Brochure about the water in Vence from 1925
Another very cool little find for me. A six page brochure from 1925 all about the water in Vence, specifically the water from the La Foux spring. It’s 24cm by 11cm when folded up. The cover is a kind of “billboard” touting the best attributes of Vence. On the inside cover there is a mineral analysis of the water. This is followed by a lengthy “report” from a Doctor Greffier all about the benefits of the water on your health. Then an “appreciation” by a Doctor Boulva about the water, the health benefits and how the spring is fed by rainwater and filtered by the rock formations in the area.
Download a high quality PDF of this brochure (193mb)
Download a very good quality PDF of this brochure (19mb)
Download a good quality PDF of this brochure (2mb)
[click on any image to see sample pages – more info after the samples]
I found this at “Chine & Bouquine,” a wonderful little bookshop here in Vence. If you have a chance, stop by and visit them (4, rue saint Véran, near the Porte d’Orient).
I’ve translated the entire brochure (with the help of Google Translate) if you would like to read it. It’s a bit wonky in places (Google Translate can only do so much and I hesitate to try and “correct” it too much since I am not an expert) but it is still quite readable and easy to understand.
Cover
Vence
Alpes-Maritimes (Altitude 325 meters)
Tourism and Excursion Center
Regular temperature
Ideal Station of Resting and Relaxation
9 kilometers from the Sea – Very mild marine climate
Chamber of Tourism Industry
Inaugurated on September 21, 1923 by the Prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes
Notice on the Waters of Vence
edited by
the Tourist office
For more information, send correspondence to the President
(Attach 0.25 stamp for response)
The Tourist Office will send a brochure for 2.50 francs
1925
All reproduction rights reserved
Page 2
Analysis of “La Foux” Spring Water
Organic materials:
in oxygen:
acid solution: 7 milligrams
alkaline solution: 5 milligrams 5
in A. ixalic:
acid solution: 5 milligrams 910
alkaline solution: 3 milligrams 94
Ammonia: O
Albuminoic nitrogen: 0
Nitrites: O
Nitrates: 0
Phosphoric acid: O
Sulfuric acid: TRACES
Sodium Chloride: 8 milligrams 2
Chlorine: 5 milligrams
Hydrometric degree: TOTAL 20 °
Hydrometric degree: PERMANENT 7 °
Alkalimetric degree (in 103 Na1) 0.185
Colibacillus detection: NEGATIVE
(Examination made by the Laboratory of Biological Research – A. Daumas and E. Missimilly – 1, Avenue Georges-Clemenceau in Nice.)
Page 3
The waters of Vence have properties that it is important to make known
REPORT OF DOCTOR GREFFIER
Vence has a number of springs that flow from the neighboring “Baous,” all clear and limpid and deliciously fresh. There is, in particular, one which enjoys a real vogue throughout the region which the many foreigners who come to make a stay in this pleasant resort tend to spread all over the place, experience all the beneficial effects: It is the water of La Foux. It is cold (11° to 12 °). Its temperature and its flow are more or less constant whatever the season. Clear and perfectly limpid, it has no odor and one experiences in tasting it a pleasant sensation of lightness and freshness. It is very aerated without being carbonated. By its chemical composition, it can be classified in the group of very slightly alkaline waters.
Very weak in mineralization, containing a few milligrams of soda salts (carbonate) and traces of chlorides, it does not contain any microbes such as colibacillus and it constitutes the true type of a diuretic and derivative water.
It can, in fact, be taken in considerable doses to determine an abundant and rapid evacuation without causing fatigue to the organs of absorption, circulation and elimination.
The water of Vence therefore provides the ultimate diuresis cure. So every year in both summer and winter, we see many foreigners making it a treat and demanding it at their table as their only drink.
This water operates in the body as a marvelous, intense, progressive washing, thanks to its great absorption by the digestive tracts, and to its rapid elimination by the urinary tracts. We understand how much this rapid passage throughout the economy of abundant and pure water, very little loaded with mineral salts, causes a deep detoxification and if everyone knows the multitude of toxins and poisons with which current life overloads our bodies, no one is not unaware of what use is the urinary purification to eliminate them from the blood and protect us from diseases.
Action on the blood – Action on the liver – Action on the kidneys: such is the triple effect of Vence waters. And not only does it act as an eliminator by all that its current carries through the body, but also it seems to regulate cellular exchanges, no doubt by intervening by osmosis in the intimate phenomena of nutrition.
Page 4
Its indications are numerous, because it constitutes a water of diuretic, diverting and eliminating cure, action on this collection of states classified under the name of arthritis, gout, rheumatism, arteriosclerosis, especially when hypertension does not the result of established arterial lesions, but that of a vasoconstrictor reflex, a state in which abundant diuresis gives the best results: rapid elimination of chlorides and uric acid and a significant reduction in toxic dyspnea so painful for many of cardiopathics: migraines, nausea and neurasthenia, of food toxic origin (stomach and biliary).
Action on the Intestine: Chronic enteritis, especially mucomembranous enteritis.
