CARLSBAD has been called "the hospital for diabetics" It is a hospital, however, of which the walls are the pine-clad hills, the roof the sunny sky, and the medicine the hot bubbling streams. At Carlsbad, the dietetic treatment of diabetics is carried out under the most agreeable and revivifying conditions.

The town of Carlsbad lies in a narrow winding valley, through which flows the stream of the Tepel. The houses climb the hills on either side; and it seems to have been hard to find level spaces for the Curhaus, and the concert and promenade rooms. At certain spots in the shallow river, hot saline water is seen bubbling up through the crust of the earth and mixing with the stream. One of these hot springs, called the Sprudel, shoots high into the air, while others bubble up slowly into wells and reservoirs.

All the Carlsbad waters contain the same alkaline ingredients in almost identical proportions; they vary only from one another in the amount of carbonic acid they contain, and in the temperature at which they come to the surface. This temperature varies from 100 deg. to 166 deg. The principal salts they contain are sulphate of sodium, chloride of sodium, carbonate of sodium, and carbonate of calcium. The springs are believed to be derived from a common source seven to eight thousand feet below the surface of the earth. In fact, Carlsbad may be considered to be set down over an immense cauldron of boiling water, which is forced up under the pressure of the steam through cracks and holes in the earth's surface. The water is very agreeable to drink, and has been compared to rather salt chicken broth.

Life at Carlsbad is framed to be free of care, and as diabetes is frequently caused by over-anxiety of mind and the worry of life, it may be conceived that to be relieved altogether from the causes of the malady may alone effect the cure. On arriving at Carlsbad one is immediately visited by the tax collector, who demands a tax of from four to fifteen florins from every visitor according to his means. With the money obtained from this universal cure-tax, the immense forests which stretch for miles round about Carlsbad are maintained as public gardens; two bands of the best reputation, and composed of highly-trained performers, are engaged to give music all day long to the visitors; the theatre is subsidised, and the Curhaus and promenade rooms are kept up. Lodgings can be obtained at Carlsbad at every price. The usual course of life is as follows.

At The Wells

Called early, the visitor is out in the fresh morning air by six o'clock at the latest, and with a glass cup suspended by a leather strap across his shoulder, he takes his way to the great Curhaus which covers the spouting waters of the Sprudel, or to the wells of the Schlossbrunn, Muhlbrunn, Elizabethquelle, or Neubrunn, as he may be directed by his physician. He joins the queue at the well, and in turn hands his cup to be filled by one of the neat little maidens whose duty it is to charge the glasses. Waiting until the water is cool enough to drink, it is slowly sipped, while the delightful strains of Labitzky's band are enjoyed. A short walk of about twenty minutes is then taken either up and down the covered promenades of the Curhaus, or among the flowerbeds of the Stadtpark. In the course of two hours three or four half-pints of hot water have been drunk, and three or four miles have been walked.

Breakfast

By this time one feels not disinclined for breakfast; but rigid abstemiousness is the rule of life at Carlsbad, and though one might feel capable almost of eating a mutton chop or some ham and eggs or fish for breakfast, it is not allowed. Cheerfully submitting to the doctor's orders, the many visitors are seen trooping into the various bakers' shops, and purchasing their frugal breakfast in the form of a couple of "crescents," or some of the admirably made diabetic cakes. With these in a paper bag the patient betakes himself to one of the many little tables set out under the trees of the restaurant gardens; where breakfast is made, from coffee, the bread purchased at the baker's, with perhaps a single boiled egg, or a few slices of German sausage.

Bathing

After breakfast the papers of the day are leisurely read, and at about eleven o'clock the operation of bathing is gone through. The baths are of different kinds, hot saline baths and vapour baths; but the characteristic bath of Carlsbad is the peat bath. This consists of black peat pulverised, then screened and freed from accidental impurities and mixed with hot Sprudel water. After lying in this mixture for some time the patient takes a dip in a bath of clean water. The effect of the peat bath is said to be stimulating to the skin and sedative to the nervous system.