IKIN ON TRE MINERAL SPRINGS OF GERMANY. 535 
ing to them. The illustrious mistress of these realms paid the 
mineral waters of Ems a visit last year; but they did not produce 
their reported usual good effects in her case. Fortune, however, 
was said to be more kind to many other ladies who accompanied 
the Queen on that occasion ; for, to the astonishment of all their 
friends, numerous hitherto hopeless cases among them had as- 
sumed a very different aspect before the court departed. 
At Weisbaden, the capital of the Duchy of Nassau, are other 
baths. Many are the stories of people crawling to Weisbaden, 
and running home again ; and numerous are the crutches trium- 
phantly displayed as having belonged to persons who had there 
thrown them away. There is also a horse-bath here, which is 
much used. The whole of the animal is immersed, saving his 
head, the halter being tied to a post ; and the beast luxuriates 
and soaks himself in it for half or three quarters of an hour. 
At Baden-Baden are baths for the poor, and one also for the 
poor persecuted horse and the rest of the tribe of domesticated 
animals. 
Ikin on the Mineral Springs of Germany , from 
the Lancet , Aug. 13 fy 20, 1836. 
Mr. Ikin also alludes to the baths at Schlangenbad, the his- 
tory of which was given in the 7th vol. of The Veterinarian, 
and which a poor heifer more than returned all this kind consi- 
deration of the Germans and the Swiss with regard to the too- 
much abused domesticated quadruped. A heifer, hide-bound 
and melancholy, her bones protruding through her skin, and so 
destitute of all honest nutritive matter that not a fly in the forest 
would bite her, disappeared. She returned in a few weeks, with 
her ribs covered with flesh, and her skin as sleek as a mole’s. 
Every evening, however, she was missing — curiosity was roused — 
and she was watched. She went to a pool deep in the forest, and 
and there she drank. A young girl of the village was pining 
away like the heifer — every one had given her up, when the 
herdsman hearing of it, persuaded her to try the heifer’s secret 
remedy. She, too, unscared by the serpents that inhabited the 
pool, and whence it had derived its name, drank of it every 
morning, and in a short time became one of the stoutest young 
women in the duchy. The reputation of the water was at once 
established, and the serpents were driven from their refuge-place, 
and the pool was surrounded with noble buildings ; and, to the 
present day, horses are frequently brought to be bathed, and are 
sure to be cured of a slight affection of the lungs; and not a few 
of the swinish multitude are rescued, or said to be rescued, from 
the jaws of death. 
