144 THE MOUNTAIN. 



and have been the subject of great experimentation ; also, 

 the objects of a great amount of fabulous exaggeration; 

 also worthy of attention as possessing positive merit as heal- 

 ing agents. In certain diseases, the profession -is satisfied 

 that their virtue is real, and their effects undoubted. The 

 catalogue of their fancied and absolute healings would be a 

 nosological table of almost the whole range of human infirmi- 

 ties. The real powers of these waters are those usually as- 

 cribed to all saline and aperient waters. A discriminating 

 survey shows their chief force to be in their effects upon the 

 organs contained in the cavity of the abdomen. This em- 

 braces the stomach, liver, small and large intestines, kidneys, 

 etc., a large number of whose functional, and even organic 

 derangements, are said to be curable by these waters. The 

 special advocates of their powers give extensive tables of 

 diseases within their control. Omitting what is obviously 

 false and fraudulent in these statements and suggestions, a 

 critical reading of the testimony in favor of their powers, 

 points out the great abdominal region, with enclosed viscera, 

 as the special theatre of their action, and its extensive class 

 of diseases as the legitimate subjects of trial with them. 



As these derangements are the horrors that hang, like 

 the sword of Damocles, or the skull at the Egyptian ban- 

 quet, over the classes of society diseased by luxurious indul- 

 gences, that division of the human family to whom it has 

 become fabulous and absurd that the chief end of man is 

 self-sacrifice and crucifixion of the flesh, but that the more 

 tangibly good ends, the stuffing the human bread-basket, 

 and having a good time generally, are demonstrably sound 

 as a religious creed and system of salvation ; it would follow, 

 that any waters that have a tendency to swab out or deterge 

 the great sacks and sewers of the body would be beneficial. 

 It being the law, that swift and sure upon the heels of the 

 indulgence comes the expiatory suffering, it would occur, 

 even to the unthinking, that a clear navigation being effected 

 in the tortuous canal of membranes that undoubtedly occu- 

 pies the interior of the human body, (however beautiful and 