Action on the Liver: Biliary lithiasis, hepatic colic Chronic gio-cholitis for poisons and bile pigments into the body. This is where the diuresis cure activates by the kidney the necessary elimination by reinforcing the effect of the diet and by achieving a real irrigation of the liver. This irrigation is especially intense when we consider:
The action on the kidney, this great filter of the body, whether it is about renal lithiasis (renal colic), uric, oxalic or phosphaturic gravel.
Vence water, thanks to its very low mineralization, makes a real washing of the urinary canals, causing all the abnormal products and helping their elimination by reinforcing the secretive activity of the renal cells.
Let us add that the albuminuric seems almost always to benefit from the waters of Vence, provided that its renal and cardiac functions are well supervised by the doctor.
It is good that such real and so active properties are better known. Many winter visitors come to Vence only for the cure of its waters.
In the future, there will be more visitors who, staying for some time in this delicious corner of Provence, will take advantage of our short instructions to take away the feeling of well-being that Vence water communicates to all its enthusiasts upon their departure.
Doctor REGISTRAR
of the Faculty of Paris
Ex-Intern of Asylums
Branch and Nutrition Diseases
Appreciations by Doctor BOULVA
INTRODUCTION
Vence has two ancient monumental fountains which are most artistic.
The tourists contemplate them with curiosity and admire them.
Painters spend happy days putting them to bed on their canvases.
Page 5
But all of them drink their water with greed and pleasure.
These magnificent fountains are a fair testament to the gratitude that the Vençois wanted to return to their favorite source known as “la Foux”.
The water from this source is, in fact, of very exceptional purity, freshness and lightness; it has appreciable therapeutic qualities which attract to Vence the martyrs of arthritis.
Vence also receives water from another source known as the “Riou”, the qualities of which are roughly equal to those of La Foux.
Here is how these sources are fed and how they are captured:
The two sources emerge at an altitude of approximately 400 meters on the flanks of the large limestone plateau north of Vence, and whose average altitude is 1,000 meters. This plateau, once covered with forests, is currently deforested and arid. Thyme and lavender reign supreme there; it is almost the desert. The surface of this plateau is therefore not soiled, and if it were, it would quickly be sterilized by the chemical and caloric rays of the sun so hot at 1000 meters in our dry climate.
The rainwater that falls on this vast plateau infiltrates through limestone strata with a wavy profile, but generally horizontal. These stratifications are cracked into a multitude of small cracks all filled with mineral debris and a very old forest humus. All these little cracks make up a set of hair filters of considerable length. The water to reach the sources through this incredible network of filtering pipes, slowly travels a distance three or four times greater than the difference in level of the plateau (1,000 meters) And the sources (400 meters).
Due to the size of the absorption surface and the abundance of rains in certain seasons, the flow of the sources is very important. The water is plentiful.
The length of the filtering cracks and the thickness of the plateau (600 meters) ensure a regular flow of water, the whole behaving like a sponge soaked in water and which would drip gradually.
Also, even during periods of great droughts, such as that of 1920-1921, the flow of the sources remains regular.
It is obvious that such filtration ensures the water a perfect temperature equality and exceptional clarity.
Captured at the sources (moreover very beautiful and which are the goals of excursion), the water is brought to Vence:
1° La Foux, by a pipe made of large tubes, very waterproof and about 2 kilometers long.
2° Le Riou, by a covered cement pipeline, about 6 kilometers long.
The water from the Riou is that which flows from all the taps of all the houses in Vence.
Page 6
The water of the Feux is reserved for the two monumental fountains, it is the best of the two, because the less mineralized … it is the source that is venerated in Vence almost like a mythological divinity.
Various analyzes have revealed that the water of La Foux is not very mineralized, slightly alkaline; very airy, and that it does not contain germs.
But there is one observation which is worth all the analysis, it is that in Vence renal lithiasis is unknown and that the various manifestations of arthritis are rare. They only affect the people of Venice who prefer the more wonderful wines of their vines to their marvelous water.
ACTION OF THE VENCE WATERS
The traveler who comes to Vence notes:
1° A diuretic action.
2° A laxative action.
To tell the truth, there is in this water neither diuretic nor laxative. The observed effects are due only to the fact that the water is very pure and very little mineralized.
This action results in a significant elimination of toxins by the kidneys and the liver, these organs excreting more abundant fluids.
The result has the consequence of reducing and then eliminating the manifestations due to accumulations of toxins in the organism, such as gout, rheumatism, renal and bladder lithiasis, eczemas, headaches of toxic origin, etc.
On the other hand, the bile becoming oilier and more abundant, we observe: 1° decongestion of the liver and an improvement in cases of gallstones; 2° a regulation of the intestinal functions with suppression of toxic fermentations.
In summary, Vence water has an
action on the kidneys;
action on the liver;
action on the intestine.
CONCLUSIONS
Rainwater falls on large permeable surfaces, almost deserted, and sterilized by a blazing sun. It is filtered over 600 meters in height in a network of considerable length of capillary filters. It is collected at the sources and brought to the fountains according to all the rules of hygiene. Its low mineralization, its clarity, its freshness and its ventilation make it very pleasant to drink, and its therapeutic actions make it the water of arthritis patients.
DR BOULVA,
Respiratory tract – Radiology.
Doctor-Director of the “La Maison Blanche” clinic.