MEDICAL YIRTUES OF THE WILDBAD WATERS.
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and contractures, arising from extraneous causes, falls, wounds badly hcaled, etc., are particularly seconded by application of the shower-bath, and friction of tlie sulfering parts witb the warm sand on tbe bottom of the bath-basin.
Monsieur Berchthold, a Darmstadt oflicer, 26 years of age, had bccome pcrfectly lame in consequence of a fall, which had produced an affection of the right hip, the pre- cise nature of which was never ascertained. Four months aftcr the accident, being able to walk without crutches, but always with the most violent pain, he was scnt to Wiesbaden, whcnce he returned without the slightest im- provement. For five months he could not tread upon his heel; and when, thirteen months after the fall, he was able to do so, it caused bim the most dreadful sufferings; so that at every step his head was drawn down almost to his hip. In this pitiable and distressed condition he went to Wildbad. The first bath had no effcct upon him; the second caused him some pain in the region of the loins; the third increased the pain; but the seventh he was un- able to endure—so excessivc was the pain it caused. He was taken out of the bath, and placed in bed. When he had becn there but a few minutes, he feit an indescribable, painful sense of coldness in the impaired limb, which was followed by a copious warm perspiratiou, particularly around the hips. He now found that he could move his foot freely, and after resting in bed for an hour, he was able to leave it without a stick, and free from pain. Mr. Berchthold now walks as straight and upright as if nothing had happened.
T he diseases of the hones, such as excrescences caused either by inveterated arthritic, syphilitic, or scrophulous disorders, or appearing under the form of osteo-sarcoma- tous tumefactions, or even under that of arthrocace (spina