The salt sulphur springs, Monroe County, Va.

  • Thomas Dent Mutter
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The salt sulphur springs, Monroe County, Va. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    PREFACE. It is not unamusing, observes Shenstone, to consider the several apologies that people make when they commence authors. It is taken for granted, that in every publication there is at least a seeming violation of modesty; a presumption on the writer's side that he is able to instruct or to entertain the world; which implies a supposition that he can communicate what they cannot draw from their own reflections. It does not appear to me ne- cessary, to offer an apology to the public for introducing to their more particular attention the Springs of Virginia, or more properly that group of mineral springs of the powerful sanative influence of which we have all heard, but of whose true charac- ter so little, even at this time, is known! This ignorance is attri- butable perhaps, in the first place, to their remote location, which prevented, for a length of time, an accurate investigation into their properties by competent persons; and in the second, to the tide of fashion, having set in another direction. Within the last few years so numerous have been the cases of different ills, either radically cured, or materially benefitted by their employment, that the attention of the whole North seems at the present mo- ment to be directed towards them. The fashionable man, as well as the victim of disease, begins now to ask, u What sort of a place is the Virginia Springs? In the year 1S34 I was induced, in consequence of feeble health, to visit this delightful, as well as health-restoring region, and during my residence there, engaged extensively in the prac- tice of my profession. My object in seeking professional occu- pation was solely to ascertain for myself, as nearly as possible, the merits of the different waters, and I succeeded in collecting a number of interesting, as well as practically important facts, bearing upon their employment in different diseases. These I determined to embody in the shape of a small work, and had