XVII.] THE HOT SPEINGS AND THEIE HEALING POWEES. 345 
in long open wooden channels to the bath-honse of the town? 
and to several evaporating pools, some by the wayside, others in 
the town, intended for collecting the solid constituents of the 
water, which are then sold in the country as medicine. The 
great evaporation from these pools, from the open channels and the 
hot baths, wraps the town almost constantly in a cloud of watery 
vapour, while a very strong odour of sulphuretted hydrogen 
reminds us that this is one of the constituents of the healing 
waters. 
The road between the wells and the town appears to form 
the principal promenade of the place. Along this are to be 
seen innumerable small monuments, from a half to a whole 
metre in height, consisting of pieces of lava heaped upon each 
other. These miniature memorials form by their littleness a 
peculiar contrast to the hauta stones diudi jettekast of our Swedish 
forefathers, and are one of the many instances of the people’s 
fondness for the little and the neat, which are often to be inet 
in Japan. They are said to be erected by visitors as thank- 
offerings to some of the deities of Buddha or Shinto. 
I received from a Japanese physician the following information 
regarding the wells at Kusatsu and their healing power. In 
and near the town there are twenty-two wells, with water of 
about the same quality, but of different uses in the healing 
of various diseases. In the hottest well the water where it 
rises has a temperature of 162° F. (= 72'2° C.). The largest 
number of the sick who seek health at the baths, suffer from 
syphilis. This disease is now cured according to the European 
method, with mercury, iodide of potassium, and baths. The 
cure requires a hundred days ; from seventy to eighty per cent, of 
the patients are cured completely, though purple spots remain 
on the skin. The disease does not break out anew. A large 
number of leprous patients also visit the baths. The leprosy is of 
various kinds; that with sores is alleviated by the baths, and is 
cured possibly in two years ; that without sores but with the skin 
