1. To present a careful and candid account of the nature of water and
its physiological effects.
2. To explain the effects of water when used as a remedy for disease,
and to demonstrate its value as a remedial agent.
3. To show that the employment of water in the treatment of disease has
been practiced by the most eminent physicians of all ages, and is not a
modern discovery.
4. To expose those absurd and erroneous practices which have brought the
use of water as a remedy into disrepute, and have thus deterred
scientific physicians from adopting it.
5. To provide a convenient manual of the various methods of applying
water.
The reader will observe that water is not presented as a panacea. Its
use is not advocated as a specialty. It is only recommended as one of
the many potent agencies which may be successfully employed in the
treatment of the numerous ills to which humanity is subject—a remedy
which has been abused by quacks and tyros and disgraced by fanatics, but
which still urges a just claim to the attention and consideration of all
candid persons.