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THE 

DANGERS OF THE WATER CURE 

AND 

ITS EFFICACY EIAMIKED AND COMPAEED 

WITH TH08B OF THB 

DRUG TREATMENT OF DISEASES, 

AND AN 

EXPLANATION OF ITS PRINGIFUBS AND PRAOTICE; 

WITH AN ACCOUNT OP 

CASES TREATED AT MAIVEBN, 

AND A 

PROSPECTUS OT THE WATEE CUKE ESTABLISHMENT 

AT THAT PLACE. 

BY 

JAMES WILSON, M.D., 

PHTSICIAN TO HIS SEBENE HIGHNESS PBINOE NASSAU, MEMBER 
OP THB BOTAL COLLEGE OP SUBGEONS, LONDON, &C. &C. 

AND 

JAMES M. GULLY, M.D. 

PBLLOW OP THE BOTAL PHYSICAL SOCIETT, EDINBXTBGH, OP THE 
BOTAL MEDIOO-CHIBUBGICAL SOCIETY, LONDON, &C. &C. 

*' An error is not the better for being common, nor truth the worse 
for baying lain neglected ; and if it were put to the vote anywhere in the 
world, I doubt, a$ things are tnanaged, whether truth would have the 
mijoxity ; at least while the authority qf men, and not the examin<Uion 
q/thinfft, mast be ita measure." — ^Lockk. 

LONDON : 
CUNNINGHAM AND MORTIMER, 

ADELAIDE STREET, STRAND. 
1843. 

/ 




LONDON : 

FaiNTBD BV O. J. PALMXR, 8AVOT STRBET, 8TRANI>. 



TO THE MOST NOBLE 

HENRY MAEQUIS OF MGLESET, K.G. G.C.B, 



My Lord Marquis, 
The high rank, the chiyalrous character, and the 
undeyiating urbanity of your Lordship, are ample 
reasons for the desire to dedicate a literary effort to 
one so distinguished in his country's annals. We 
therefore inscribe the following pages to your Lord- 
ship ; which it is the more appropriate to do, as, in 
your own person and under our professional super- 
intendence, your Lordship has braved and escaped 
the multiplied dangers which are alleged to beset the 
treatment of disease by water, and the explanation 
of which forms the chief subject of this treatise. 

We have the honour to be. 

My Lord Marquis, 
Your Lordship's very faithful servants. 

The Authors. 



PREFACE. 



Abundant reason for the publication of this 
volume will be found in its pages. When a novel 
plan of treating disease is unscrupulously denounced 
as dangerous by those who know it not, — do not 
even profess to know it, — either in theory or prac- 
tice, it behoves those who, both in theory and prac- 
tice, are acquainted with its superior efficacy, to un- 
deceive the public by answering the objections that 
are brought against it. This we have endeavoured 
to do. 

In the attempt, an exposition of the physiological 
principles upon which the Water Cure is based was 
inevitable. These will be found scattered through- 
out the answers to the individual objections urged 
agamst the practice we profess ; but lest there should 



VI PREFACE. 

be obscurity on this point, they have been placed in 
a consequent train in a series of propositions com- 
mencing with the definition of disease, and termi- 
nating with its cure. These propositions do them- 
selves answer an objection, or rather a sneer, pro- 
ceeding from our medical brethren, namely, that the 
Water Cure is not reducible to a scientific system. 
We ask whether the rationale of drug medication 
can be made to concord so completely with the ascer- 
tained phsenomena of health and disease ? 

Be it remarked, that in demolishing the assertions 
of medical men of the drug-school, we have chiefly 
used their own weapons. We have shown, on the 
authority of writers recognised by themselves as 
orthodox, the utter groundlessness of their assertions, 
and the utter ignorance which dictated them. We 
have quoted chapter and verse, and, in most in- 
stances, the words of those writers ; and it will be 
necessary to prove the latter to be worthless before 
the weight of our statements can be diminished by 
one tittle. 

The same plan has been followed in making a com- 
parison between the dangers of treatment by water 
and by drugs. We have allowed the practitioners of 
drug medication to state their own perils : their own 
pens write the condemnation of their practice quite 
as much as they answer the objections to ours. In 



PREf*ACE. Yll 

this portion of the work we have to acknowledge 
some extracts from the able book on the Water Cure 
by the Reverend Mr. Abdy. 

As the re^tation of opinions adverse to the Water 
Cure is of infinitely greater moment than that of re- 
ports inimical to ourselves personally, only a very 
small space has been devoted to the latter, the false- 
hood of which can be testified by every honourable 
person who has been under treatment' at Malvern. 
For the rest, we must leave the settlement of the 
account with their own consciences, to those medical 
men who generated and industriously promulgated 
such reports. Perhaps they may take shelter under 
a perversion of Plato's boon to doctors; ''Menda^ 
cium medicia coneedendum esse, aliia vero minime" * 
If so, we wish them joy of the text, but cannot envy 
them the ready application of it, even though it has 
retained a few patients whom they might otherwise 
have lost. 

In sundry places we have spoken without reserve 
of trading speculators who, because drugs are not in 
the case, imagine that water may be employed by 
Ignorance to serve the purposes of Cupidity. We 
have shown that the true dangers of the Water Cure 
are to be found in the practice of these non-profes- 
sional speculators and their professional servants. 

* Respiiblica, lib. 3. 



YIU PREFACE. 

In doing this we have taken occasion to point out 
another egregious error, namely^ the attempt to 
carry on a system of drug medication simultane- 
ously with the treatment hy water. This squaring 
of truth to the exigencies of prevailing prejudice, — 
this Macheath-like chanting, *' How happy could I 
be with either," — may serve certain purposes for a 
certain time ; but as it will inevitably destroy any 
good to be derived from either plan of treatment^ 
and is, moreover, replete with danger, (which, of 
course, will be laid to the water,) we think it right 
to warn those who are unlucky enough to be sub- 
mitted to such contradictory practice. It is a trick 
of which the patient is to be the victim, and by 
which the practisers of such dangerous absurdity can 
alone profit. Parallel with this trick is another which 
we have been strenuously called upon to signalize as 
one which every properly regulated mind must view 
with feelings of disgust. A pamphlet, entitled 
" Hints on the Water Cure," and professedly written 
by, and signed " A Clergyman," has been distributed 
by thousands. A lady at Leamington, desirous to 
learn the name of the author, made the inquiry of 
the pubUshers, and was told that they knew of no 
" clergyman" in the matter, but that it was the 
property of some new bath proprietors ! Disclaim- 
ing all participation in so disgraceful an imposture. 



PREFACE. IX 

and all knowledge of its perpetrators^ we join 
heartily with those who have urged us to the publi- 
cation of it in the feeling of disgust which arises on 
the fact of the sacred calling of a clergyman being 
desecrated for purposes of deception, and by con- 
nexion with the tissue of falsehoods which forms the 
body of this pamphlet, the tone, style, and even 
grammar, of which point out the vulgar tradesman 
rather than the educated '' clergyman." No wonder 
that Dr. Jephson, producing it at a large party, 
asked, " What is to he thought of men who use such 
indecent and dishonourable means as these ?" No 
system, however good, can escape a taint from the 
contact of such unscrupulous traffickers. 

It is therefore with the greater pleasure that we 
hail the accession to the principles and practice of 
the Water Cure, of such men as Mr. Herbert 
Mayo, the senior surgeon of the Middlesex Hos- 
pital, Mr. Courtney, surgeon R. N., Dr. Sme- 
THX7RST, Dr. Johnson, Sir Charles Scxjdemore, 
and Dr. Freeman. To these we doubt not, (and 
we predicted it some time ago) will ere long be 
added some of the best names of scientific and prac- 
tical medicine. Under similar auspices the system 
will be carried out as it ought to be, and they who 
by their trickified attempts to turn it to their own 
temporary account, are now marring its progress. 



X PREFACE. 

m\\ find their occupation gone, and their power of 
doing mischief at an end. 

On the whole our objects in publishing this ex- 
amination of the dangers of the Water Cure have 
been to answer objections, to remove prejudices, to 
place the trei^tment on a scientific basis, and to 
denounce fraudulent and unqualified pretenders. The 
reader who, we trust, mil give the book a fair and 
impartial perusal, after comparing all we have ad- 
vanced with all he may have heard and himself ima- 
gined, must determine how far we have succeeded in 
these objects. Every day is adding to our practical 
experience of the truth of every word we have written. 

