[The "Tractatus de balneis Germaniae" by Caspar Schober (around 1530). On the status of early balneology in Germany between mineral source analysis and corresponding reports].
Caspar Schober, an Austrian physician of the early 16th century, wrote a treatise concerning the most famous German spas. In this treatise he describes a method to analyse the hot springs in Gastein to know their therapeutic effects. With this description he is one of the first scientific authors in Germany dealing with the modern analysis of hot springs used by the Italian balneologists; in fact he is writing in the same textual paradigm as Menghus Blanchellus in his "Consilium de balneo Villae'. The second part of his treatise about the spas of Baden near Vienna, Markgrafenbad, Wiesbaden, Aachen, Wildbad in the Black Forest, Pfäfers and Baden in Switzerland depends on a hitherto unknown latin redaction of the "Tractatus de balneis naturalibus' of Felix Hemmerli, probably written by the Munich physician Johannes Hartlieb.