90
WILDBAD. — CHAPT. V.
tain facetious Stories, about the Bath of Serpents, or Schlangenbad in Nassau, its power of embellishing the skin, “its milk-like warmth,” and the fascinating beauties by which the spring is surrounded in a Iittle scquestered valley. The people of England, on the faith of such a declaration, have flockcd since 1835 to Schlangcnbad, to bathe in its foul water, drawn from tanks and uscd in tubs! and they have fancied themselves, after using it, vvhat the writer of “The Bubbles,” a layman, had told thein they wouldbel* Let them now try on the faith of a physician, the eflccts of the Wildbad bath; let them exchangc the temperature of eighty-onc degree for one of ninety-six or ninety-eight; let them dip into the Jordan itself, instead of erouching into narrow slippers, placed in dark rooms on the ground floor, by the side of a dark corridor, Let them climb among gigantic rocks, and ramble through stately forests, which proclaim the grandeur of mountain nature, instead of asccnding easy, smooth, and fair-faccd hills, the prettiest feature of which are the myriads of vinc-poles planted on them. Let them do all this, wlien next they seek liealth in a warm mineral spring, and I will answer for their success. Wildhad is to Schlangenbad, in evcry respect, as the reality of a place is to its panorama.
It is curious that the schleim and bitumen which are found in the thermal waters of Gastein and Wildbad, and to which some people are inclined to ascribe a portion at least of their beautifying faculty, are not present in the Schlangenbad. This water contains in evcry pint three grains of carbonate of soda. If we suppose thercfore, a bath to consist of seventy gallons, or 560 pints of the water
* The author of ‘A Hot-Watercure’ facetiously observes, “They fancied, they would go into the bath sachcloth, and come out Satin."
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