J. Wilson. 
J. M. Gully. 

Great Malvern, 
July 1, 1843. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
RiDicuLB of the Water Cure . . . .1 

General opinion of danger . . . .7 

Theory of disease and cure . . . .13 

Aim of treatment . . . . .17 

Water Cure in towns . . . .22 

Medical authorities on the danger of drugs • 30 

Individual illustrations, — Mercury . . .41 

Use and abuse of water . . .48 

Does the Water Cure thin the blood ? . .49 

Does water break the blood-globules ? . . .61 

Does the Water Cure exhaust animal heat ? . .64 

Does the Water Cure destroy the tone of the stomach ? . 70 
Does the Water Cure produce dropsy or disease of the kid- 
neys? . • • . .76 
Does the Water Cure cause rheumatism ? . .84 
Is the crisis of the Water Cure dangerous ? . .91 
The ^ Brandy and Salt'* Review in the Quarterly . 95 
The various kinds of crises . . .101 



xn ca 



How enei become dngeraoB .110 

TniEdEmg apceniatoa ..... 1)5 

Falae ''^"™**"^ • 123 

Reaolt of iiy n mab of five himired oaa treated aft Mai- 

▼era ....... 128 

P imwiiio BS on the pimnptot and paactiee of the Water 
129 



CASB TBHATSD AT KALYSBN ST TUB WA' 



Nerrons indigeotioa with wricidal prapenaitj . 140 

Indigertion with threatening mfiammation of the hiam . 143 
Hjpodiondiiaab with halludnation . 144 

Inteiue hjpochondiiaab and mercurial disease . 140 

LiTer and stomach complaint with emaciation .147 

Indigestioii, liTer disease, and epDeptic fits . 149 

Indigestion and UTer disease, with asthma, and inteinal accu" 

mnlation of fiit ...... 150 

Black or brown leprosy ..... 152 

Acne and sjcosis, with crises .... 153 

Congestion of the head, with threatening apoplexy . 155 

Threatening apoplexy, with extensiYe d isease of the liver 157 
Slight paralysis after apoplexy, treated at seyenty-fiye years of 

age ....... 159 

Chronic rheumatism and gout, with tendency to maUgnant 

disease of the stomach . . • c * ^^^ 

Intense nervous indigestion, with constipation . . 163 

Nervous indigestion, with skin disease . . .165 

Hip-joint disease . . , • . .166 



CONTENTS. XIU 

Bilious fever ...... 168 

Gout — ^Mr. Marsh's letter . .170 

Gout — ^Mr. Case's letter . . . . .172 

Neuralgic rheumatism . . . . .174 

Supposed consumption . • . .175 

Stomach complaint with diseased liyer . . .176 

Stomach and liver complaint, with depressed mind and 

lethaigj ...... 178 

Rheumatism . . . . 178 

Tic douloureux . . . . . .179 

Stomach, liver, and skin disease, with tic . .181 

Stomach and liver disease, with tic douloureux— cure arrested 

bj fiJling in love ..... 183 

Rheumatism treated at the age of seventy . .184 



THE DMGEBS OF THE WATEE CUBE, 



Whenever a noTel mode of compassoDg an aim 
in anjj no matter what^ part of social existence is 
proposed in this comitry^ it is first of all greeted mih 
the laughter and the jest of those interested in the 
maintenance of the old mode. The analysis of this 
laughter is sufficiently curious. Ignorance is its 
parent, whose nakedness it> like a grateful child, 
seeks to , clothe ; Indolence and Arrogance assisting, 
meanwhile, in generating a warm atmosphere around 
the poor, meagre, shivering wretch. Anon, remark- 
ing how well the doak covers his lean carcass from 
observation, and waxing bolder with the augmented 
temperature about him. Ignorance sparkles into the 
propagation of a jest ; for 

** Gentle Dulneas ever loves a jest,*' 

and we are truly told by La Bruyere, " La moquerie 



2 PROGRESS OF PREJUDICE. ^ 

est une indigence d'espiit." Nevertheless, behold 
the povertj-stricken thing which for a time swindles 
our countrymen into a belief in his respectability and 
out of their common sense. 

John BnU, however, maintains a vigilant police ; 
and in due time the swindler is detected, being con- 
fronted by facts which he cannot explain away. 
Throwing aside his doak, therefore, he stands forth 
in all the unabashed nakedness of Dishonesty, and 
essays alternately what coaxing and bullying will 
effect for him, stopping at no meanness in the for- 
mer, and at no falsehood in the latter. It is no 
longer a jest for him, but a serious question of social 
extinction. 

Such has been the process with regard to the in- 
troduction of the Water cure into Great Britain. A 
few short months ago it was met by the laughter of 
the great and small among the medical profession. 
We remember well the cachinnatory explosions that 
followed the announcement that wet sheets were 
excellent in fever, so excellent as to preclude the 
necessity for drugs in that disease. There was no 
end to the smart things emitted and the guffaws 
which ensued upon them, when sitz-baths were 
mentioned as effective in constipated bowels. We 
have a distinct recollection of a little priggish sur- 
geon-apothecary, who told us that if we continued to 



THE TACTICS. 3 

talk in such strain, " we should convert his eyes into 
a shower hath, for he must laugh until he cried." 
And we can make affidavit to having heen condemned 
to hear nearly a score of medical men ezuherantlj 
facetious in the perpetration of jests ahout ''penance 
in a wet sheet." Useful thing to starveling wits, 
that wet sheet ! 

Again a Uttle while, and people had read of a great 
numher of cases cured, and not a few had tried sundry 
tumblers of cold water before breakfast, whereby 
many were the fees saved and numberless the draught 
vials which remained unfilled, unsold, all colourless. 
"Citius venit periculum cum contemnitur." The 
jest is past, the danger begins. " Where be your 
jibes now ? your flashes of merriment that were wont 
to set the surgery in a roar ? Not one now to mock 
your own grinning ? quite chap-fallen ?" Only for a 
time. The heads which erewhile teemed with facetiae 
touching the Water cure are now seriously joined in 
deep-revolving conclave to devise the tactics offensive 
and defensive against the common enemy. But, as 
to combat a foe it is essential to know something 
about him, it occurs to them /or the first time that 
it were perhaps as well to get a shadowy notion of 
what the Water cure is. In doing which they find 
that sometimes patients reeking with perspiration are 
washed in cold water ; that they are folded in damp 

B 2 



4 PRACTICAL MEN. 

sheets and then enreloped in blankets^ so as to make 
a vapour-bath for themselyes ; and one or two other 
processes enjoined in certain circumstances^ which 
are not in accordance with the received ideas of 
** warmth and comfort" prevalent among the masses 
who know nothing of the fiinctions and capabilities 
of their own bodies. 

At this point commences the dishonesty. For 
either the medical detractors of the Water cure com- 
prehend its physiological action, and in that case they 
must know that, in competent hands, it is both an 
efficient and safe treatment ; or they do not com- 
prehend it, yet pass and disseminate an opinion upon 
it, — ^which is plain dishonesty. Grantmg that all, so 
far from erring in ignorance, are capable of theorizing 
on its probable results, it may very reasonably be 
asked whether the loudest, the most violent, 'and the 
most unscrupulous of its enemies has ever himself 
practised it or seen it practised ? The question is 
the more reasonable, as these quand m^e opponents 
of all innovation are ever the most solemn sneerers 
at all " theory," and the greatest sticklers for what 
is purely " practical ;" which means often, in truth, 
acting on no principles whatever. TFe venture to 
asaerty and challenge a contradiction, that not one of 
these has ever seen a case of any sort treated by water. 
When such men, therefore, usurp a cathedral chair. 



WHERE ARE THE REASONS? 5 

and ¥rith overbearing voice pronounce a practical 
opinion on that which thej have never seen in prac- 
tice, the common sense of the community will, sooner 
or later, hurl them from that chair with the very 
stigma of imposture which they seek to fix upon 
those who have the courage to abandon what they 
hold to be incorrect, and embrace what they know — 
practically know — to be an improvement. And we 
marvel that when opinions are thus pronounced, it 
does not occur to the audience to ask the very perti- 
nent question, '^ whether they are founded on personal 
experience 7" 

But supposing, for the sake of argument, that 
opinions inimical to the Water cure are grounded on 
it priori reasoning, we must ask why is this not openly, 
freely, and extensively promulgated ? The medical 
body constituting themselves, and being looked up 
to as, the protectors of the public health, are surely 
bound to give a reason to that pubhc for the adoption 
of this or the avoidance of that mode of treatment, 
particularly when a revolution of practice is involved. 
Have they offered any such manifesto based on their 
physiological knowledge ? Has any one member <^ 
them done so ? Not one. Yet from one end of the 
land to the other all manner of vulgar assertions and 
monstrous reports have been recklessly scattered, 
and unscrupulously exaggerated, each medical prac- 



6 OPINIONS AND REPORTS. 

titioiier in each tovni and village holding it a sacred 
duty to prolong the *' mad-dog'' cry originating with 
the magnates of the metropolis. The appeal^ in fact, 
has heen to the prefudicea and fears of the pnhlic. 
Give reasons, indeed ! '^ No, not if they were plenti- 
fu\ as hlackherries." Troth to tell, they are consistent 
in this ; for when did a doctor ever give a reason to 
a patient for the practices he was enacting on his 
hody ? Easier far is it to ntter a prejudiced opinion 
or concoct and give currency to a falsehood, to the 
timid laity ; and if so, wherefore rummage for an 

argument, a reason— -those scarce commodities in 
prejudiced hrains ? 

In this manner opinions without reasons, and 
reports utterly devoid of truth, concerning the Water 
cure, have heen industriously passed from mouth to 
mouth, gaining as they go in intensity of irrationality 
and enormity of falsehood. We speak advisedly in 
this, and purpose in these pages to deal hoth with 
the opinions and the reports. The former, be it re- 
membered, are not founded on experience, and are 
therefore, we generously presume, the result of k 
priori physiological reasoning ; awaiting the appear- 
ance of which, we propose to offer our reasons per 
contra. To the latter, in so far as they relate to our 
practice of the Water cure at Malvern, we shall give 
our indignant denial, leaving the onw probandi to. 



A GENERAL OPINION. 



and courting its publication by, their interested pro- 
pagators. 



