may be used with most advantage between ten-thirty and
twelve a.m., and three and five p.m. It is not advisable to take the
massage bath within two hours after a meal, or less than one before.
Massage, or kneading of the whole body, is carried out in this bath after
which a steam douche or a warm spray is turned upon the affected parts,
according to the nature of the case.

Chronic rheumatic arthrites, with painful and contracted muscles,
obstinate lumbago, diaphragmatic, intercostal, periosteal, and synovial
rheumatism, and sprains and injuries to joints, are greatly benefited by
the application of massage, followed by the hot steam douche or warm
spray. Much relief is obtained from the application of the douche (first
hot and then reduced to tepid or cold, according to the nature of the
case) in subacute rheumatic arthritis, long-standing sciatica, facial
neuralgia or tic douloureux, intermittent headache, spinal irritation,
chorea or St. Vitus' dance, wrist drop (from lead poison), writers'
cramp, where there is the rheumatic diathesis, and paralysis agitans, &c.

The Buxton medicinal baths, either at their natural temperature, or when
the water is artificially heated, are, on account of their powerful
action upon the human system, quite inadmissible in all cases where there
is acute inflamation of any organ. In extensive valvular disease of the
heart, especially when accompanied with regurgitation, or advanced
degeneracy of that organ, atheromatous degeneration or aneurism of the
larger arteries, lung disease, in an advanced stage, especially when
connected with the phthisical diathesis, asthma, or amphipneuma,
complicated with fatty degeneration or dilatation of the heart,
giddiness, vertigo, or sudden faintness consequent upon organic disease,
the baths should not be taken, except locally, and even then with the
greatest caution. When so used the affected parts may be sponged with
the thermal water heated to the prescribed degree. An ordinary compress
soaked in the heated water may often be advantageously worn continuously
over an inflamed joint, congested liver, inactive kidneys, or irritable
stomach.

When the thermal water is only prescribed, the most favourable time for
drinking it is from seven to eight and eleven to twelve a.m., and from
four to five p.m., but when ordered to be taken in conjunction with the
chalybeate, the former should be taken in the morning and the latter in
the afternoon. It ha