ther 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. At one end of this edifice,
there is an octagon, open at top, having a bason, with a stone pillar
in the middle, which discharges water from the same source, all round,
by eight small brass cocks; and hither people of all ranks come of a
morning, with their glasses, to drink the water, or wash their sores,
or subject their contracted limbs to the stream. This last operation,
called the douche, however, is more effectually undergone in the
private bath, where the stream is much more powerful. The natural
warmth of this water, as nearly as I can judge from recollection, is
about the same degree of temperature with that in the Queen's Bath, at
Bath in Somersetshire. It is perfectly transparent, sparkling in the
glass, light and agreeable to the taste, and may be drank without any
preparation, to the quantity of three or four pints at a time. There
are many people at Aix who swallow fourteen half pint glasses every
morning, during the season, which is in the month of May, though it may
be taken with equal benefit all the year round. It has no sensible
operation but by urine, an effect which pure water would produce, if
drank in the same quantity.

If we may believe those who have published their experiments, this
water produces neither agitation, cloud, or change of colour, when
mixed with acids, alkalies, tincture of galls, syrup of violets, or
solution of silver. The residue, after boilin