The first opinion confidently advanced is the very 
extensive one, '* that the Water cure is dangerous." 
It is one which may be made in the mofit profound 
ignorance of the subject ; and, being offered for the 
most part to others in an equal state of mental dark- 
ness, it frequently passes without any of those incon- 
venient monosyllables, "how," "when," " why," that 
occasionally cause the brazen mask of impudence to 
fiill firom the stoHd face of ignorance. Accordingly 
it constitutes the generalization of the mingled fear 
and hatred so vividly entertained by the coarsely 
educated portion of the medical profession against a 
system of treatment calculated to supersede that which 
long usage of the people enables them to practice 
with the smallest possible amount of medical know- 
ledge. But poorly endowed akeady with the mental 
means of using their own drugs with scientific anti- 
cipation and artistical precision, this class of prac- 
titioners, which may be truly called the " classe dan- 
ffereuse" nevertheless continue to blunder on, now 
allaying by an opiate the excessive irritation they 
produce ])y a mercurial, again remedying by stimu- 
lants the exhaustion induced by emetics and bleed- 



8 TOCABVLARY OF DISEASE. 

ings, and so on, until a casual is conyerted into a 
permanent 'paJdtntf'whose mind, confusedand enfeebled 
with his body^ is brought to look upon the ignoramas 
as a modem Galen in medicinal resources. To the 
class in question it can scarcely be wondered that 
the Water cure should be a thing to be detested^ and 
that the detestation should be concentrated in the 
shiblxdeth, " it is dangerous." Poor creatures 1 what 
more can they say about it 7 For the practice of it 
requires an amount of physiological and pathological 
acumen which to them is as a fairy dream^ or any 
other imagination far> far beyond their power to 
realize. They have their creed imbibed in the surgery 
of their master. They betieye that mercury is good 
in Uyer complaint, and is to be tried in all other 
complaints when all other remedies haye failed ; that 
purgatires are always demanded; that Ueedinfj^ 
opiates, and emetic sudorifics, are fit and appropriate 
for rheumatism ; that colchicum defieth gout ; that 
sal yolatile, yalerian, and sundry other ill-flayoured 
stufBi are requisite for hysterical women ; that indi- 
gestion — that puzzhng, Protean fiend — is to be com* 
bated pell-mell by all the aboye remedies, and as 
many more as the pharmacopoeia can supply; and 
finally, that, per fas et nefas, physic must be pre- 
scribed. What more easy than such a yocabuhry ? 
The remedies are named opposite the diseases ; nay 
more, there are remedies to counteract theeyil elects 



HEADS OF THE PROFESSION. 9 

of other remedies — *'Acts to amend acts passed" 
in the last prescription. Moreoyer^ the remedies are 
known to themselves^ unknown to their patients, 
whose queries, if any, are answered in an unknown 
tongue of technicality. The whole process, in short, 
is one of easy, jog-trot routine, wherehy if the patient 
recovers, so, — ^he must take some tonics ; if he dies, 
so, — ^he swallowed the pharmacopoeia, and what can 
a man do more ? Think you this tramroad of prac- 
tice wiU be abandoned for any other which demands 
acuteness, consideration, and accurate calculation of 
the body's organic powers ? Or think you that in- 
vestigation wUl precede denunciation in men of this 
mental calibre ? Lo ! they do not investigate their 
own practice. Yet something must be said against 
this mighty innovation, the Water cure ; and what 
so easily said or so readily beUeved by their patients, 
as " it is dangerous V* 

Side by side with the above-named worthies we 
are most unwilling to place some of the men who, 
by their fashionable renown in London, are greeted 
as ** the heads of the profession." Yet how is this 
to be avoided when we find them stooping fi*om their 
altitude to the busy propagation of the self-same 
alarm, backed by an equal array of reasons and ex- 
perience 7 Not only so, when we find them pla3ring 
the part of '^ fuglemen" to the medical rank and file 



10 HARTEY AND JENNER. 

in whatever is illiberal in statement and unphiloso- 
phical in judgment ? Aware that 

'' Quicquid deliiant r^es, plectuntur Achivi/' 
thej use the power which chance or tact, and, in 
some instances, skill, has given them, not to forward 
the calm and judicious investigation of what is pre- 
sented as an improvement, but to foster that spirit 
of blind reckless opposition which mil not see the 
possibiHty of good in aught that is new, if the inno- 
vation be not within the range of their own remedial 
agents, or cannot be dovetailed into the craft. But 
so it has ever been. Who denounced Harvey, the 
glorious discoverer of the circulation of the blood, as 
a " quack," for that very discovery, and contrived, 
by their united malignity and aspersions, to deprive 
him of his practice J Who first ridiculed vaccination, 
and then reviled and persecuted its discoverer, 
Jenner? Their confreres in the high places of 
fashion and the Physician's College ! And when in 
the last century Lady Mary Montague inoculated 
her own child with small-pox matter, in order to mi- 
tigate the severity of the disorder, what was the con- 
duct of the '^ heads of the profesuon" and in the 
consequences to herself? Let her biographer and 
descendant Lord Wharncliffe speak on this point : 
'' Lady Mary protested that in the four or five years 
immediately succeeding her arrival at home, she sel- 



LADY MARY MONTAGUE. 11 

dom passed a day without repenting of her patriotic 
undertaking ; and she vowed she never would have 
attempted it, if she had foreseen the vexation, the 
persecution, and even the ohloquy, it brought upon 
her. The clamour raised against the practice, and 
of course against her, were beyond beUef. Hie facul- 
ty all rose in arms to a maUy foretelling failure and 
the most disastrous consequences ; the clergy descant- 
ed from their pulpits on the impiety of thus seeking 
to take events out of the hands of Providence ; and 
the common people were taught to hoot at her as an 
unnatural mother, who had risked the lives of her 
own children. We now read in grave medical biogra- 
phy, that the discovery was instantly hailed, and the 
method adopted by the principal members of the 
profession. Very likely they left this recorded : for, 
whenever an invention or a project, and the same 
may be said of persons, has made its way so well by 
itself as to establish a certain reputation, most people 
are sure to find out that they always patronized it 
from the beginning, and a happy gift of forget^ilness 
enables many to beheve their own assertion. But 
what said Lady Mary of the actual fact and time ? 
Why, " that the four great physicians deputed by 
government to watch the progress of her daughter's 
inoculation, betrayed not only such incredulity as to 
its success, but such an unwillingness to have it 



12 THE GREAT PHYSICIANS. 

SUCCEED, suck an evident t^rit of rancour and malig- 
nitiff that she never eared to leave the child alone toith 
them one second, lest it should in some secret way mi^er 
from their interference/^ So that it would appear that 
whilst the professional masses rose in arms, the great, 
physicians of the day were open to the suspicion of 
tampering with a child's safety, in order to back a 
prejudice against a treatment of which they had no 
experience, and which they denounced with all the 
virulence of unreasoned opinions and unfounded 
reports. Precisely the case of the great physicians — 
to which add some surgeons-— of this day with re- 
ference to the Water cure ! great by courtesy of lan- 
guage, but not great enough in fact of candour and 
magnanimity to be trusted with a patient in the 
crisis of the water treatment. More on this point 
hereafter. Meanwhile, what are we to think of the 
" danger** opinion emanating from such sources, — 
croaked by the vulgarian practitioners of drug medi- 
cation, and awiuUy whispered at postprandial pota- 
tions by the respectable — ^no, the fashionable — ^pre- 
sciibers of the fashionable drug of the dag f It may be 
thought that pecuniary interest dictates the opinion. 
It may be opined that wounded amour-propre at be- 
holding the introduction by others of a system so 
far superior to their own, originated it. And there 
are two or three other hypotheses which present 



WHEtlE IS THE DANGER? 13 

themselyes to account for the ennnciation of so 
sweeping an opinion. But leaving the sifting of this 
delicate question for the present, or granting that 
portions of all possible motives are implicated, we 
stfll hold by one thing as certain ; namely, that in 
their total ignorance of the Water core, theoretically 
and practically, they had no resource but to appeal 
to the fear9 of the public, and that the cry of 
'' danger*' was therefore what naturally suggested 
itself as the most pot^it which could be got up. 

Now we by no means gainsay the assumed fact 
that there is danger in the Water cure. If there 
were none, neither would there be any efficacy in it. 
But in compassion for the ignorance of our medical 
brethren who assume it, and in justice to the public 
who ought to receive an explanation with an assertion 
of the sort, we ourselves will endeavour to show in 
what the " danger" of the Water treatment con- 
sists. 



The most esteemed medical writers from the time 
of Hippocrates downwards, agree in stating that 
remedial means, no matter of what kind, possess in 
themselves no power of directly changing a diseased 
condition into a healthy one. All that they can 
effect is to aid the efforts of the body to its own re- 
storation. This position is maintained in the follow- 



14 RATIONAI.E OF TREATMENT. 

ing very precise terms by Dr. Craigie^ a living prac- 
titioner and writer of admitted and great celebrity. 
He says, **When healthy properties are impaired, 
we know no agent by which they can be directly re- 
stored : when vital action is perverted or deranged, 
we possess no means of immediately rectifying it, 
but must be satisfied with using those means under 
which it is most likely to rectify itself." * 

Canstatt, a German writer, who pubUshed in 
1841, a work of which the British and Foreign Me- 
dical Review, for April 1842, speaks " as containing 
an intelligent, though not entirely novel exposition 
of the general objects and principles of treatment in 
inflammation, and in some measure in all diseases," 
says, as quoted by the reviewer ; " We seek to place 
the diseased organ and the organism on such a foot* 
ing as shall enable their vegetative and conservative 
properties to operate as easily and efficiently as pos- 
sible, to develope their powers, and compensate, by 
an act of self-reparation, for any disturbing or altera- 
tive influence of the morbid agent. It is not we or 
our measures that remove anomalous action. The 
art and the physician who accompUsh this is the 
organism itself ; all that we can effect is to Hberate 
the normal action from any oppressing or obstructing 
cause, and afford it freedom of exertion." In the 
same article the reviewer himself says — " It b now 
* Elements of the Practioe of Phjac Introduction, p» 26. 



