A Treatise on the Bath Waters Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1812 Excerpt: ... inconsiderable to account for the effects of the waters on the body, or even for their taste, we shall very much underrate their mineral impregnation. As the dried residuum, after evaporating the waters, is interspersed with numberless black particles, every one of which is attracted by the mag net, it is impossible to suppose that this iron should have been united to carbonic acid, or that the iron should have been contained therein in the state of an oxyde. As in the sand of the bath there are similar black particles alike obedient to the magnetic influence, we must conclude that a Common cause produces these and those found in the residuum, and that the ochrey substance in the glasses used at the pumps, and which is also deposited about the baths, is that portion of iron which had arisen in combination with carbonic acid, which acid escapes or enters into new combinations on the water becoming cool. On the immediate cooling of these waters they do not cease to give some appearance of iron when treated with the tincture of galls; but even when closely stopped, and when no uncombined vital air can be supposed present, the waters in a cold state are affected by tincture of galls in a degree considerably less than when.the waters are hot from the spring. I have ascertained this fact repeatedly upon many different quantities of the water. It appears that the carbonic acid' is but weakly combined with iron, for the mere cooling of the water lessens the capability so manifest when they are hot of being tinged by galls. If the waters are for a long time exposed with a large surface to the air, and suffered to cool, they lose entirely the property of being affected by galls. The cessation of liability in the waters to be tinged by galls, seems to prove that it c...