Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) as a health resort

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ...“Balneotherapeutics” is that special indications can be given for the use of baths. Formerly all or nearly all forms of disease known to pathology, with one or two exceptions, were considered suitable and capable of accommodating themselves to almost every form of bath. Today on the contrary each disease has its proper mode of treatment and particular forms of disease have their special form of bath. There is naturally very much yet to be done before “Balneotherapeutics” arrive at the dignity of a science in the true sense of the word, and should they ever win the name of an independant science the foundation must be laid by observation and experiment on the living material, the principal instruments of progress, which can only be had at a bathing resort--and although physiology, pathological anatomy and microscopy have in this as in other fields of medical science cleared away errors and mistakes it is still to the practising physician at the baths that we must look for the building up of the science of balneotherapy. Nervous cases have been sent to baths and especially thermal baths for a long time, although we are by no means clear as to their mode of action. It is said to be a peculiar influence of a chemical, mechanical and thermal nature which acts on the nerve endings in the skin and so brings about a reflex action. These reflexes are of a different nature according to the strength and duration of the exciting cause employed: as, for instance, acceleration or retardation of the circulation--increase or diminution of the blood pressure--acceleration or depression of the action of the heart--of the respiration &c. These peripheral stimuli are transmitted to the central nervous system and react either in...