ORGANIC POWERS OF THE BODY. 15 

generally admitted that many of the -seemingly vio- 
lent pbeenomena of inflammation are not, strictly 
speaking, morbid movements, but consist, at least in 
part, simply of energetic endeavours of nature to rid 
itself of an injurious agent or influence/' 

And it must be a familiar fact to many who bave 
bad occasional and sligbt indigestions, tbat twenty- 
four hours of starvation supersedes the necessity for 
any remedies. In this case, the disease to be re- 
moved being sligbt, the digestive organs rebeve them- 
selves, having been placed in a condition to do so by 
the mere removal of the causes — ^food and stimu- 
lants — ^wbicb produced their disorder. But when 
from the continued operation of the causes — ^too often 
aided by the additional one of drug medication — ^the 
internal malady has acquired a certain amount of inten- 
sity oxfixedneiSy one of two things happens : the inter- 
nal organs make a violent effort to throw off their ma- 
lady on the external organs, or externally opening 
oi^ans, the skin, the bowels, the kidneys ; or, if this 
effort be interfered with, the morbid internal parts 
at length sink, their vitality is extinguished, and the 
patient dies, or their structure becomes changed, 
and organic, incurable disease is estabUshed. 

Through what instrumentality is this effort made ? 
All evidence of facts goes to show that the nervous 
system, as the representative of the nutritive and 



16 THEORY OF THE WATER CURE. 

sentient faculties of the body^ is the agent by which the 
effort is enacted. 

On these well-recognised facts is based the theory 
and the practice of the Water cure. Internal disease 
existing^ the natural e£Ports of the system to rid the 
vital parts of it, through the instrumentality of the 
nervous system, are seconded by the internal and ex- 
ternal exhibition of water alone. But as Nature, when 
making such efforts unassisted, most commonly 
directs them towards the external surface of the 
body, the practice of the Water cure teaches, that 
the operations of Nature in this particular should be 
imitated ; the rather, as it is abundantly found that 
when circumstances are applied which thwart this 
extrinsic e£Port, (and we shall mention some of these 
hereafter,) and tend to re-concentrate the disease upon 
the internal parts, mischief, often fatal, invariably 
follows. Instances of this extrinsic effort are seen in 
fevers, themselves the struggles of the frame to 
throw internal malady upon the external surface ; in 
that most ordinary, and universally allowed, most 
perfect termination of fevers, sweating; in gout, 
wherein ever and anon as the vital parts accumulate 
disordered action, it is thrown, for safety's sake, on 
the toes and fingers ; in rheumatism, where the same 
occurs on the large joints ; in all eruptive complaints, 
whether acute or chronic ; and in a number of other 

6 



PRACTICL INYBSTI6ATION. 17 

diseases^ all indicating this very si^e and e£Pectual 
mode taken by Nature to withdraw her strong holds 
of life from peril. 

All the processes of the Water cure having in view 
to assist Nature in this her fights we proceed, 

1st. To measure the amount of internal disease to 
be remoyed> and the capabilities of the system to 
remove it : which is done bj an accurate investigation 
of the previous history of the case, and the present 
condition of the body in general, and in the detail 
of its functions. 

2nd. To withdraw all unnatural irritants from the 
inner organs, (improper food, alcoholic liqueurs of all 
kinds, and medicines of whatever sort,) and to sub- 
stitute the natural stimulus of water at an appro- 
priate temperature, and plain and appropriate food. 
And to withdraw likewise, as far as may be, the body 
from mental irritation. 

3rd. To adopt the amount of external stimulation 
by water and sweating to the capabilities of the sys^ 
tern. For this act a vast deal more medical obsenra- 
ticm and tact is required than is generally supposed. 
The idea that the whole of the various processes are 
employed indiscriminately, or in a routine manner, 
is altogether erroneous. 

4th. To watch closely the efforts of the system, 
and modify the internal and external apphcations of 



18 CIRCUMSTANCES OF DANGER. 

the treatment, according to circumstances which may 
arise. 

Be it remembered, meanwhile, that, in all this, the 
fact that the entire nervous system is in active ope- 
ration, tending to distribute the blood and its own 
energies more and more towards the surface, and 
thus reUeve the congested and oppressed interior, is 
never to be lost sight of. Be it further remembered, 
that in thus arousing the entire nervous system to a 
general extrinsic effort, reference must always be had 
to those great centres of it — the brain and the ner- 
vous matter at the pit of the stomach, — and provi- 
sion be made in the remedies, that these suffer not 
from over excitement. 

With these succinct preluninaries touching the 
theory and practice of the Water cure, we are in 
condition to state, for the enlightenment of our me- 
dical brethren, as well as the non-medical reader, 
under what circumstances that mode of curing disease 
may become '* dangerous." 

1st. The Water cure is " dangerous" when the 
amount and character of internal disease being inves- 
tigated in a slovenly manner, when the temperament 
in general, and the functions in particular, being cal- 
culated with insufEcient precision, the processes of 
the treatment are liable to be applied in a manner 
which may cause confusion in the internal vital 



CIRCUMSTANCES OF DANGER. 19 

organs, by an attempt to rouse them too suddenly 
or^ on the other hand^ not yigorously enough. 

2nd. The Water cure is " dangerous" when the 
efforts of the system^ through the instrumentality of 
the nervous system, to throw disease from the in- 
ternal organs, are interfered with by irritation of those 
oigans in the shape of spiced and otherwise stimu- 
lating food, alcoholic liquors of any kind, and drugs 
of whateyer sort. 

3rd. The Water cure is " dangerous" when, during 
the efforts alluded to, mental distractions and irrita- 
tions of business, or of the passions, are allowed to 
interfere. And it is ^^ dangerous" in this and the 
last named case, because, 

4th. The entire nervous system, in its state of ex- 
trinsic effort, being irritated and interfered with, is 
liable to have its great centres — the brain and the 
nervous collection about the stomach — ^more or less 
seriously affected by the re-concentration of blood 
and nervous energy within. In such case the har- 
monious operations of all the nerves towards the ex- 
ternal surface is interrupted, and in the confusion 
caused by the means above mentioned, their central 
and largest collections are the most likely to suffer. 

From all this it appears, that they who practise 
the Water cure require to be acquainted with the 
human frame in health and disease, just as they do 

c 2 



20 THE WEAPON AND THE WEIDBR. 

who follow anj other mode of treatment.'*' If igno- 
rance does mischief, as it is always sure to do, it is 
both unjust and illogical to la j it on the Water cure. 
The ** danger" is clearly not in the weapon, but in 
the wielder of it. Physicians are in the daily habit 
of prescribing the deadly poisons, prussic acid, 
arsenic, and corrosive sublimate, and, they say, with 
beneficial results ; but should some ignoramus of 
their body, or some one devoid of a medical diploma 
as well as of all medical education, extinguish one or 
more lives by the administration of these poisons, 
what would they think of the fairness of those who 
should fix, not upon their remedies only, but upon 
themselves personally, the epithet '^ dangerous V* 
That persons in this country, without medical ac- 
quirements of any sort, think fit to set themselves up 

* *« * If this treatment (the water) be capable of general 
adoption,' was the observation of an English physician, who 
had left a very distressing complaint behind him at a water 
establishment in Germany, * all that I have been learning is 
useless.' A little reflection would, I think, have led him to a 
different conclusion. His acquirements in anatomical and 
pathological science have lost nothing of their value ; and the 
power his physiological knowledge has given him over the in- 
firmities of our nature, still exists to soothe the sorrows of others 
and soften his own. He has but to change his instruments. 
He has the same work to do, and the same strength of hand 
to do it more effectually /* — Ab<fy<m the Water eure^ p. 102. 



TRADING SPECULATORS. 21 

as practisers of the Water cure, is a thing to be de- 
plored and deprecated : but the art thej profess is 
assuredly not liable for the mischief they perpetrate. 
It is for the public to make choice between the mere 
trading peculator, and the educated physician who 
attaches himself to a plan of treatment which^ from 
the conviction of theory as well as practice^ he be- 
lieves to be the most efficacious of all. Were the 
medical body industrious and candid enough to study 
the Water cure^ these men, with no professional 
rights whatever^ would soon find themselves Aor« de 
combat; for it is not with the Water cure as with 
drugs : — there cannot be any secret " pill" or " drops" 
to supersede the employment of the educated prac- 
titioner. The time will come for this ; the sneer, the 
ribaldry, and the calumny past, and the facts of cures 
by the water treatment still going on, doctors, great 
and small, vrill do as they did with Harvey's circu- 
lation. Lady Mary Montague's small-pox inocu- 
lation, and Jenner's vaccination — adopt it. Until 
then the public have to thank them for the " danger" 
which accompanies its practice by trading specu- 
ktors. 

In the next place it follows, fh)m what has been 
premised, that when patients labouring under chronic 
disease come under the operation of the water treat- 
ment, it behoves them to leave behind them, as far 



22 WATER CURE IN TOWNS. 

as it is possible so to do, the cares and anxieties of 
business, the excitements of factitious pleasure, the 
hurry, noise, and social tumult of towns, and, for the 
time, to give themselves up to the recovery of their 
health. Otherwise there is '^danger" that the 
concentration upon the brain implied in these painful 
or pleasurable excitements, during the period of effort 
of the entire nervous system, should produce in that 
important organ changes and revulsions of circula- 
tion that are incompatible with the integrity of its 
function. Hence it is that men of business, or men 
of pleasure, will in vain seek radical cure of their 
ailments amid the scenes of their respective avoca- 
tions. Hence also it will be time thrown away, or, 
worse than that, it will be a " dangerous" experi- 
ment, to attempt relief by the Water cure in towns. 
The attempt has been made more than once on the 
continent, and has signally failed, as we have seen ; 
and is still more likelv to fail in this commercial 

pleasure is made an anxious business ; and the brain, 
in both cases, is maintained in a state of ebullient 
activity, to the detriment of itself and of the rest of 
the nervous system. This emphatic remark is ap- 
plied to chronic complaints which allow of change of 
abode. And if it be asked, how the objection is to 
be avoided in cases of acute disease ? we answer that 



ATTENDED WITH DANGER. 23 

it does not then exist. He who is prostrate on his 
bed with fever, or local inflammation of a grave kind, 
cannot undergo the excitement of the . office or the 
opera, and kindly Nature, ever wishful to save the 
individual, /orees him firom the contemplation of balls 
as well as bales ; from seeking speculation either in 
hogsheads of sugar or in the eyes of beauty. But it 
b in such cases of acute disease that the Mtounding 
power of the water treatment is most exhibited : 
where the efforts of the system to rid itsc^ of dis- 
order, to save its ^ital organs, are most wonderi^Uy 
seconded by the processes of the Water cure. Upon 
this, however, we cannot dwell ; but we assert loudly, 
that in acute disease there is no danger^ direct or in- 
direct, in that mode of treatment, save from the igno- 
rance of those who may choose to practise it. 

