108 CRITICAL NOTICES OP NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



" Having undressed in an adjoining room, where I found a sofa, chairs, a 

 table, with a mirror, a carpet, and warm linen, I entered the bath at an hour 

 when no other person was present. After descending a few steps from the 

 dressing-room into the bath-room, I walked over the warm soft sand, and I 

 laid myself down upon it, near the principal spring, resting my head on a 

 clean wooden pillow. The soothing effect of the water, as it came over me, 

 up to the throat, transparent as the brightest gem or aquamarine, soft, geni- 

 ally warm, and gentlj' murmuring, I shall never forget. Millions of bubbles 

 of gas rose from the sand and played around me, quivering through the lucid 

 water as they ascended, and bursting at the surface to be succeeded by 

 others. The sensation produced by these bubbles, as many of them, with 

 their tremulous motion, just cffleuraient the surface of the body, lilce the 

 much-vaunted effect of titillation in animal magnetism, is not to be describ- 

 ed. It partakes of tranquillity and exhilaration, of the ecstatic state of a de- 

 votee, blended with the repose of an opium-eater. The head is calm, the 

 heart is calm, every sense is calm ; yet there is neither drowsiness, stupefac- 

 tion, nor numbness : for every feeling is fresher, and the memory of worldly 

 pleasures is keen and sharp. But the operations of the moral as well as the 

 physical man are under the spell of some tranquillizing agent. It is the hu- 

 man tempest lulled into all the delicious playings of the ocean's after-waves. 

 From such a position I willingly would never have stirred. To prolong its 

 delicious effects, what would I not have given ? But the Bad-meister* ap- 

 peared at the top of the steps of the farther door, and warned me to eschew 

 the danger of my situation ; for there is danger even in such pleasures as 

 these, if greatly prolonged. I looked at the watch and the thermometer be- 

 fore I quitted my station. The one told me I had passed a whole hour in 

 the few minutes I had spent according tc my imagination ; and the other 

 marked 295° of Heaumur, or 981" of Fahrenheit. But I found the tempe- 

 rature warmer than that whenever, with my hand, I dug into the bed of 

 sand, as far down as the rock, and disengaged myriads of bubbles of heated 

 air, which imparted to the skin a satiny softness not to be observed in the 

 effects of ordinary warm baths." 



This bewitching water has neither taste nor smell ; it is colour^ 

 less, transparent, and brilliant. That it is of the purest softness is 

 evinced by the cosmetic and striking changes it readily produces on 

 the skin. Its chemical composition, according to Dr. G.'s judgment, 

 is probably one of the simplest in nature ; it contains not more than 

 three and a half grains of " fixed principles" in a pint, and of these 

 common salt makes just one-half, the rest consisting of carbonate of 

 soda and glauber salt, sulphate of potass, carbonate of lime, and 

 the carbonate of magnesia. With regard to its gaseous or aeriform 

 contents, there is, 1st, the small quantity of gas which is disengaged 

 by boiling the water ; and 2nd, the gas which rises naturally from 

 the spring, in numerous bubbles. The chief and predominant me- 

 rit of the Wildbad water is its temperature, and this has continued 

 the same throughout a long succession of years. After mature con- 

 sideration of the subject, the Doctor confesses that he has been led 

 to ascribe to the temperature of this and other warm mineral springs 

 the principal eifects which they produce on the human constitution. 

 But it is not the thermometrical temperature to which he alludes 

 when he proclaims this opinion ; it is to the caloricity of the water 



• The person known as the " bath-man" in England Ed. 



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