written to the contrary), that in small-pox, scarlatina, measles, croup,
and all the complaints incidental to children; in fevers, inflammations,
cholera, cholic, dysentery, diarrhoea, and, in fact, all acute diseases,
hydropathy competently administered is omnipotent; and that in chronic
complaints it effects more than can be obtained by any other means. The
question is frequently put, "Will hydropathy cure all complaints?" I
answer it is no catholicon, no panacea; nor is any cure for all diseases
to be found.
"As man, perhaps, the moment of his birth,
Receives the lurking principle of death,
The young disease that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength."
Thus Pope viewed it, and thus it must be viewed by all who think on the
subject. What the advocates of hydropathy assert is, that sudden fevers,
of whatever nature they may be, diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, English
or Asiatic, in fact, all complaints that are termed acute, when the
vital energies can be roused are sure of being cured; and that in
old-standing complaints, usually denominated chronic, the water cure
will do all that can be done by drugs, and that it is all-powerful over
many complaints which are beyond the reach of all pharmaceutical
remedies.
VI.--IS HYDROPATHY NEW? WHY IS IT NOT GENERALLY ADOPTED?
It is frequently said, by way of detracting from the merits of the
Water-cure, that it is not new, that ages buried in the past have been
witnesses to its merits. To this it may be replied, its advocates admit
that the application of water to the cure of disease is as old as the
hills;--but let me ask, breathes there a man who can point to the page,
or call the dirty manuscript, from cavern or chest, wherein lies hid the
present process of Hydropathy's main arms, the wet sheet, sweating
process, the douche, etc.? Where shall we find the sage of ancient or
modern times, buried in herbalistic lore and practice, that ever
succeeded so completely in the cure of diseases, by thrusting nothing
upon his patient's stomachic organs but pure unadulterated water, as
Priessnitz? We seek not to prove its novelty, but its utility.
It has been shewn that water as a curative agent, has been known from
the remotest period; but its means of application were insufficient. In
the days of Pliny, it agitated the Roman world. In the sixteenth
century, great efforts were made in our own country to introduce it into
practice, and again more lately, the subject was agitated, but it did
not advance. Thus it has been with all great discoveries--witness Steam.
Le Caus, who discovered its powers two hundred years ago, was consigned
to a mad-house. The French Academy of Science denounced Fulton's
discovery as a chimera and absurd, as it did Hydropathy a few years
since. Others, anxious for the existence of a hidden treasure, were
ever in search of it, each step conducted slowly nearer the goal; but a
Watt, was required to give full and vigorous development to its powers.
Thus, it has been with water, which, unaided by its present manifold
modes of application, was nearly as ungovernable as the steam without
the engine.
All nations recognised and many partially profited by the healing
properties of water; but the genius of a Priessnitz was required to
explore its capabilities and resources, and, by reducing them to a
science, confer an inestimable boon on mankind and scatter to the winds
the accumulated fallacies of ages.
If all these effects which we have shown, are to be produced by
Hydropathic appliances, is it not evident there is something to be
learnt? An acquaintance with its details, its _modus operandi_, can only
be acquired by study and experience, as Lady Morgan says, "knowledge is
a fruit which no longer grows upon trees; on the contrary, it partakes
more of the nature of the truffle, and must be dug for by those who are
desirous of tasting it."[2]
[2] The following letter, extracted from Miss Costello's "Summer among
the Bocages and Vines," chronicles another melancholy instance of
persecution:--
"Paris, Feb. 1641.