Again, it follows from what has been laid down, 
that in the event of any irritant being applied to the 
internal organs during their effort to cast off disease, 
" danger" may ensue. But we ask, how in the name 
of common sense can such danger be attached to the 
Water cure when its cause, the application of internal 
irritants, not only forms no part of that cure, but is 
diametrically opposed to its principles and practice ? 
To cause a convergence of nervous excitement on the 
▼ital organs is to meddle with the divergence towards 
the whole exterior, which it is the object of the cure 



24 DSATH FROM AOILS? 

to efibct ; and, conftisioii following this intermption, 
the hrain or nerves in the pit of the stomach are the 
first to suffer. If at any period of the water treats 
ment^— **before or daring a crisis, — dietetic or medi- 
cinal irritants be administered internally^ let the harm 
which follows be laid on the right shoulders, viz< on 
the presoriber of the irritants, who has amply shown 
how little he knows of the water treatment, or how 
willing he is to throw discredit upon it by fotd prac- 
tices. Thus it is industriously told by medical prac- 
titioners, who are prescribers of drugs, that instances 
of death during the crisis of boils which sometimes 
occurs in the water treatment, have taken place in this 
country. And in the Medical Gazette of the 16th 
of December, 1842, a Dr. Silvester gives a very 
slipshod account of one which came under his pecu- 
liar eare. Passing over dates and all other circum- 
stances of detail which scientific medicine is in the 
habit of demanding, the writer tells us that the patient 
had three large boils on his body, and many of smaller 
size scarcely deserving the name : that these appeared 
after pursuing the water treatment for one month on 
the Rhine : and that, although the patient was ren- 
dered feverish by them, the persons about him there, 
who tnuet have been in the habit of frequently seeing 
erieee, thought these boils subject for congratulation 
rather than commiseration I {Strange^ that they 



DKATH FROM VnUVULHTHl 25 

who were in the daily h4ibU of hdwldmg this kind of 
crisis, produced and treated by water, should have 
no wtanner of /ear of it, but laugh at and eongror 
tulate the patient!) However, the unpatknt patient, 
who np to this period had sufiered only a little in* 
conyenienoe and feverishnesSj resolved to return home 
with all his boils upon him. No wonder we are told 
that *' he accomplished this with some difficulty." 
But arrived, and under Dr. SiitYESTsn's care, surely 
all pain and feverishness ceased? Not at all: he 
n^idly got worse. Then we are douhtlessly in- 
formed what treatment Dr. Siltester pursued? 
Not at all ; the only words that refer in the most 
remote manner to hia treatment are these ; " Every 
effort was made to restore the debilitated constitution 
of the patient ; but in vain" Few words ! hut quite 
sufficient to oonrey to our minds, who know a trifle 
about the minutiie of drug treatment, a long list of 
irritating stimulants applied to the internal organs 
''to restore the debilitated constitution." What 
mercury, what quinine, what opium and camphor, 
what ammonia, and what wine is there not implied 
in this restoration of " the debilitated constitution !" 
But this ''blazon may not be" to the uninitiated. 
The object being to connect the death of the patient 
with the Water cure, " this deponent" dwelleth only 
on the boib and the fatal terminatiouj and " saith 



26 " DEBILITATED CONSTITUTIONS." 

not*^ of the intervening treatment. Yet some sus- 
picion seems to have crossed his mind, that some- 
thing besides the water may have contributed to the 
fatal event : why else does he finish his bald record 
of the case with this significant query ; " the patient 
sank a victim, shall I say, to the water-cure V* 

No ! we answer, you shall not. Nor you, nor 
any other practiser of drug medication have the right 
to cast upon the Water cure the mischief which that 
medication inflicts upon the patient whose system is 
labouring to rid itself of internal disease. Had the 
patient remained where he was on the Bhine, avoided 
^ stimulants, and kept the boils constantly moistened 
with lint pledgets wetted with cold water, we should 
have beheld a very different termination of his case. 
But if, whilst the systematic efforts at relief are at 
their height, a patient thinks fit to undergo all the 
worry and turmoil of some four hundred miles tra- 
velling : and if at the end of his journey he is sub- 
mitted to all ufonner of internal stimulation and irri- 
tation, under the plea of " restoring a debilitated 
constitution," it strikes us that we have at least an 
equal, if not a better right to say, " the patient 
sank a victim, shall we say, to the druff treat- 
ment ? " 

After this plan there is no possible case treated by 
water which is not accompanied with danger. AU 



ACCIDENTS AND DEATH. 27 

that is required being to bring the system into a 
certain stage of effort, and then — pass it over to one 
who shall treat it with stimulating diet and drugs. 
But as drug-treatment is not water treatment, we 
submit, that, when patients die under such circum- 
stances, the former and not the latter is accountable. 
And, on the other hand, we maintain in the most 
positive and unqualified manner, that the Water 
cure practised with a knowledge and calculation of 
the powers of the body, and fairly carried out with- 
out interference of dietetic and drug irritants, is, from 
the first of its processes to the last, devoid of all 
danger, and only becomes " dangerous" when so in- 
terfered with. How comes it that the case above 
alluded to, the first and only one of the kind recorded 
in England, should have proved fatal when committed 
to a physician who prescribes drugs, whilst out of 
nearly eight thousand treated at Graefenberg in the 
last ten years, and nearly five hundred treated at 
Malvern in the last seven months, many of them with 
extensive crises of boils, not one death, nor one 
ACCIDENT, has occurred during or after such crisis ? 
The *' danger," again we say, is in the meddling of 
drug medication. With water treatment a crisis of 
Jifty boils has no danger whatever, and the patient 
seldom loses a dinner or his usual exercise. 
Lest it may be thought that we are overstating 



28 DEATH WITHOUT A CRISIS. 

the importance of ayoiding internal medication^ when 
Nature's efforts are all towards the exterior of the 
body, we will quote the following cases fe>m the most 
learned book of the most learned medical writer of 
the day — Dr. Copland ; a man whom we are 
proud to designate as our excellent friend, and whose 
private worth is only equalled by his pubUc emi- 
nence. He says, at page 600, of his " Dictionary 
(^ Practical Medicine,'^ under the head " Disetue ;" 
" A few facts which have fallen under my obserration 
will serve to elucidate the subject. A medical fnend 
had gout in the lower extremities, /or which he took 
a large dose of colckicum, before the morbid secre- 
tions had been evacuated. He almost inetarUly had 
a violent attack of the disease in his stomach, with 
simultaneous disappearance of it firom the original 
seat. In this case, the transfer from one place to 
the other was instantaneous : the medium being evi- 
dently the nervous system. Again $ a middle-aged 
and not robust man bad most severe rheumatism in 
the thighs and legs, for which he took a large dose of 
croton oily which produced hypercatharsis (excessive 
purging,) and the complete cessation of the pains in 
the limbs, followed by the most distressing agony 
referrible to the heart, with palpitations, &c« He 
was actively treated^ hut he died in a day or two," 
A volume of such cases as these might be collected 
with little trouble. 



TRUE CRISIS IN POINT. 29 

Now in tliese instances there was no Water treat- 
ment on which to shoulder the hhune. Still they are 
instances of the danger of drugs when nature is casting 
her internal disease upon the external parts^ as she 
does most notably in gout and rheumatism ; and the 
Water cure only aids nature in this her self-conserva- 
tive endeavour^ which drug-treatment only mars. 

How stands the general question of " danger '* in 
the Water cure now? Are the members of the 
medical profession or others furnished with cases in 
which from the water treatment and the water treat- 
ment alone fatal terminations have resulted? For 
cases of this kind are the only ones which bear at 
all upon the opinion of '* danger " they so extensively 
promulgate. If they have only such as we have 
above quoted to produce in practical evidence of their 
opinion, common sense people will be very apt to 
pronounce the evidence something more condemna- 
tory of the drugs than the water, on the score of 
danger. 

To sum up. Wlien accurate investigation is made 
into the previous history of a case ; when the physical 
capabilities of the individual are minutely calculated 
by a careful medical enquiry into the particular func- 
tions ; when, as the treatment proceeds, the effects 
of each process on the restorative power of the con- 
stitution are watdied with a nicety of medical obser- 



30 MODE OF AVOIDING DANGER. 

vation which can only be attained by physiological 
and practical education ; we assert that no danger 
whatever attends the treatment of disease by the 
Water cure, and we challenge the medical fraternity 
to a discussion, as public as it can be made, of the 
whole subject, in its general character and in its 
minutest details. 

When also, during the treatment by water, no 
interference with the natural restorative process of 
the body which the Water cure so powerfully calls 
into play, is made by the introduction into that body 
of stimulating food, stimulating liquids, and of drugs 
which are all irritating ; when in addition, a crisis 
of boils or any other eruptions on the surface being 
produced, no drug medication is applied to them, but 
simple water alone ; we assert that no danger what- 
ever attends the treatment of disease by the Water 
cure, nor that particular result of it denominated 
a crms ; and we challenge the medical fraternity to 
a discussion, as public as it can be made, of the 
whole subject of the comparative safety of the water 
and drug treatments, in their progress and their final 
consequences to the human constitution. 

