Austrian Health - Resorts, and the Bitter Waters of Hungary. By W.
Fraser Rae. (Chapman and Hall.)—This book, on Carlsbad, Marienbad, Gastein, Franzenbad, Meran, Konigswart, IschL Arco, and other favourite resorts of the elite—a tolerably numerous elite, by-the-way—of European invalids and hypochondriacs, is at once a very lively and a very useful book. The bulk of it is just what might be expected from a well-read, open-eyed Englishman of the world, who has some sympathy with, and perhaps a little con- tempt for, the folks that seek for health with an earnestness worthy of that greater cause, a search for truth. But Mr. Rae is also a bit of a " graphic " artist, a bit of a historian, a bit of an archteologist, and even a bit of a politician (witness what he says on Home-rule in Bohemia) ; and he has read all (and that is no trifle) of what the various health-doctors have written of the places he has visited. He has incorporated his knowledge and that of others in this volume, which, being therefore a collection of what are too commonly known as tit-bits, has all the value and none of the dryness of a guide-book. We cannot follow Mr. Rae in his visits to the doctor-ridden regions of Austria, as he proceeds from Carlsbad, full of diabetes-patients and memories of Goethe, to that " Adamless Eden," Franzenbad, to Gastein with its Royalties, to Meran, where one may eat nine pounds of grapes and survive, and on, and on to Arco, where, thanks to a device for torturing the invalids known as the Terrain cur, the physician is to be found at his very worst. At Arco, "besides enjoining upon a patient what he is to drink, eat, and avoid, what medicine he is to swallow, and what hours he is to keep, where and how he is to live, the phy- sician who prescribes the Terrain cur can also exercise a strict con- trol over his walks abroad." But where, oh where ! is the doctor to be found who can give to the invalid that unconsciousness, or at least self-regardlessness, which is health ? The Austrian health-resorts seem to be managed on diametrically the opposite principle ; they make self-consciousness a terrible science and a perfect art. This is no business of Mr. Fraser Rae's, however. That is to describe Austrian health-resorts, and the bitter springs of Hungary—to this subject he devotes a commendably small amount of space—and he does it admirably.
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