Near The Same Place Was Found A Small Stone Altar,
With The Figure Of A Priapus, And Some Letters In Capitals, Which
The Antiquarians Have Differently Interpreted.
From this figure,
it was supposed that the waters were efficacious in cases of
barrenness.
It was a long time, however, before any person would
venture to use them internally, as it did not appear that they
had ever been drank by the antients. On their re-appearance, they
were chiefly used for baths to horses, and other beasts which had
the mange, and other cutaneous eruptions. At length poor people
began to bathe in them for the same disorders, and received such
benefit from them, as attracted the attention of more curious
inquirers. A very superficial and imperfect analysis was made and
published, with a few remarkable histories of the cures they had
performed, by three different physicians of those days; and those
little treatises, I suppose, encouraged valetudinarians to drink
them without ceremony. They were found serviceable in the gout,
the gravel, scurvy, dropsy, palsy, indigestion, asthma, and
consumption; and their fame soon extended itself all over
Languedoc, Gascony, Dauphine, and Provence. The magistrates, with
a view to render them more useful and commodious, have raised a
plain building, in which there are a couple of private baths,
with a bedchamber adjoining to each, where individuals may use
them both internally and externally, for a moderate expence.
These baths are paved with marble, and supplied with water each
by a large brass cock, which you can turn at pleasure.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 513 of 535
Words from 137365 to 137622
of 143308