This is the only mode of settling the question of 
"danger" satisfactorily for the laical public ^ and 
not by the self-sufficient enunciation by the medical 
public of an opinion which is not based on personal 



INFALLIBILITY OF MEDICINE. 31 

experience, and for which they offer no theoretical 
reasons. 

It might be imagined with great reasonableness 
that the medical gentlemen, who propagate the opinion 
in question regarding the Water cure, themselves 
practised a system free from all danger^ and had un- 
bounded faith in the invariable safety and efficacy of 
their own remedies. How far this is the case will 
be seen by the following extracts from works pubhshed 
by practitioners of drug medication, and by journals 
which are recognized as their organs, and which are 
bitter enough against the water treatment. These 
quotations are the more appropriate here as the 
"danger" of remedies implies their inertness and 
their uncertainty as well as their violence ; and it will 
be found that according to their own confessions the 
practitioners alluded to employ remedies possessed 
of all these "dangerous** attributes. 

Here is a passage from- a review of the work of 
one of the great physicians of the day : 

** It cannot be wondered at that even at this day, with all 
the advantages of clinical teachers, the practice of physic should 
be so singularly unscientific; and, that imperfect diagnosis, 
exce$sive bleedings, and the extravagant administration ofpur- 
goHve medicines, should be so characteristic of English medi- 
cine. With many practitioners every pain is an in6ammation, 
every palpitation a disease of the heart, every form of difficult 
breathing an asthma or a dropsy ; whilst a large proportion of 

7 



32 ^'herodtan massacre." 

obflcuie dlBeases are ascribed on small grounds to some unde- 
fined state of the stomach. The d^dt/t/y attendant on fever is, we 
know, still not unfirequentlj treated by tonics and stimulants ; 
and niunerous oiganic diseases are decided as nervous and 
exasperated by tonics from the mineral kingdom. We speak of 
things which we dailj witness, and the effect upon our minds is 
the growing up of a belief, to which everj jear adds strength, 
that not a few invalids are annually destroyed by mal-praetice$, 
for which, if there i$ no moral exetae, there is unfortunateiy no 
legal punishment.^' * 

^ Less slaughter, I am convinced, has been effected by the 
sword than hy the lancet — that minute instrument of might j 
mischief!" 

** Of the cases of mortality in the earlier months of our ex- 
istence, no small proportion consists of those who have sunk 
under the oppression qf pharmaceuHeai fiUh> More infantile 
subjects in this metropolis are, perhaps, diumally destroyed by 
the mortar and pestle^ than in the ancient Bethlehem fell victims 
in one day to the Herodian massacre/* f 

Writing subsequently^ the same learned physician 
says^ apropos to the above quotation : 

** I plead guilty to the charge of rashness and hyperbole, 
which were brought against this remark when first published ; 
but I wish that the years of experience and reflection, which 
have since intervened, had convinced me that the remark was 
destitute of foundation. When we contemplate a church-yard, 
the earth of which is composed, in a great measure, of the 

* British and Foreign Medical Review, April 1837, article 
on Dr. Latham's Clinical Medicine. 

t Reid's Essays on Insanity, Hypociiondriasis, &c., 1816. 



SPEAKING OUT. 33 

bodies of infimts, it is natural for us to fancj, but surely it is 
not reasonable for us to beliere, that those beings were bom fbr 
no other purpose than to die : or that it is within the design of 
nature that the pangs of production on the part of the mother 
should, on that of the ofispring, be almost immediately suc- 
ceeded by the struggle of dissolution. Fault must exist some- 
where ; it cannot be in the proyidence of God ; it must there- 
fisre attach to the improvidence and indiscretion of man. Con- 
aeqaences as &tal originate from ignorance as from crime. In- 
fanticide, when perpetrated under the impulse of maternal 
desperation, or in the agony of anticipated disgrace, is a subject 
of astonishment and horror ; but if a helpless victim be drugged 
to death, or poisoned by the forced ingtirgitation ofnauseoui and 
emntiaUy noxious potions, we lament the result merely, without 
thinking about the means uhieh inevitably led to its occurrence, 
Conideneefeels little concern in cases of medicinal murder. The 
too ordinary habit of jesting upon these subjects in convivial 
or ^uniliar conversation has an unhappy tendency to harden 
the heart, and inclines us to regard with an inhuman levity 
those dark and horrible catastrophes which too frequently arise 
from professional ignorance or mistake.*' 

This is " speaJdng out " with a vengeance, as to 
the general fact of " danger" in medicines I 

Here is a morfeau regarding a particular remedy 

in exceeding great favour any time during the last 

fifty years. 

" We must acknowledge that the profession is highly indebted 
to those who have lately introduced the non-mercurial plan of 
treatment. We have been released from an inveterate and deep. 
rooted error. ^''^ 

* British and Foreign Medical Review, Jan. 1840« 



34 EFFECTS OF IODINE. 

^ As an internal means of cute, iodine^* is su^Sgeefked ; but 
then the author (Canstatt on Special Pathology) so^ticaUj 
surmises that this is a means danger&u9 to be had recourse to, 
since the modus operandi of iodine consists in undermininff 4he 
universal process qf nutrition. It is not to be drntbted that^ in 
some measure, it does so. Blood-letting, particularly when it 
can be brought to bear locally on the oigan, may be useful ; 
but, even in regard to it, the author is far from sanguine; since, 
if practised in moderation, it is apt to prove fruitless ; if ener- 
getically employed, it is more likely to produce anemia, (blood> 
lessness,) dropsy, and debility, than to cure the hypertn^hy 
(the enlargement.) He entertains the same opinion of purga- 
tives. Attempts to arrest the hypertrophy of glandular organs, 
by augmenting their secretionsj may, in some cases, do good ; 
hut, on the other hand, the excitement produced in the endea- 
vour to stimulate the organ to more active exertion, may but 
help to argument and accelerate the hypertrophy,*'t 

Good news truly for those who suffer from enlarge- 
ment of any organ of the body ! What with " fruit- 
lessness'* here and " may" there and " huts " every- 
where, reviewer^ reviewed^ and patients seem to fall 
incessantly on the horns of dilemmas. . . 

The same Beyiew^ January 1838, thus gives a few 

* Priessnitz was so persuaded by long observation of the in- 
jurious eifects of Iodine in destroying the reparative power of 
the constitution, that he told me he would in future refuse all 
cases where large quantities had been taken. — J. W. 

t British and Foreign Medical Review. April 1842. 



ADULTEI^ATION OF MEDICINES. 35 

piquant words as uttered by Dr. Billing^ a physi- 
cian of eminence in London ; — " I visited the differ- 
ent schools, and the students of each hinted, if they 
did not assert, that the other sects killed their pa- 
tients. I found that, provided the physician of each 
was a man of talent and experience, the mortality was 
fairly balanced.'' 

If there be such internecine work between the 
professors of drug medication, they who hold by the 
water-treatment can scarcely hope to escape the 
benevolent '' hints, if not assertions," regarding their 
mode of committing manslaughter, whatever cer- 
tainty they may have that the mortality will not be 
found to be fairly balanced. 

Not a little of the " danger" of drug medication is 
attributable to the uncertainty of the agents em- 
ployed : a fact asserted and explained by sufficient 
authorities, as follows. 

** To make ther^eutical experiments conclusive, we must 
have calm observers, not anxious to catch a little fleeting £ame 
bj magnifying the merits of a new compound ; and, as another 
preliminary, of small dignitj but vast importance, we mu$t 
have authentic drugs* Unless our information is very incorrect, 
there are not many prescriptions faithfully prepared in the 
British dominions. We believe there is icarcely a medicine^ 
however simple, which the chemises art cannot imitate in cheap 
and base material. There are many industrious '* commercial 

d2 



36 PRUSSIC ACID. 

gentlemen" in the chemical line, whose section of the business 
it is to supply the materials of adulteration to the brewer, the 
baker, and the retailer of drugs : and jet we eat and drink with 

m 

'ndifference ; and physicians prescribe with calm satisfaction. 
We fear these evils will be proof even against the numerical 
method ; for so long as factitious drugs are given, there are no 
credible therapeutics to be counted, and the medical treatment 
of diseases is overlaid with fallacies J*''^ 

^ M. Magendie narrates a lamentable occurrence which took 
place some years since in a Parisian Hospital. Our author's 
hydrocyanic syrup (syrup of prussic acid) is the only one 
commonly used ; but in the hospital, the hydrocyanic syrup of 
the codex is employed, which is very much stronger. Seven 
epileptic patients took, at the same time, about two drachms 
and six grains of the hydrocyanic acid of the codex, and in three 
quarters of an hour they were no more. The moral which our 
author draws from this frightful occurrence is, that every body 
ought to use his syrup ; whereas we would suggest that every 
doctor ought to be intimately acquainted with the codex."i' 

It may be objected that this happened in France, 
and that we liave nothing to do with it. Neverthe- 
less it bears directly on the point at issue, viz. the 
danger from the uncertainty of drug remedies. But 
here are the remarks of an English author on the 
uncertainty of an English narcotic preparation pre- 
scribed by the London CJoUege of Physicians. They 

* British and Foreign Medical Review, January, 1838. 
t Medical Quarterly Review, vol. iv. 

8 



UNCERTAIN PREPARATIONS. 3? 

are extracted from Dr. Collier's TVanslation of 
the New Pharmacopoeia. 

