The Sun.
London, England, 1847-01-01 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

KISS EN GEN, ITS SOURCES AND RE-
SOURCES, with Observations on their Use and
Efficacy in the Treatment Di' Disease. By A. B.
Granville, M.D., F.R.S.
Dr. Granville has here given us a complete hand-
book to Kissengen, pointing the various routes from
London to that far-famed spring, and detailing the
expences of a journey to, and a residence at Kissen-
gen. Although Kissengen is situated some hundreds
of miles from the sea (it is in the kingdom of Bavaria),
yet the visitors enjoy all the benefit of sea air, by a
curious contrivance at one of the springs, which is
thus described by Dr. Granville :
"It may truly be said
,that one of the great lions of
Kissengen is the Sprudel, and its whole establishment
for the manufactory of salt. Often have I escorted par-
ties of patients to both places to explain the phenomenon
of the one and the proceedings of the other, with a view
of showing how th..y have been made applicable to me-
dicinal purposes.
"The daily produce of the spring just mentioned, at
the rate of 2,000 cubic feet of salt water per hour, must
be evaporated in order to obtain the salt held in solution.
It is evident that such an evaporation, wholly conducted
by means of fire, would be: too costly to be profitable.
The well-known plan of spontaneous evaporation has
been preferred, by suffering the salt water to drop from
twig to twig, off vast open stacks of thorns, so arranged
as to present a very large surface to the air, and thus
carry on evaporation at an ordinary temperature.
" These stacks of thorns, regularly piled up in stages,
forming a wooden platform of twelve or fourteen feet
from the ground, rite to a height varying from twenty-
four to forty•two feet, being disposed in two separate
parallel ranges, one foot in thickness, with a space of
about one foot between. They are covered over with a
wooden roof, under which are the hydraulic contrivances
for the circulation of the water, and suffering it to drop
through the stacks of thorns when necessary. At the
bottom of the stacks forming the central part of the
wooden platform before mentioned; are wide continuous
troughs, into which the dropping water falls, to be again
carried up by suitable pumps to the top of the stacks,
from which it is again suffered to trickle down into the
troughs below. This operation is repeated not less than
five, and very frequently as many as six times, when at
length the water having attained the required concen-
trated degree of saltness, is conveyed to the boiling-house
for the concluding part of the process necessary to ex-
tract the salt.
" Those singular looking ranges of wooden building
which the spa visitor beholds for the first time, on directing
his steps from Kissingen:along:the 'Alley towards Hausen,
and which attracts his curiosity, without finding him
able to guess at their destination, are the evaporating
sheds I have endeavoured to describe, and to which the
name of Gradiren houses has been given. Nothing can
be more admirably suited to the .intended purpose of
evaporating water by the ordinary temperature of the
air. By an ingenious contrivance (which it is needless
here to explain more minutely, but which, as well as
the rest of the hydraulic apparatus, will amply repay the
visitor to examine; by ascending to the top of the gra-
duating houses) the salt water is made to trickle down
the sides of the stacks of thorns to leeward of the wind.
Without this contrivance, the wind would scatter the
drops of water and disperse them through the atmo-
sphere. Two parallel rows of stacks are placed under
each gradiren-haus, that the salt may trickle down two
surfaces. The stacks are seven thousand feet in length ;
so that a space equal to two English miles and a half is
traversed by the water before it reaches the boiling-pans,
where the final crystallization of the salt takes place.
"During this progress of the salt water forward, the
quantity of oxide of iron which it holds in solution, and
a large proportion—indeed nearly the whole—of the
earthy matter is deposited on the thorns, which become
incrusted with those substances, and present to the ob-
server the red and dusky-white appearances observed in
the Gradiren houses. This process of depuration saves
a subsequent troublesome and very expensive operation
of re-dissolving the salt and crystallizing it afresh for
purposes of purification, which the ordinary mode of
obtaining salt from sea water renders necessary. No-
thing can be purer or whiter in appearance than the salt
drawn from the boiling pans or tanks after the first
crystallization.
" What a vast charge of moisture the atmosphere has
carried off during the period of spontaneous evaporation,
may be inferred from the fact that the salt water is seven
times stronger (2.5 : 17.5) after, than before that opera-
tion. Analysis gives 14 grains of salt water for 976
parts of water. Hence in the course of the year, 210
millions of pints of water are dispersed through the air
in the form of invisible vapour, in the neighbourhood of
these graduating or evaporating houses.
"Advantage has been taken of this circumstance to
establish a marine promenade for the benefit of such in-
valids as require to inhale a moist air, charged with such
saline particles as are found by the sea-side, but con-
siderably stronger. Accordingly a footpath is established
on each side of the whole length of the graduating-
houses, on the elevated platform, guarded by a
parapet, along which the patient is made to walk
for an hour or so in the middle of the
day—sometimes early in the morning—selecting that
side on which the sun happens to be shining at the time,
and avoiding the side to the wind, a matter easy to
accomplish, as the graduating-houses are placed at
various angles of incidence to each other.
" The patient, or indeed any per: on thus engaged, is
not long in perceiving that he takes into his mouth salt
air, inhaling and smelling that peculiar aerial principle
which consists of chlorine or bromine exhalations, and
which mark marine atmospheres, until he cheats himselj
into the belief that he is really by the sea-side--a belief
confirmed rather by the view of certain co7Virrce or
marine plants that grow in those troughs of the gradua-
ting- houses in which the more concentrated water is last
dropped from the thorns."