Clinical lectures on diseases of the urinary organs : delivered at University College Hospital / by Sir Henry Thompson.

Thompson, Henry, Sir, 1820-1904.

Date:: 1882

Credit: Clinical lectures on diseases of the urinary organs : delivered at University College Hospital / by Sir Henry Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

131/192 (page 119)

$110 waters which I am about to describe belong to a group of springs all containing sulphate of soda, and some of them sul- phate of nuignesia also, in solution. In studying these waters, I wish you. to look with me at the composition of them, and at the same time to dismiss from your mind entirely those views of medicinal ■doses which you have acquired in the dispensary, and which necessarily belong to it, since small quantities of drugs, as they exist in mineral ^vaters, will act more freely than will those quantities combined after the ordinary pharmaceutical method. You ask me for a demonstration, and I am quite ready to give it you. At the ■same time, let me caution you against regarding the small doses of mineral Avaters as having any affinity, either in the matter of quantity or by manner of administration, with what is understood as ' infinitesimal' doses. Thus, for ex- ample, you know that you may give A an ounce of salts, or B half an ounce, and you purge them; but you may obtain the same effect with one-fifth of those quan- tities if the patient takes it as prepared in Nature's laboratory—that is, in the form of mineral water. It is a curious fact, ivhich I give as an ultimate one, and without speculating here on the cause of the difference. As a proof of the superior force of the saline combinations found in •natural springs, I may refer you to the following experiment. If you will reduce by careful evaporation, as I have done, such mineral waters to their pharmaceuti- cal condition of crystallised salts, you will find them possessing little, if any more, power than similar salts as obtained by the ordinary processes, and met with in every chemist's shop. They no longer do their work on the same terms as when administered in the original water before they were separated by evaporation. You will therefore readily understand how essential to our end it is to em{:)loy the natural mineral waters; since what are called ' artificial waters,' however admir- tibly prepared, are simply pharmaceutical p)roducts, and are destitute of the very quality which distinguishes the remedies they are designed to imitate. Here is a table of the waters which I. refer to, with a comparative synopsis of their distinguishing saline contents, re- presenting the number of grains (without chloride of sodium and other less active agents which are also present) in an English pint. Below these I add two well-known alkaline waters. The most powerful water of the saline group is that of Hunyadi Janos, a Hun- garian water, which contains about two and a half drachms each of sulphate of soda and sulphate of magnesia in an Eng- lish pint; next and nearly equal to it is that of Pullna, Avhich contains 154 grains, or about drachms, of sulphate of soda to the pint, and nearly 2 drachms of sul- phate of magnesia. Those quantities of the commercial salts would give a toler- ably efficient purge to anybody. But you must not give a pint of either; 5 ounces would be a full dose. I do not like Pullna generally for our purpose, because it purges too freely, often gripes, and is very nauseous ; Hunyadi Janos is less so. Half a drachm of sulphate of suda and half a drachm of sulphate of magnesia in a natural mineral water suffice as an ape- rient for most people. On the whole, '■here is no better aperient water than Friedrichshalle; although an equivalent dose of Hunyadi Janos, which is barely one-half the quantity by measure, is often more convenient on that account. Supposing that we order Friedrichshalle, which contains not a drachm of sulphate of soda in a pint, and little more than three-quarters of a drachm of sulphate of magnesia; yet eight or nine ounces make an efficient purge; for many persons six or seven suffice. I think I may say that seven ounces is an ordinary average dose, and it should be warmed and diluted too, adding, say a third or a half of its bulk of hot plain water. If seven ounces of Friedrichshalle water are taken in the early morning, an hour before breakfast, comprising the cup or two of hot fluid usually taken then, a full, free action of ^ CO ^3. Si (line : Pullna . Hunyadi Janos Friedrichshalle INIarienbad (Kreuz) Carlsbad (Spriidel) Franzensbad . Grs. 154 150 48 25 •60 Grs. IIG 148 49 Grs. / Little I iron r Little t iron AJkallne : Vichy (Celestius) ] about . . J Yals (Magde- ] leine) about . i f Little i iron f Little i iron$