*^ There i8 a bad practice in the retail trade, which is well 
worthy of the serious attention of the profession, and one 
which ought not to have been disregarded by the college, of 
selling various substitutes for this syrup (of poppies) ; one is 
prepared with laudanum and treacle ; another with extract of 
poppies in syrup ; and both made of inferior narcotic strength 
to the preceding. Now, let the dispensing chemist mark the 
consequence; numerous fatal cases have occurred, in which 
mothers, who had been in the habit of being supplied with the 
spurious syrup, have casually applied to houses, where the 
^ymp is prepared by the college formula ; and having admi- 
nistered a tea-spoonful of this last to their fretful children, or 
perhaps a second, just as they were wont to do with the weaker 
remedy, it has induced narcosis ; and death has ensued in a 
few hours* The editor has himself attended inquests of this 
nature, and he appeals to the Coroners of London, whether a 
year elapses without similar occurrences. The intention of the 
ditpensing chemist in making a weeper article is praiseworthy ; 
for, knowing that mothers habitually exhibit it to their children, 
he is afraid to sell them the stronger syrup. Thus the parent 
is deceived in her estimation of the dose, and the deception is 
fiktal. TTtese errors too are likely to occur among practitioners 
themselves ; for, if they consult the popular works on pharmacy 
they will meet with evidence the most discrepant. By one 
popular author, an ounce of the syrup is stated to be equiva- 
lent to a grain of opium ; by another, half-an-ounce ; by 
another, three drachms ; by another, two drachms.^* 



38 PECULIARITIES AND CHANCES. 

More uncertainties. 

** There is a caution also which it is verj necessaiy to impress 
upon the practitioner, respecting the power which some medicines 
possess of accumulating in the system. This is notorious with 
regard to lead and mercurj, and probablj with the preparations 
of arsenic and some other metallic compounds. Dr. Withering 
has observed that the repetition of small doses of Fox-glove, 
at short intervals, till it produces a sensible effect, is an unsafe 
practice, since a dangerous accumulation will frequently take 
place before any signals of forbearance present themselves. 
I have already alluded to the possibility of mercurial accumu- 
lation, and its development at a remote period. Constitutional 
peculiarities will sometimes render the operation of the mildest 
medicine poisonous. I have seen a general erysipelas follow 
the application of a blister : and tormina (severe griping) of 
the bowels, no less severe than those produced by the injec- 
tion of arsenic, attend the operation of purgatives composed of 
senna !" • 

The question is bow we are to know all these 
dangerous " peculiarities," " probabilities/* and 
" possibilities/* before they have become sad reali- 
ties. No such chances attach to the use of water as 
a remedial agent. In another part of the same work 
Dr. Paris, after remarking on the combination of 
'^substances which possess properties essentially 
different, and directly opposed to each other," which 
he stigmatizes as " an error of the most serious de- 

* Dr. Paris's Pharmacologia, p. 324, vol. i. 



CAPRICIOUS PRESCRIBING. 39 

scription and unfortmiately one of too common occur' 
rence/ gives the following fact and remark : 

^ I latelj met with a country practitioner, who, upon being 
aaked by a lad/ whom he attended, the intention of three dif- 
ferent draughts which he had sent her, replied, that one would 
warm, the second cool her, and the third was calculated to 
moderate the too violent effects of either !"* 

** The file of eyery apothecary would ftumish a volume of 
instances where the ingredients of the prescription are fighting 
together in the dark, or at least are so adverse to each other, as 
to constitute a most incongruous and chaotic mass.*' f 

That the prescriber as well as the prescribed is 
ofttimes " in the dark/* would seem to be too true 
according to the following evidence. 

"We cannot reflect without astonishment," says 
the British and Foreign Medical Review for October, 
1836, *' on the common and capricious employment 
of alkalies, and of acids in medicine, so often pre- 
scribed with advantage, where it would, we suspect, 
puzzle the practitioner exceedingly to account for his 



own success." 



How far the " success" is worth the risk under 
such puzzling circumstances we leave the reader to 
judge : as also whether the practitioner with water 
can possibly appear in more doubtful and dangerous 
guise than his pharmaceutical brother. Perhaps, on 

• Vol i. p. 280. t Ibid, page 318. 



40 POLYPHARMACY. 

the whole the conclusion we are about to quote is 
that at which he will arrive. 

^ A considerable portion of the public are labouring under a 
prejudice which is daily gaining ground, namelj, that the pre- 
sent system of polypharmacy (complicated drugging) is injurious 
more frequently than beneficial."* 

Who shall gainsay so respectable an authority? 
Injurious though the polypharmacy be, it is persisted 
in ; for which, no doubt, there is a motive of the 
highest order — a motive connected, in ultimate result, 
with the safety and well-being of the community, and 
defensive of all " danger" to the pubhc ? Yet from 
the following extract from the Medical Quarterly 
Review^ the middle classes at least do not appear to 
benefit from such a motive. 

^ The middle ciasses can pay but middling prices ; but if we 
wish Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road to have 
the benefit of medical advice, without swallowing barrels of 
pills, and hogsheads of saline draughts, we must encourage 
a race of physicians who will take plebeian silver instead of 
patrician gold, and pocket a crown piece without blushing. 
Among the evils engendered by the junction of pharmacy and 
physic, with which the most uninstructed part of the public are 
familiar, is the superfluity of medicine (and very nasty medicine 
too) which is sent, swallowed (?) and paid for (? ?). These medi- 
cines, says Gray, must, in most cases, be made unpalatable, 

* Medico-Chiruigical Review, April, 1 842. 



DEGRADING INFLUENCES. 41 

lest the patient should conceive himself to be furnished with 
mere slops for the sake of a charge being made/* 

Neyertheless we are bound to look upon all this 
sort of practice as wholly devoid of " danger" to the 
patient ! Shall we be so unreasonable as to conjec- 
ture that it might lead to recklessness on the part of 
the medical attendant^ bent only on the sale of a 
certain amount of physic, to be made " unpalatable" 
for certain reasons, without reference to the stomach, 
bowels, or nerves of the ** middle classes ?" At all 
events, we may reasonably maintain that the treatment 
by water cannot be the subject of similar prejudicial 
and degrading influences. 



It were easy to glean firom the pages of writers on 
drugs, and drug medication, abundant evidence of 
the " danger" arising irom the violence and uncer- 
tainty of individual drugs. Allusion to a few has 
been made in the extract from Dr. Paris's work ; and 
a fearful picture might be presented of the destruc- 
tive effects on the constitution of courses of mercury, 
iodine, iron, colchicum, ptussic acid, and creosote ; 
a picture painted from the life, for several of the un- 
lucky sufferers are at this present time under the 
water treatment at this place. With the stomach 



42 SECONDARY DISEASES. 

transformed from the starting point of vivifying feel- 
ings into a focus of sensations that render life intole- 
rable: with the general nervous system utterly 
shattered, altogether unable to respond naturally to 
natural stimuli : with the brain in a state of perma- 
nent congestion and sleeplessness : with the skin all 
over as sensitive as the eyeball : and with the mind 
emasculated, deprived of moral courage and almost 
of volition, in a state of hebetude, hypochondriacal 
anxiety, suicidal^ depression, or excessive irritability ; 
— these victims of the treatment which is lauded for 
its superior safety y strange to say, have quitted their 
%afe plan, after trials of it varying from four to 
twenty-four years, to seek, in the "dangerous" 
Water Cure, alleviation, not so much of their original 
maladies, as of the morbid condition into which these 
have been made to merge by the frightful amount of 
drugging practised on their systems. These consti- 
tute the most tedious and intractable cases submitted 
to us : every tissue of the body, every faculty of the 
mind, is in a state of almost hopeless disorder : in- 
stead of some of the rhythm of the functions which 
is found in most other diseases, in these complete 
confusion reigns, and sheer anarchy of the organs : 
the blood, meantime, charged with the accumulated 
poison of years, circulating among and depositing 
solids, which in this manner have gradually been 



DISEASES FROM MERCURY. 43 

oonyerted into concretes of medicinal absurdity, of 
pharmaceutical prejudice. 

The instances of mercurial disease alone are suffi- 
cient to establish a strong case in favour of the 
" danger" of medicines. Disease so called, but tak- 
ing on Tarious forms, is recognized by a great num- 
ber of medical writers ; from whom it would appear 
that in many cases some of these forms were the 
result of small doses of the mineral, in the adminis- 
tration of which there appears to be the utmost un- 
certainty. We cannot in this place do more than 
give the names attached to the marked consequences 
of mercurial treatment by various writers. They are 
as follows ; 

1. Mercurial fever, or erethismus. (Bietericb^) 
(Pearson.*) 

2. Excessive salivation, (Dieterich.^) As little 
as a grain of blue pill has been known to produce 
this. 

3. Mercurial diarrhoea. (Bieterich.) 

4. Mercurial urorrhoea, or excessive secretion of 
urine. (Schlichting.*) 

' Die Merkurialkrankheit. Leipzig, 1837. 
' Obsen-ations on the Effects of Various Articles of the 
Materia Medica, p. 131. London, 1800. 
» Op. dt. 
* Ephimerides. Nuiembuigs, 1748. Tom. viii. obs. 8. 



44 DISEASES FROM MERCURY. 

5. Mercurial skin disease, oomprehending eczema, 
or heat eruption, (Pearson,^) othervrise called Ay- 
drargyria, (Alley* and Rayer^^) or mercurial 
leprosy, (Moriarty,^) or mercurial disease, 
(Schreiber9 and Mathias^) or mercurial exan- 
ihem, (Frank.^) Also mercurial miliary eruption, 
(Frank and Dieterich.^) 

6. In/lammation of the various parts of the eye. 
(DiETSRiCH^ and Trayers.^) 

7» Sloughing of the gums and throat. (Colles>^ 
Bacot,^ and Astley Cooper.^) 
8. Enlargement of most of the glands of the body. 