"My dear Effiat,
"While you are forgetting me at Narbonne, and giving yourself up to
the pleasures of the court, and the delight of thwarting M. le
Cardinal de Richelieu, I, according to your desire, am doing the
honours of Paris to your English lord, the Marquis of Worcester; and I
carry him about, or rather he carries me, from curiosity to curiosity,
choosing always the most grave and serious, speaking very little,
listening with extreme attention, and fixing on those whom he
interrogates two large blue eyes, which seem to pierce to the very
centre of their thoughts. He is remarkable for never being satisfied
with any explanations which are given him, and he never sees things in
the light in which they are shown him, you may judge of this by a
visit we made together to Bicêtre, where he imagined he had discovered
genius in a madman. If this madman had not been actually raving, I
verily believe your marquis would have entreated his liberty, and have
carried him off to London, in order to hear his extravagancies from
morning till night, at his ease. We were crossing the court of the
mad-house, and I, more dead than alive with fright, kept close to my
companion's side, when a frightful face appeared behind some immense
bars, and a hoarse voice exclaimed, 'I am not mad! I am not mad! I
have made a discovery which would enrich the country that adopted it!'
'What has he discovered?' I asked of our guide. 'Oh,' he answered,
shrugging his shoulders, 'something trifling enough; you would never
guess it; it is the use of the steam of boiling water.' I began to
laugh. 'This man,' continued the keeper, 'is named Solomon de Caus; he
came from Normandy, four years ago, to present to the king a statement
of the wonderful effects that might be produced from the invention. To
listen to him, you would imagine that with steam you could navigate
ships, move carriages--in fact, there is no end to the miracles which,
he insists upon it, could be performed. The Cardinal sent the madman
away without listening to him. Solomon de Caus, far from being
discouraged, followed the Cardinal wherever he went with the most
determined perseverance; who, tired of finding him for ever in his
path, and annoyed to death with his folly, ordered him to be shut up
in Bicêtre, where he has now been for three years and half, and where,
as you hear, he calls out to every visitor that he is not mad, but
that he has made a valuable discovery. He has even written a book on
the subject, which I have here. Lord Worcester, who had listened to
this account with much interest, after reflecting a time, asked for
the book, of which, after having read several pages, he said, 'This
man is not mad. In my country, instead of shutting him up, he would
have been rewarded. Take me to him, for I should like to ask him some
questions.' He was according conducted to his cell, but after a time
he came back sad and thoughtful. 'He is indeed mad now,' said he,
'misfortune and captivity have alienated his reason, but it is you who
have to answer for his madness: for when you cast him into that cell,
you confined the greatest genius of the age.' After this, we went
away; and since that time he has done nothing but talk of Solomon de
Caus.
"Adieu, my dear friend and faithful Henry.
"Make haste and come back, and pray do not be so happy where you are
as not to keep a little love for me.
"MARION DELAMORE."
A Medical Education does not necessarily assist in the knowledge of
Hydropathy; on the contrary, it acts as barrier to the acquirement of a
perfect insight into it. Hydropathy and Allopathy in their practice are
like the poles asunder.
The question is frequently mooted, if Hydropathy is so harmless and yet
so certain in its operations, how is it that the medical professors,
whose object is to relieve their fellow-men, and prolong their lives, do
not take it up? To this it might be answered, "It is a difficult thing
to force any to believe the evidence of their own senses, if their
instincts or their interests (which are one and the same) happen to
point another way."
In the practice of Medicine, as in every thing else, there are vested
interests, those in the receipt of large sums of money are content with
things as they are, those in more limited practice have not the courage
to enter upon anything new, however persuaded of its utility. Others are
deterred by the fear of being considered Quacks, or losing cast[e] with
their brother practitioners, and all see, that, in the ordinary
occurrences of life the application of Hydropathy is so simple, that
were it generally practised, nine tenths of the faculty would have to
throw up their briefs. A writer in Chamber's Journal justly
observes,--"If the subject be new and startling, and still more so, if
any interest or prejudice be disturbed by it, the clearest demonstration
on earth is of no avail."
Since the education of medical men (totally at variance as it is with
all the principles of the Water-cure), gives them no advantage whatever
over a non-medical man in judging of what is, or what is not a fit case
for Hydropathy; or, in prescribing its practice, any opinion from the
faculty, opposed as their interest, and prejudices are to it, ought to
be received for as much as it is worth, and no more. One thinks
Hydropathy available in gout--another doubts that, but believes it to be
good in fevers or inflammations--a third would not hesitate to apply it
in dysentery or diarrhœa--a fourth, for a cold--and so on through the
whole category of disease; but, with the gravity of true sons of
Esculapius[Transcriber's note: Aesculapius], to their own patients they
recommend caution, which at once deters them from trying it. When these
practitioners are asked, how they arrived at the conclusion, that the
complaints they name may be cured by this treatment, their reasons are
entirely speculative; and when pressed as to why they do not apply it,
inasmuch as they admit it to be good, they argue the impossibility of
contending with public prejudices.
