554 M C NEVEN ON THE MINERAL WATER 



influence of the water is not permanent, though, indeed, the longer he 

 drinks of it, his intervals of ease are proportionably protracted. When 

 he returns to his professional labours in this city, to late hours of writing 

 and study, and adds to bodily inactivity a great deal of mental exertion, 

 or experiences from any source whatever, much anxiety of mind during 

 the same period, the suspended assaults of his distemper are speedily 

 renewed with no less severity than ever. As those causes must have 

 operated against the beneficial effect of all the medicines he took at any 

 time in town, their insufficiency in his case cannot, in fairness, be con- 

 sidered to detract from the character they may have acquired on other 

 occasions. The patient having convinced himself, at last, that a transi- 

 tion from a sedentary to an active life, was the thing most important, 

 perhaps, to his recovery, he has fixed his residence out of town, where 

 he avails himself of the opportunity of exercise afforded by a garden of 

 considerable extent, and a long walk daily to and from his office. In 

 this rural retreat for bodily exercise, and mental relaxation, and from 

 which all books and papers are scrupulously excluded, Mr. H. drinks 

 ad libitum, of a carbonated chalybeate which I directed to be prepared 

 for him. It is made in a strong iron bound vessel containing several 

 gallons of pure water, into which there are introduced a few coils of 

 clean iron wire. Carbonic acid gas is then propelled through the water 

 by means of a forcing pump, after the manner employed in the manu- 

 facture of soda water. This artificial chalybeate contains, it is true, 

 much more carbonic acid gas than the natural chalybeate of Schooley's 

 Mountain. The difference, however, renders the artificial more palat- 

 able, and to him not less efficacious, than the natural water. It has 

 already produced the same sensible effects. It equally blackened the 

 urine, increased its quantity, and in other respects the patient ex- 

 perienced the same relief from it as from the water of the spring. 



