86

WILDBAD.

CHAPT. V.

principally are tlie rcsults of this nevcr changing tcmpcrature, which, lying exactly betwccn tbe degrees in wbich indi- viduals of all constitutions may feel most comfortable, and allowing every one to select that which bc tliinks proper for bis particular casc, bas given origin to a populär saying in Würtemberg. Wbcn pcople want to describe any tliing as particularly fitting, tbey say: “Just riglit like tbe Wildbad waters!” (Eben recht , wie das Wildbad.') Dr. Granville, who ever will be considered as the first Englisb autbority on the German spas, with rcspect to this point entirely concurs with our Statements. He says: Tbe temperature of tbe water at Wildbad is its chief and predominant merit. This bas continued tlie samc tbrougbout a long succcssion of years; and I confess at once, that I am led after mature consideration of the subject, both in this case, and in the cases of all the other warm mineral springs I have visited, to ascribc to temperature the priucipal effects which tbe water produces on the human Constitution. But it is not the ther- momctrical temperature to which I allude, when I proclaim such an opinion; it is to the caloricity of the water, which is not to be measured by Reaumur or Fahrenheit; a prin- ciplc imparted by naturc to the springs in question, from sources which as yet have escaped detection, but which, at no distant period, will probably be found to be connected with electrical forces, and therefore not appreciable by our ordinary instruments of thermometrical mensuration. Here at Wildbad the ränge of temperature in the water, accord- ing to Fahrenheit, is the same as that which has been assigned as the ränge of heat in the blood of the human body, when in its healthy state. On the water, therefore, being applied to the human body, the sensations produced are as agreeable as when we enter a bath of ordinary water charged with the same degree of heat. But there the com-