Might we not ask, who are the authors of this state of things? Few
people think for themselves, either in Law, Physic, or Divinity. As long
as incomes from one thousand to thirty thousand pounds a year (and that
there are the latter is proved by the returns of the Income Tax), are
made by members of the profession, no reform with their consent can be
expected. At one period, after the amputation of a limb, bleeding was
staunched by the application of boiling pitch. Paré deprecated this
treatment, and recommended the taking up arteries, as is now done. He
was treated with derision: "What" said the old practitioner, "would you
hang the life of a man upon a thread?" When Harvey propounded his
theory, he lost caste with his brethren, and a medical writer doubts if
any practitioner of the period, who had passed forty years, believed in
the circulation of the blood.
Jenner, to secure himself from the fury of a mob, sought refuge in the
house of Colonel Wilson; and there is still a minute in the books of the
Foundling Hospital, the first public establishment that adopted
Vaccination, stating that as its application could not be entrusted to
the faculty, the Committee recommended that the operation of vaccination
should be performed by the Clergy.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague was so persecuted, that she always regretted
having introduced inoculation into the country.
VII.--The Lancet.
The use of the Lancet is a subject that ought to interest every friend
to humanity in an especial manner. By this, our mortal foe, more have
fallen than by the sword. The use of one is as unjustifiable as the
other. "Blood is the life," this is the language of holy writ; he who
sheds that, deprives us of a part of our existence.
"The use of the Lancet," says Dr. Dickson, "was the invention of an
unenlightened, possibly a sanguinary age; and its continued use says but
little for the after-discoveries of ages, or for the boasted progress of
medical science.
"Will the men who thus lovingly pour out the blood, dispute its
importance in the animal economy? Will they deny that it forms the basis
of the solids,--that when the body has been wasted by long diseases, it
is by the blood only it can recover its healthy volume and appearance?
"Misguided by theory, man, presumptuous man, has dared to divide what
God, as a part of creation, has united; to open what the Eternal, in the
wisdom of his omniscience made entire.
"It is on the face of it a most unnatural proceeding. How can you
withdraw blood from one organ without depriving every other of the
material of its healthy state?
"The first resource of the surgeon is the lancet. The first thing he
thinks of, when called to an accident, is how he can most quickly open
the flood-gates of the heart, to pour out the stream of an already
enfeebled existence."
Capt. Owen, in detailing the mortality which took place among his people
on the coast of Africa, by yellow fever, says, "he had not one instance
of perfect recovery after a liberal application of the lancet.["] And in
the subsequent report of the Select Committee on the Western Coast of
Africa, there occurs the following passage. "The bleeding system has
fortunately gone out of fashion; and the frightful mortality that
attended its practice, is now no longer known on board our ships."
"Let the reader," says Dr. Gibbs, in his letters from Gräfenberg, "enter
the crowded hospitals in England or the Continent, and see how
mercilessly the lancet, the leech, and cupping-glass are employed in the
diseases of the poor. Look at the pale and ghastly faces of the
inmates."
Among the numerous diseases which bleeding can produce, Darwin says, a
paroxysm of gout is liable to recur. John Hunter mentions lock-jaw and
dropsy; Travers, blindness and palsy; Marshall Hall, mania; Blundell,
dysentery; Broussais, fever and convulsion. "When an animal loses a
considerable quantity of blood," says John Hunter, "the heart increases
in frequency of strokes, as also in its violence." Yet these are the
indications for which professors bleed. Magendie mentions _pneumonia_ as
having been produced by it; and further tells us, that he has witnessed
among its effects "the entire train of inflammatory phenomena;" and
mark, he adds the extraordinary fact, "that this inflammation will have
been produced by the very agent chiefly used to combat it." We read in
scripture, "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed." It has ever been supposed, that this applied to the assassin; but
holy writ is deeper than this! and no doubt the time will come, when one
man will no more think of bleeding another, than he would of committing
any other act that should expose him to public ignominy.
