94

WILDBAD.

CHAPT. VI.

tirnes appears in the shape of head-achcs, sometimes also as an oppression of the ehest, although the latter Symptom might rather be ascribed to the vapours inhaled in the bath. However, these Symptoms disappear generally by the time the invalid has taken five or six baths, when they are suc- ceedcd by an indescribable but delicious feeling of return- ing strength, and of well-bcing, wliich, witli tlie exr.eption of some rare cascs in nervous invalids, lasts tili to the end of the eure.

Anotber, and seemingly a more serious affair, are the feverish Symptoms, the majority of the patients experience in the course of the eure; old pains are revived, the small- est scars, whicli often can be scarcely perceived, or old cuts in the fingcr whicli liave long been forgotten, begin to smart and revive during the use of these baths. Fre- quently these pains are severe, and often aggravations of the disease,—but let the patient beware from drawing unjust conclusions by tliem, as to the effect of the baths. These pains are the surest sign tliat the water is acting upon the disorder, and tokens of the beginnings of a eure. The same remark applies to the bath-itch; and the patient may rather rejoice in the appearance of these Symptoms than declaim against them. In these cases the waters first awake the refractory tenants of the body from the factitious slum- ber in wliich they so lang have been lying, and drive tliem out from their innermost recesses, but then their expulsion is achicved in such a satisfactory way, that they never dare to show their face again.

In some patients again the receptivity for the sanative powers of the waters is so small that the effects of the batli remaiu latent during almost the whole course of ba- thing. Such persons have sometimes left Wildbad with marked expressions of discontent; but it often liappened,