Essay on the mineral waters of Carlsbad/Insufficiency of the theories proposed for explaining thermal heat
INSUFFICIENCY
OF THE
THEORIES PROPOSED FOR EXPLAINING THERMAL HEAT.
“No stranger,” says Mr. Berzelius, “contemplates the boiling and springing Sprudel without asking whence its temperature proceeds. The answer is the more difficult, as in the absolute impossibility of reaching the hearth which imparts it, we shall never know the means employed by Nature to form it, nor how that water is impregnated with substances, of which, as far as investigations have shewn, the mountains of Carlsbad contain too little to account for the enormous quantities of sulfate and carbonate of soda, emitted from the wells, in the course of only one year.”
“It is highly probable,” adds he, “that the heat and nature of the substances, which impregnate this water, are so closely united, that the cause of thermal temperature will not be explained as long as the place from which those ingredients proceed, remains unknown.”
The problem of animal heat has not engaged the attention of more eminent men, than the cause of the high temperature of the Carlsbad waters. Bohuslas de Lobkowitz proposed poetically that question (p. 11), and, after him, a series of learned physicians, chymists, mineralogists and geologists: Frederick Hoffmann, Gottfried Berger, Bruckner, B. L. Tralles, David Becher, Klaproth, Leopold de Buch, Gilbert, Berzelius, de Hoff, offered, instead of proofs, ingenious conjectures; each pointed out the weak sides of his predecessor’s opinion, and proposed a new theory, but all acknowledged the impossibility of ascertaining the operations of that deep and mysterious boiler, anterior to history, coeval to Creation. Masses of hornstein, of sulfuret of iron, of fossil coals, imbedded in the granite of Carlsbad, volcanos, earthquakes, revolutions of the globe, comparisons between the external forms of our environs with those of such regions (France and Iceland), where hot springs are found; subterraneous electric or galvanic action; violent friction of vegetable, animal, bituminous substances, heated to ignition; erudition, sagacity, analogy, every means in short have been tried to resolve the problem of thermal temperature; but, in our dark ignorance of the anatomy and physiology of the bowels of the earth, of which we scarcely know more than the integuments, that gordian knot has neither been untied nor cut through. Those researches have in some respects promoted science, without however teaching us where the subterraneous laboratory lays, in which the Almighty prepares the mineral ingredients of our waters; out of what store-house he draws them; how he mixes and heats them; nor by what ramification of channels he leads them, in mercy to mankind, to the various orifices, where a sickly multitude flocks annually, to partake of the blessing. “Should we not believe,” said Galen, speaking of thermal waters, above two thousand years ago, “that Vulcan and all the Cyclops of his retinue, are incessantly blowing and stirring up the fire of their subterraneous furnaces, to maintain a temperature so equal and so constant?”
I have only named here learned men who have attempted to explain the heat of our waters; french, italian and german men of science have paid equal attention to the phenomenon, but with as little success, in their respective countries.