The operation of blood-letting is so associated in the minds of most men
with the practice of physic, that when a sensible German physician, some
time ago, petitioned the king of Prussia to make the employment of the
lancet penal, he was laughed at from one end of Europe to the other.
"The imputation of novelty," says Locke, "is a terrible charge against
those who judge of men's heads as they do of their perukes, by the
_fashion_; and can allow none to be right, but the received doctrine."
Thus Hydropathy, like many other valuable discoveries, and even
Christianity itself, must wait its time; a circumstance much to be
lamented--because all that is sought by bleeding is effected without
this soul-harrowing process. Let such as doubt the fact, go to
Gräfenberg, there they will learn that during the whole course of Mr.
Priessnitz's practice, not a single drop of human blood has been spilt;
and yet all diseases for which the lancet is applied are hourly
relieved. This is a fact so notorious, that no pen has ever been raised
to deny it; so long as interest governs prejudice, practitioners may
continue their destructive practice with impunity; but where are the
feelings? As observed by a writer, "what a long dream of false security
have mankind been dreaming! They have laid themselves down on the laps
of their medical Mentors, they have slept a long sleep; while these,
like the fabled vampire of the poet, taking advantage of a dark night of
barbarism and ignorance, have thought it no sin to rob them of their
life's blood, during the profoundness of their slumber."
Dr. Kitto, in his clever work on consumption says;--"On the subject of
bleeding, purgatives, mercury, and a low course of diet, I shall have
occasion to show, in the course of my observations, that these agents
are not only unnecessary, but actually mischievous, particularly
bleeding, which has proved more fatal than the pestilence or the sword.
Nature is our best and surest guide; and if we would follow only her
admonitions, we should not so frequently have to witness the impotence
of our efforts to alleviate suffering; or to mourn the unfortunate
results of cases, which, despite the boasted improvements in the healing
art, but too frequently terminate in the grave."
VIII.--AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT OF WATER AS A CURATIVE AGENT.
Thales, like Homer, looked upon water as the principle of every thing.
The Spartans bathed their children as soon as born in cold water; and
the men of Sparta, both old and young, bathed at all seasons of the year
in the Eurotas, to harden their flesh and strengthen their bodies.
Pindar, in one of his Olympic Odes, says, "The best thing is water, and
the next gold."
There was a Greek proverb to the effect that the water of the sea cured
all ills.
Pythagoras recommended the use of cold baths strongly to his disciples,
to fortify both body and mind.
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who added friction to cold
bathing, was accustomed to use cold water in his treatment of the most
serious illnesses. It was Hippocrates who first observed that warm water
chilled, whilst cold water warmed.
The Macedonians considered warm water to be enervating; and their women,
after accouchement, were washed with cold water.
Virgil called the ancient inhabitants of Italy, a race of men hard and
austere, who immersed their newly-born children in the rivers, and
accustomed them to cold water.
Pliny, in speaking of A. Musa, who cured Horace by means of cold water,
said that he put an end to confused drugs; and he also alludes to a
certain Charmes, who made a sensation at Rome by the cures he effected
with cold water. On being asked what he thought drugs were sent for, he
said, "he could not imagine, except that men might destroy themselves
with them when they were tired of living."
Celsus, called the Cicero of doctors, employed water for complaints of
the head and stomach.
Galen, in the second century, recommended cold bathing to the healthy,
as well as to patients labouring under the attacks of fever.
Charlemagne, aware of the salubrity of cold bathing, encouraged the use
of it throughout his empire, and introduced swimming as an amusement at
his court.
Michael Savonarola, an Italian doctor, in 1462, recommended cold water
in gout, ophthalmia, and hæmorrhages.
Cardanus, of Pavia, 1575, complains that the doctors in his time made so
little use of cold water in the curing of gout.
