The Argosy — page 390: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

370 LIFE AT GASTEIN. OST of the visitors in Gastein are ordered to take nineteen baths ; a few patients here and there taking one or two more or less. This was the number the doctor prescribed for me: and after the seventh and fourteenth, a day’s interval. On these two days I drank the waters as they came up warm from the springs, and the doctor was urgent in not allowing them to be touched at any other time. Some people, he said, persisted in taking the baths and drinking the waters together, and so mixed up the treatment that it was impossible to say what did them good and what not. The water was tasteless. Its chief virtue probably hes in the large amount of electricity it contains : a property that does not diminish with time. Gastein water may be exported to any part of Europe, and at the end of six or twelve months will still retain its healing powers. The doctor called me into his dampfbad as I was passing it one morning, and began experiments with the water and an electrical machine. First he brought forward some ordinary water and applied the battery. The needle was motionless. Next he took a bottle of water obtained from one of the well known Spas of Germany. The needle moved, but slightly. ‘Then he had some water brought in from the adjoining spring, and the needle under its influence moved consid- erably : proving it to be highly charged. Lastly he took a bottle of Gastein water a year old, and the needle with the old water moved as powerfully as it had done with the new. “Thus you see,” concluded he, “ how eminently it is adapted for ex- portation. Neither time, nor land, nor sea-voyage, deprives it of its properties. Now let me show you my vapour bath.” We went into another room, where were various ingenious contri- vances for the application of the vapour. Tubes for the mouth and ears ; a peculiar arrangement for the knees and feet ; another for affec- tions of the spine. The vapour rushed up hot and hissing from various apertures, and after a short time I was unable to bear their strength. I came out of the room with a singing in the ears that for an hour after- wards almost deafened me. “ Here,” said the doctor, “‘ you get the utmost power of the springs. By this means the properties of the waters are administered to the patient in a condensed form.” “ Are they useful in every kind of complaint?” I asked. “* All those complaints for which Gastein is noted. You already know | the catalogue does not embrace every ill flesh is heir to. The waters ~ are only. of use to those suffering from affections of the spine, nerves, to head: for this class of maladies there is perhaps no, such cure in — , COMIC OOOKS. EO