Hints for invalids about to visit Naples : being a sketch of the medical topography of that city : also an account of the mineral waters of the Bay of Naples : with analyses of the most important of them, derived from authentic sources / by J.C. Cox.

  • Cox, J. C.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints for invalids about to visit Naples : being a sketch of the medical topography of that city : also an account of the mineral waters of the Bay of Naples : with analyses of the most important of them, derived from authentic sources / by J.C. Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    The quantity of saline ingredients, the large proportion of gas which it also contains, and the agreeable temperature at which it issues from the spring, renders tliis one of the most valuable mineral waters with which we are ac- quainted. The locality of this spring at the base of Vesuvius proves its origin to be specially volcanic. Most striking is the situation in which it is placed: vast blocks of lava surround the spot, and for several miles along the coast, high walls of the same material abruptly arrested in its course, and suddenly cooled by contact with the sea, mark the powerful agency by which it has been effected; and even the bottom of the bay, to a great distance, is here paved with lava which has flowed into the sea in a molten state, so that an anchor will not hold. Again and again have the towns at the foot of the mountain been destroyed, yet, no sooner was the liquid rock sufficiently cooled, than it formed the foundation for a Jiew dwelling for the poor inhabitant, whose former one is encased in stone beneath. The floor of the new church at Torre del Greco is placed on the roof of the former edifice, and the tower, bereft of its fair proportions, still forms the campanile to the successor. How vast must be the cavern beneath the surface from which so much liquid stone has been ejected. The ashes alone that have been wafted away on the winds would probably form a mountain of prodigious size. It is not wonderful, then, to find rivers obliterated, straits filled up, and N 2