556 THE MOUNTAIN. 



impression made upon the digestive machinery, and the re- 

 energizing power of the large new functional impression, 

 made by all surrounding influences, water included. 



That a perfectly adapted regimen and suitable climate, as- 

 sisted by the novel impression of a change of water, will 

 modify the action of morbidly inclined, or even morbidly im- 

 pressed and seized mucous membranes, skin, and viscera of 

 splanchnic cavities, and induce a new action in chronic 

 cases of vicious habitudes of organs, is not questionable. But 

 the application of one mineral water to diverse and various 

 derangements of complexly-mixed, and often different states, 

 or diseased conditions, or impending diseases, as specially 

 preventive or curative of them all, is simply, in the present 

 state of science, preposterous. That certain new impres- 

 sions made by whatever causes upon the organism about to 

 be diseased, or that is diseased, in various ways further the 

 efforts of the great guardian sanitary forces of complaining 

 parts, and facilitate their return to a state of normality, there 

 can be no doubt. 



But that in the indefinitely-complicated derangements of a 

 number of differently-diseased persons, with diversity of tem- 

 peraments, ages, habits of life, and idiosyncrasies, all, or any 

 number of them, shall be specifically relieved by one and the 

 same water, of one and the same spring, savors of the scien- 

 tific absurdity of the quack's specific cure-all nostrum. "A 

 well-directed course of mineral waters" would be a well- 

 directed course of pure water, rationally mineralized, or medi- 

 cated and adapted to the special conditions of the case, by an 

 intelligent medical man. It is conceded that many forms of 

 stomach disease are positively (caused) injured by what are 

 called mineral waters. In many cases of highly irritable, 

 morbidly impressible, and diseased conditions of the sto- 

 mach, (and lungs,) mineral waters are poisonous. Efforts 

 have been made, with vaunted results, to refer special con- 

 ditions of particular organs to special waters : Ems, Vichy, 

 and Plombieres, to this or that organ or condition ; Marien- 

 bad, Carlsbad, Kissingen, Bedford, and Saratoga, to others, 



