Bethesda.

Date: 1885

Series: 613.122 B465 - "Bethesda;:

a Traveler's Criticism on Our Health Resorts, Their Scenery, Climatic Peculiarities and Curative Influence.

(Page 12 of 19)

Early Florida Medicine

Transcript

[page 21]

NICHOLS' BARK AND IRON.

flowers, we proceed to give a just, fair, disinterested view of the State, so far as our personal experience extends, after visiting it for six successive seasons.

Sailing up the St. John's, we pass Manderine, noted as the residence of Mrs. H. B. Stowe, and Magnolia, where we find one of the best hotels in the State, as regards appointments, - a beautiful place for a day or two, but no place for the invalid.

Two miles beyond, or thirty miles south from Jacksonville, we come to

Green Cove Springs.

The attraction here is a most remarkable spring. The water boils up from a large fissure in the rock, about twenty feet below the surface of the ground, and the volume is some 3,000 gallons per minute, its temperature being 78° . Some have supposed that its source is at a considerable distance, possible Georgia or North Carolina, and that the depth to which it reaches is over 2,000 feet. There is some dispute respecting its medicinal qualities, some of the most conservative physicians highly recommending its use for nth cure of nervous prostration, and live and kidney complaints ; while other say it is not a sulphur spring, and has no medicinal qualities whatever. We have made a careful analysis of the water of this spring, and, omitting all technicalities of language or scientific distinctions, briefly remark that there can be no question respecting the absolute purity of the water, with the exception of the medicinal salts, which are held in solution in minute qualities. The water, after standing in a glass for twelve hours, becomes inordorous, tasteless, and clear as the purest spring water. Connected with the spring are large bathing pools, into which the water flows, and in which one may bathe during the months of March and April.

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BETHESDA.

We have frequently urged upon the proprietors the importance of covering one of these pools with glass, so that invalids could safely bathe at any time during the winter; but this has not been done, and therefore it is only on a warm, sunny day that one can safely take a bath in the pool. After a few baths the skin becomes as soft as that of an infant, due, we believe, to the sulphur in the water. The patient should drink freely of the water as it floes from the spring, before breakfast, and as frequently during the day as is possible. Occasional draughts of this water — supplemented by a simple, grateful tonic, to invigorate the appetite — promote the healthy action of the digestive organism, remove the impurities from the system, and give life and vitality to the blood, — such a tonic as, by personal experience, in ourselves and in our families, we have for a number of years found in

Nichols' Bark and Iron.

We most emphatically assert that the visitor to this pool, with this invaluable tonic as an auxiliary, will find, if he has been suffering for years from the most obstinate forms of rheumatism, neuralgia, and the majority of the varied and insidious phases of liver and kidney complaints, in any event, immediate and substantial relief, and in most instances, a certain and permanent cure.

There is much, of course, in the natural surroundings of the place to interest and enliven the mind of the visitor. We know of no walk in Florida more delightful than the walk of two miles through St. David's Path. The sun is always shaded by the lofty branches of the live oak, magnolia, and cypress trees; the air rich with fragrance; the views through the trees and across the river a continuous delight.

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