Essay on the nature and uses of natural spas : from A first trip to the German spas, and to Vichy / by John Aldridge.

  • Aldridge, John.
Date:
[1856]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay on the nature and uses of natural spas : from A first trip to the German spas, and to Vichy / by John Aldridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    10/44
    ‘‘That which has never been proved, you should not suppose to exist.” l^ow, Kastner is the only one who has endeavoured to prove the existence of free electri- city in mineral waters, and when his experiments were shown by Walker to be fallacious, he sheltered himself by stating, “that the mineral waters, in the state in which they issue from the earth, exercise no influence upon the unarmed siderometer, but thatsthis influence takes place in a high degree with the suls^mnt sponta- neous decomposition of the water.'' To be sime it does; we all know that electricity is developed by chemical decomposition. So then, by this admission, mystery iS^o. 1 is got rid of; and we may receive it as a fact, in the present state of science, that the natural mineral waters are not electrical. Secondly, as to the alleged peculiar nature of their temperature, it is at once admitted that we do not know by what precise means the thermal mineral springs are heated; it may be by a “volcanic hearth” or a “ cen- tral fire,” for aught we can tell. We know that here upon the surface we have many ways of generating heat. Eut this we also do know, that wha,tever way we gene- rate it, the heat we accumulate is always the same in its essential nature. It may perform very different functions; it may in one instance increase the bulk of a body, in another raise its temperature, and in a third change its state, but nevertheless it is the same caloric still. Whether you get it from a flint and steel, or from rubbing together two dry sticks, or by boiing a cannon, or by concentrating the rays of the sun, or by chemical action, or by combustion, or by the electi’ic current, it will equally expand water to the same amount, boil it at the same temperature, and produce a steam of the same elasticity. Hot dry air, may afford different sen- sations from hot moist air; but this arises from a com- bination of influences, not from any difference in the nature of the heat. The Geysers of Iceland will boil a kid, although there is no doubt of their volcanic origin;