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Sulphuretted Waters
Simple Sulphuretted Water.
Pass sulphuretted hydrogen into cold water (previously deprived of air by boiling, and cooled in a closed vessel), till it ceases to be absorbed.
Aix-la-Chapelle Water.
Bicarbonate of soda, 12 grs.; common salt, 25 grs.; chloride of calcium, 3 grs.; sulphate of soda, 8 grs.; simple sulphuretted water, 24 oz.; water slightly carbonated, 174 oz.
Bareges Water.
Crystallized hydrosulphate of soda, crystallized carbonate of soda, and common salt, of each 24 grs.; water (freed from air), 1 pt. A stronger solution for adding to baths is thus made:-Crystallized hydrosulphate of soda, crystallized carbonate of soda, and common salt, of each 2 oz.; water, 10 oz. Dissolve. To be added to a common bath at the time of using. Naples Water.
Crystallized carbonate of soda, 15 grs.; fluid magnesia, 1 oz.; simple sulphuretted water, 2 oz.; aerated water, 16 oz. Introduce the sulphuretted water into the bottle last.
Harrowgate Water.
Common salt, 100 grs.; chloride of calcium, 10 grs.; chloride of magnesium, 6 grs.; bicarbonate of soda, 2 grs.; water, 184 oz. Dissolve, and add simple sulphuretted water, 1½ oz.
These are imitation spa waters — attempts to reproduce the mineral springs of Aix-la-Chapelle, Barèges, Naples and Harrogate in a bottle for patients who could not travel. The active ingredient in all of them is hydrogen sulphide, and that is the reason none of them belongs in a kitchen.
- The gas is the problem"Sulphuretted hydrogen" is hydrogen sulphide, H₂S, the smell of rotten eggs. It is acutely toxic by inhalation, heavier than air so it pools at floor level, and it deadens the sense of smell at concentrations well below the lethal one, so the usual warning disappears exactly when it matters. Bubbling it into water until saturation, in any domestic room, is a hazard on the order of working with a war gas.
- Hydrosulphate of soda is the same hazard in solid formThe Barèges recipes use a crystallised sodium sulphide/hydrosulphide salt. In solution it is alkaline and it releases hydrogen sulphide, faster still if it meets any acid. The "stronger solution for adding to baths" — 2 oz each of three salts in 10 oz of water — is a concentrated source of H₂S, to be tipped whole into a bath.
- Reagent-grade is not food-gradeChloride of calcium, chloride of magnesium and sulphate of soda came from a chemist rather than a grocer, and nineteenth-century commercial salts could carry arsenic and lead traces from the manufacturing process. Sulphate of soda (Glauber's salt) at 8 grains is a small amount, though in quantity it is a brisk purgative.
- Fluid magnesiaAn obsolete pharmacy preparation — magnesium hydroxide or carbonate held in solution under carbonic acid pressure, sold by Dinneford and others as an antacid and laxative. It has no modern shelf equivalent, and its presence marks the Naples water as medicine rather than refreshment.
- Reading the units, for interest onlyA grain is about 65 mg, so 100 grains of common salt is roughly 6.5 g; the fluid ounce here is the British one, about 28.4 ml, making the Harrogate water a little over five litres. "Water freed from air" means boiled and cooled in a sealed vessel, to keep dissolved oxygen from oxidising the sulphide to sulphur and clouding the bottle.
- If you want the effectSulphurous mineral waters are still bottled commercially at some Continental spas and sold under food regulation. That is the route to take; there is no home version of this worth attempting.
Sulphur springs were the backbone of nineteenth-century hydrotherapy, and the four named here were among the most fashionable in Europe: Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Barèges in the Pyrenees, the Neapolitan springs around Pozzuoli, and Harrogate in Yorkshire, whose Old Sulphur Well was often said to be the most foul-tasting water in England. Doctors prescribed courses of drinking and bathing for gout, rheumatism, and above all skin disease, and a cure at a spa town was beyond most purses. Books like Mackenzie's therefore printed synthetic recipes, worked out from published chemical analyses of the springs, so that a druggist could compound an approximation on the spot — the same impulse that fills these volumes with imitation Seltzer, artificial Vichy and factitious Cheltenham salts.