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MINERAL WATERS.

485

ties the Buxton-water differs very little from common pump-water.The medicinal effects of the Buxton-waters, however, are farfrom being inconsiderable. Taken internally in small doses at dif-ferent intervals, amounting to near a pint before breakfast, and thelike quantity before dinner, they afford very great relief in heartburn, flatulency, sickness at the stomach, and other distressingsymptoms of defective digestion and derangement of the alimenta-ry organs, the sure attendants of indolence and luxury. In suchcases, the body must be kept regularly open by means of medicineduring the jse of the waters, if these do not, as they sometimeswill, produce a laxative effect which is always salutary.* Theyare no less serviceable in alleviating painful affections of the kid-neys and bladder ; and here also the external use of the waters isoften found to promote their internal operation.

But the employment of the Buxton-waters as a bath is not con-fined to the relief of gravelly complaints. They contribute farmore effectually to restore the healthy action of particular limbs,that may have lost their moving powers in consequence of long orviolent inflammation, occasioned either by external injury, or pre-ceding acute rheumatism. But if the rigidity, weakness, or im-paired functions of the parts affected be the consequence of a par-alytic stroke or of gouty inflammation, more benefit will be experi-enced from the warmer temperature of the Bath waters.

In general, the Buxton bath is well suited to such a languid, en-feebled, or very irritable state of the habit, as cannot bear abso-lutely cold water, but may be excited to easy and salutary re-actionby a milder stimulus. The slight shock, which people feel at theinstant of immersion in the Buxton waters, is almost immediatelyfollowed by a p/easant g-low all over the body ; and this is preciselythe effect aimed at. But I have expressed myself" so fully on thenature of the particular infirmities to which the lukewarm bath isadapted, as to render any farther observations on this head unne-cessary.

Matlock, &c.

The tepid springs at Matlock approach still nearer to cold waterthan those at Buxton, being sixteen degrees lower in point of tem-perature. The shock, which they give on immersion, is conse-quently stronger, and requires greater powers of re-action in thehabit ; but they form a good intermediate bath between Buxtonand the sea. They are, therefore, very properly employed in pre-paring invalids for the latter, when this is necessary to complete acure, as is often the case in the chronic rheumatism. They areused internally as a pure diluting drink, but are not known to pos-sess any other remarkable medicinal properties.

Bristol Hot Well, &c.The Hot-well, as it is improperly called, near Bristol, is not,

* A dose or two of some aperient medicine is advised to be taken preliminary to theuse of these waters ; and gouty patient», to whom also they are recommended, oughtnot to begin a course unless they «re «ell prepared, and rendered tree trom everydiscoverable sign of an acute state of the disposition to an attack of their complaint

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