116    PURE  CARBONIC  ACID,  MINERAL  AND  LITHIA  WATER. 
glass  is  too  frangible,  and  has  not  sufficient  re- 
sisting power  if  vessels  of  large  capacity  are 
required,  and  malleable  glass  is  still  among  the 
"  lost  (?)  arts."  Still,  it  would  appear  that  this 
universal  material  has  been  made  available  for 
i 
the  purpose,  as  the  glass  reservoir  or  soda  water 
fountain  here  figured  (patented  by  Schultz  & 
Warker)  is  an  apparatus  already  in  use.*  The 
outer  cylinder  is  of  metal,  the  inner  only,  which 
contains  the  liquid,  of  glass.  There  is  a  gas 
communication  and  consequently  equality  of 
pressure  between  the  interior  and  exterior  of 
the  glass  vessel,  so  that  the  latter  has  nothing  to  sustain,  but  the 
weight  of  itself  and  contents.    The  fitness  of  the  arrangement 
is  at  once  apparent.  The  small 
portable  glass  fountains,  which  are 
operated  by  a  thumb  press,  are 
becoming  well  known. 
The  most  interesting  chapter  in 
Mr.  Schultz's  treatise  is  that  upon 
artificial  litliia  waters,  which  he 
has  been  the  first  to  introduce  into 
our  American  Materia  Medica. 
This  chapter,  after  discussion  of 
the  successive  discoveries  of  Arfveclson,  Bunsen,  Lixowitz,  A. 
Ure,  Garrod,  Ruef  and  others,  gives  the  results  of  some  original 
researches  by  Mr.  S.  himself;  the  whole  forming  an  array  of 
facts  relating  to  the  power  of  lithia  waters,  to  remove  morbid 
secretions  of  uric  acid  and  urates,  which  must  convince 
any  candid  mind  that  we  now  possess  a  powerful  specific  antago- 
nist to  one  of  the  most  cruel  enemies  ever  loosed  from  Pandora's 
box  to  scourge  our  race  for  its  "  pleasant  vices." 
I  shall  close  with  a  condensed  review  of  some  of  the  more  im- 
portant facts  presented  by  Mr.  S.,  most  of  which  will  be  new  to 
a  large  class  of  readers.  The  name  lithia,  given  by  its  discov- 
erer, Arfvedson,  in  1818,  because  supposed  then  to  be  exclu- 
*  These  fountains,  I  am  told,  are  now  being  manufactured  in  New  York. 
