On Mineral Waters* 
475 
cacy of the Waters. All these circumstances are tonic, and in a 
higa degree so. No wonder, that large dilution, frequent exercise* 
and moderate doses of laxatives should occasionally do wonders 
to an invalid, whose digestive powers suffer under the indirect de- 
bility consequent upon habitual over action, and who has all the 
confidence necessary to enable the medicine to cure. 
In the neighbourhood of Carlisle there are two mineral springs, 
resorted to greatly by persons in good health and in bad health ; 
and of the one and the other wonderful stories are propagated in 
favour of their beneficial effects upon complaints of almost all des- 
criptions. I have analysed these waters, and I proceed to give an 
account of them. 
Tne Cumberland Sulphur Spring , on the estate of Wm. Ram- 
sey, Esq. Prothonotary of this county, is situated about 5 miles north 
easterly from Carlisle. Carlisle is situated in the Cumberland val- 
ley; a limestone valley extending from Easton, on Delaware, 
through Cumberland county, Shenandoah, and southward beyond 
Staunton, in Virginia. About three miles from Carlisle, on the 
road to the sulphur spring, runs the Conodoguinet creek : half a 
mile before you come to this creek, the limestone disappears, and 
the surface soil is a schistus or rather a shale which extends from 
thence to the spring, and from thence to the north mountain as it 
is called, or the blue ridge. The spring is in a direct line not quite 
a mile from the mountain. The surface-stone of the neighbour- 
hood, is mountain quarts, amorphous, striking fire with steel. The 
Weil belonging to the house, is dry through 14 feet of shale, such 
as is frequently incumbent on coal. There is no trace of lime- 
stone in the immediate neighbourhood. 
The spring rises near a stream of good water; the quantity in 
summer time is such as would run with moderate velocity through 
a pipe of about half an inch bore. It smells and tastes strongly of 
a sulphureous gas, but has no other flavour or odour. The tem- 
perature is that of the common spring water. It feels soft and 
smooth to the hands on washing with it. 
About three pints of this water boiled, yielded about one half its 
bulk of gas. Tnis gas tastes and smells strongly of sulphuretted 
hydrogen : it deposits sulphur with oxymuriatic acid. The wa- 
ter itself blackens silver : it discharges the blue colour of muslin 
tinged with litmus : it discharges also in a great degree the co- 
lours of printed calicoes washed in it. It is therefore impregnated 
with sulphuretted hydrogen, holding sulphur in solution ; and pro- 
