y
dalesmen to their midnight rendezvous, there to be instructed in the
science of war, so as to enable them to protect their homes and families
against the marauding myrmidons of a cruel, heartless, and unreliable
king; or if the antiquarian seeketh a knowledge of the High Peak
folk-lore, and feareth neither pixie or graymarie, he can, on a spring
night, just as the moon has entered her last quarter, and the first note
from the belfry of the chapel in the frith has proclaimed the arrival of
midnight, take his stand upon Blentford's Bluff and peer into the dark
and sombre depths of Kinder, when he will hear the hooting of the barn
owl on Anna rocks, the unearthly screech of the landrail as he ploughs
his way through the unmown grass in search of his mate, the scream of the
curlew and chatter of the red grouse as they take their flight from peak
to peak, and see the fairy queen come forth from the mermaid's cave in a
shimmering light, followed by her maids, who dance a quadrille to the
music of the spheres, and hear the wild blast of the hunter's horn
heralding the approach of the Gabriel hounds as they take their rapid
course across the murky sky, and become lost in the unfathomable depths
beyond the Scout.

CHAPTER II.
THE MEDICINAL WATERS AND THEIR ACTION.

Physiological Functions in Healthy Individuals--Performance of the
Physiological Functions in Health and Disease--Action of Oxygen upon the
Nitrogenous and Non-nitrogenous Compounds--Origin of Calculi, Nodosities,
and Tophi--Action of the Thermal Water upon the Great
Emunctories--Chalybeate Water when used as a Douche, or Taken
Internally--Analyses of the Waters--Selection of Buxton by the
Romans--First Treatise upon the Buxton Spa, written by Dr. Jones in
1572--Source and Nature of the Waters.

In a healthy individual, where the physiological functions are performed
with exactitude and regularity, the elimination of the various effete
matters, the result of waste of tissue, is uniform, and easily carried
off out of the system by the skin, the kidneys, lungs, and bowels. The
nitrogenous components become oxidised, and urea ultimately formed, which
being very soluble is freely excreted by the sudorific glands in the
perspiration, and by the kidneys in the urine. The non-nitrogenous
compounds are also changed by the action of oxygen into carbonic acid,
which is expelled from the system by the lungs. If the natural functions
are not perfectly and with re