Van der Heyden, a doctor at Ghent, in a work published in 1624, states
that during an epidemic dysentery, he cured many hundreds of persons
with cold water, and that during a long practice of fifty years, the
best cures he ever made were effected with cold water.
Short, an English doctor, 1656, states that he had cured the dropsy and
the bite of mad dogs with cold water.
Dr. Sir John Floyer published a work, called "the Psychrolusic," in
1702, showing how fevers were to be cured with water. From that period
to 1722, his work went through six editions in London.
Dr. Hancock, in 1722, published an anti-fever treatise upon the use of
cold water, which went through seven editions in one year.
Dr. Currie of Liverpool, who published a work in 1797, on the use of
water, introduced that element extensively in his practice with
astounding results.
Tissot, in his "Advice to the People," published in Paris, 1770, shows
the importance of cold water.
Hoffman, the famous German doctor, says that if there existed anything
in the world that could be called a panacea, it was pure water: first,
because that element would disagree with nobody; secondly, because it is
the best preservative against disease; thirdly, because it would cure
agues and chronic complaints; fourthly because it responded to all
indications.
Hahn, who was born in Silesia, in 1714, wrote an excellent work upon the
curative agency of water in all complaints, a copy was lately found upon
a book-stall, and purchased by Professor Oertel, for little more than
one penny, and has been re-published; it is interesting to all who
regard with attention that great moral change which the Water-cure is
calculated to effect.
In Dr. Hahn's work, it is stated that Pater Bernardo, a Capuchin monk
from Sicily, went in the year 1724 to Malta, and there made some most
astonishing water-cures, the fame of which spread throughout Europe: he
used iced water internally and externally, and allowed his patients to
eat but very little. He made a proposition that the doctors should take
100 patients, and said if they, by their mode of treating them, could
cure forty, then would he undertake to cure sixty more easily and
securely, and in a shorter time. His remedy of iced water, was just as
effectual in winter as in summer. A case is cited of a man, ninety-two
years of age, who was at the point of death from the virulence of a
fever, and was cured with cold water only.
Evan Hahnemann, father of Homeopathy, in a work published at Leipsic,
1784, recommends fresh water, without which, he says, ulcers of any long
standing cannot be cured, and adds, if there be any general remedy for
disease, "it is water."
The Rev. John Wesley, A.M., published a work in 1747 (about a century
ago), which went through thirty-four editions, called "Primitive
Physic, or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing most Diseases."
After deprecating the manner in which drugs were imposed upon mankind,
the mysteries with which the science of medicine is surrounded, and the
interested conduct of medical men, the Rev. gentleman proceeds to shew,
that he was fully aware of the healing powers of water; and from the
long list which he has given, and which follows, it will be evident that
he thought water capable of curing almost every disease to which human
nature is exposed. He writes:--
"The common method of compounding and decompounding medicines, can never
be reconciled to common sense. Experience shews, that one thing will
cure most disorders, at least as well as twenty put together. Then why
do you add the other nineteen? Only to swell the apothecary's bill! nay,
possibly on purpose to prolong the distemper, that the doctor and he may
divide the spoil.
"How often, by thus compounding medicines of opposite qualities, is the
virtue of both utterly destroyed?
"Nay, how often do those joined together destroy life, which singly they
might have preserved?
"This occasioned that caution of the great Boerhaave, against mixing
things without evident necessity, and without full proof of the effect
they will produce when joined together, as well as of that they produce
when asunder; seeing (as he observes) that several things which taken
separately are safe and powerful medicines, when compounded not only
lose their former power, but compose a strong and deadly poison."
In recommending to his followers the use of water, Mr. Wesley proceeds
to state, "_that cold bathing cures young children of the following
complaints_:--
Convulsions, coughs, gravel
Inflammations of ears, navel and mouth
Rickets
Cutaneous inflammations
Pimples and scabs
Suppression of urine
Vomiting
Want of sleep
"Water," he further adds, "frequently cures every nervous[3] and every
paralytic disorder. In particular:--