the prevailing igno- 

 rance of the " most influential medical men in London" respecting 

 the nature and use of foreign mineral waters. His evidence in sup- 

 port of this simple proposition is not distinguished by anything new, 

 either in kind or quality : it is based on two cases and repeated ex- 

 amples ; and, all these being facts, the proof is a demonstration. 

 Dr. G. next evinces most clearly that the foreign mineral waters are 

 endowed with remarkable efficacy and power ; but it is not a part 

 of his plan to show that the British mineral springs are equally 

 powerful as the German ; and that some of them, by the same plea, 

 are greatly more efficacious. When treating of^ temperature, the 

 Doctor concludes that the heat of mineral springs would seem to be 

 specific in its action, and therefore dissimilar from ordinary heat : 

 but whence this peculiar heat is derived, he says, no philosopher 

 has as yet satisfactorily explained. By some inadvertency, however, 

 he omits mentioning the process by which he ascertained that the 

 results whereon he grounds his seeming conclusion were produced 

 by the " thermal or telluric heat" exclusively, and not by the gase- 

 ous or mineral elements held in combination by the thermal water. 

 Nevertheless, there are creditable reasons for imagining that there 

 may really be different kinds of heat ; for, in his " Popular Consi- 

 derations," Dr. Granville makes it plain that an excess of " ther- 

 mal caloricity" may be communicated to a frigid looker through the 

 history of inductive sciences, for a key to unriddle the great myste- 

 ry of permanent heat in mineral springs. His next section unfolds 

 the Doctor's views on the mode in which the mineral waters act, 

 and how they ought to be employed. It is his decided opinion that 

 these waters, when acting successfully on the human system, act as 

 alteratives : and whether they do so by changing the character and 

 composition of the fluids of the human body, or by effecting an 

 alteration in the solids, it is not less true that it is only as altera- 

 lives they have been acting. This discovery will be hailed with 

 grateful admiration by the most influential medical men in London, 

 and by the members of that society which, in England, is looked 

 uf on 2l& the lie plus iiltra of scientific academies. The manner in 

 which mineral waters should be used, so as to obtain their alterative 

 effects, is various. The Doctor says they may be taken internally, 

 or they may be used externally as liaths. He propounds an ingeni- 

 ous theory on the origin of mineral springs and the antiquity of 

 mud-baths. Mud mineralizes the springs ; and although the ap- 

 plication of the mineralizing mud of a spring be itself unknown in 

 this country, and is of comparatively recent introduction at the 

 Spas of Germany, yet the use of mud-baths in disease is of great 

 antiquity. In one of the Gospels, the Doctor finds evidence of the 

 practice of using mud-baths having existed in scriptural times, for 

 the cure of the " impotent folk, the blind, the halt, and the wither- 

 ed" or paralytic. He adds in iliustratiqii that " the angel who went 