(DlETERICH.9) 

* Op. cit. cap. 13. 

, • On the Hydrargyria. London, 1810. 
^ Traits des Maladies de la Peau. Vol. i. p. 272. 

* A description of mercurial lepra. 8vo. 1804. 
' Demorbo mercurial!. Erf., 1792. 

> On the mercurial Disease. 8vo. 1811. 

* Acta clinica, voL iii. p. 22, and Praxeos Medidn. XJniy. 
PrsBcep., pars. i. vol. ii. p. 177. 

' Opera dt. 

* Opera cit. 

* Surgical Essays, vol. i. p. 59. 

* Practical Observations, &c. p. 45. 
^ Medical Gazette, iii. p. 312. 

* Lectures on Surgery, in Lancet, iv. p. 43. 

* Op. dt. 



BLOOD-LETTING. 45 

9. Mercurial wasting. (Described by Travers,* 
as known **by irritable circulation, extreme pallor 
and emaciation, an acute and rapid hectic, and an 
almost invariable termination in pulmonary consump- 
tion.*') 

10. Dropsy, (AsTLEY Cooper.*) 

This enumeration may stand exempli gratid of 
some of the '* dangerous" results of a drug which is 
considered a sheet anchor of medical practice ! 

We shall close this part of the subject by an ex- 
tract from the work of the most esteemed medical 
writer of the day. It refers to another sheet anchor 
of the ordinary treatment of disease, — blood-letting. 

^ 'KYerj obserying piactitioner must often have noticed, that 
a laige depletion, when carried to £unting, will have entirely 
removed the symptoms of acute inflammation, when the patient 
has recovered consciousness ; and that he expresses the utmost 
relief. But it generally happens that the inordinate depression 
is followed by an equally excessive degree of vascular reaction, 
vith which all the symptoms of inflammation return ; and the 
general reaction is ascribed entirely, but erroneously, to the 
return of the inflammation, instead of the latter being imputed 
to the former, which has rekindled or exasperated it, when be- 
ginning to subside. The consequence is, that another very 
I'lrge depletion is again prescribed for its removal; and the 
patient, recollecting the relief it temporarily brought him, 

' Further inquiry concerning constitutional irritation, p. 87. 
« Lancet, April 3rd, 1824. 



46 BLOOD-LETTING. 

readily oonsenta. Blood is taken to full Stinting — again relief 
is felt— again reaction returns — and again the local symptoms 
are reproduced ; and thus laige depletion, full Minting, re- 
action, and tfie supervention on the origindl malady of some or 
all of the phenomena described above, (sickness, cold sweat, 
failing pulse, convulsions, &c. &c.,) as the consequence of ex- 
cessive loss of blood, are brought before the practitioner, and he 
is astonished at the obstinacy, course, and termination of the 
disease; which, under such circumstances, generally ends in 
dropsical efKision in the cavity in which the affected organ is 
lodged ; or in convulsions, or in delirium running into stupor ; 
or in death, either from exhaustion or fVom one of the foregoing 
states ; or, more fortunately, in partial subadenCe of the origi- 
nal malady, and protracted convalescence. Such are the con^ 
tequences which but too often result — which I have seen on nume' 
rotLS occasions to result, when blood-letting has been looked upon as 
the only or chief means of cure — the ** sheet anchor^ of treatment, 
as it too frequently has been called and considered during the last 
twenty years,*** 

In confirmation of the above views^ we heard a 
short time ago from a near relative of a noble ladj, 
that, being seized with inflammation of the Inngs, 
she was bled by the advice of the first — at least the 
most fashionable — ^physician of the day, four days 
consecutively, the inflammation appearing to return 
after each of the three first bleedings with renewed in- 
tensity. After the fburth loss of blood, the medical 

• Dr. Copland's Dictionary of Practical Medicine, page 177, 
article " Blood." 



EXAMPLES OF ITS RESULTS. 47 

attendants declared that the disease was at length 
subdued^ and left her ; in les9 than two hours after- 
wards the unfortunate lady was no more. The pro- 
bability is, that the sinking pulse and respiration 
were mistaken for the heneficial, instead of the 
destructive, result of the enormous loss of blood 
which had heen sustained. But what becomes of 
the ^^ safety" of this favourite ally, and indeed pro- 
minent part of drug medication, when it can thus 
deceive one of our first physicians regarding its 
effects? 

Examples of the same kind might be multiplied ; 
bat if the reader would behold this *^ safe" remedy 
in all its glory, let him turn to the heart-rending 
account of the last iQness of Lord Byron, as related 
in his biography by Moore. It remains only to 
add, that a fit of Chut, Dropsy, Blindness, Delirium 
and Mania, Dysentery, and Convulsions, are spoken 
of as some of the results of bleeding, by Darwin, 
John Hunter, Traters, Marshall Hall, 
Blundell, and Broussais, respectively. 

It will be seen from the above quotations that no 
hardy assertions or laboured arguments of ours are 
necessary to demonstrate the unfairness of those 
practitioners who maintain that safety for the patient 
is to be found in drug medication alone ; and, per 
contra, danger alone in the water treatment. The 



48 USE AND ABUSE. 

literary organs, and the authors by whom they swear, 
bear ample testimony to the " danger" of the means 
they employ, without a word from us in that direc- 
tion. If it be urged that the instances advanced are 
those of the abuse of medicinal remedies, we ask 
what are those, if any, which they can bring forward 
in tangible form against the safety of the Water- 
Cure 7 Should non-professional persons do mischief 
in their trading speculations in the Water-Cure,* 
as will probably be the case, who so ready as practi- 
tioners of drug medication to cry out against the use 
— not the a^t^e— of thattreatment ? Shouldpatients 
in the course of treatment commit indiscretions and fly 
to stimulants, medicinal and dietetic, who so anxious 
as they to refer the consequent evils to the use, 
and not to the abuse, of the Water-Cure ? However, 
we have shown how that they reside in glass-houses, 

* We have heard of an instance in which the evphnteur of a 
water-cure establiahment, a legal sort of profeadonal person too, 
made a proposition to one of his patients, a distinguished officer 
of artillery, to take shares in it, in order to set on foot a project 
he had of selling it to advantage ; finding, very probably, that 
he could make more by the sale of it than by blunders in prac- 
tice. The same speculative person is also in the habit of asking 
exorbitant remuneration, but ultimately taking what he can 
get fh)m his patients. These are the men that disgrace any 
profession or any system of practice. 



THIN BLOOD. 49 

and now leave the reader to judge of their discre- 
tion in throwing stones. 



The general allegation of *' danger" heing thus 
disposed of» we turn to certain specific charges that 
are whispered from house to house against the Water 
Ciire : charges which, be it remembered, are opinions 
only, unsupported as yet by the publicatiop of rea- 
sons or &cts. 



1. l^E Water TrEATMSNT THINS THE BLOOD. 

This may do well to frighten the lieges, but will 
scarcely stand the critical examinations of profes- 
sional men. Sudi an effect of water drinking is not 
mentioned by any of the authors who have made the 
diseased conditions of the blood their study. Let the 
writings of Hoffmann,^ Friend,* Schwencke,"* 
BuECHNER,^ Hewson,^ Hey,^ Grxjner,^ Thack- 

* De Sanguine et ejus ObBervatione, 4to. 1660. 

' Emmenalogia, Opera omnia. London, fol. 1733. 
^ Haematologia, nva Sanguinis Historia, 4to. 1743. 

* De nimia Sanguinis Fluiditate et Morbis inde Oriundis, 
4to. 1749. 

* Experimental Inquiry into the Properties of the Blood, 
8to. 1771. 

' Ohsenrations on the Blood. London, 1779. 
^ De Pathologia Sanguinis. Jena, 1791. 

E 



50 THIN BLOOD. 

RAH,B Belhomme,9 Schvltz^^ Bellingeri,^ 
Stevens,' and a host of others he consulted^ and 
we defy the reader to find in any one of them the 
thinning . of the blood attributed to dilution with 
water. These writers are most minute in their enu- 
meration of the causes of the blood's deterioration, 
and some of them give precise accounts of their ex- 
periments on this head, but nowhere do we find 
water mentioned as an impoverisher of the rital 
fluid. On the other hand, we do find fix)m the ex- 
periments and observations of Schwencke, Friend, 
CovRTEN, PiTCAiRNE, and Thackrah, that the 
employment of those very favourite medicinal agents, 
the fixed and volatile alkalis (including the carbo- 
nates of potash, soda,^ and ammonia, sal volatile, &c.) 
has a particular effect in attenuating the vital fluid, 
breaking up its coagulating power, and thus inducing 



• On the Properties of the Blood, 8vo. 1819. 

' Observations sur le Sang, 4to. Paris, 1823. 

1 MeckePs Archi? fiir Anatomie und Fhysiologie, 1826, 
No. iv. 

' Annall Uniyersali di Medicina. April, 1827. 

3 Paper read to the London College of Physicians, in May, 
1830. 

^ HuxHAM says {Essay on Fevers^ pp. 48 and 308) that 
alkalis induce ^ scorbutic cachexy, that is, a dissolution of the 
solid parts of the body. 



THIN BliOOD. 51 

a diminished vital cohesion of the various textures of 
the body formed from it. 

Further, we find from the experiments of Le 
Canu,* that another very favourite remedy of drug 
medication has the power of singularly " thinning" 
the blood, by the removal of the rich red globules 
which give it colour. He found that a, first bleeding 
furnished in 1000 parts of blood 792*897 of water, 
70*210 of albumen, 9*163 soluble salts and animal 
extractive matters, and 127*73 of 'globules. But 
after a third bleeding, a few days afterwards, in the 
same patient, (a female,) the proportions were 
834053 of water, 71*111 of albumen, 7*329 of solu- 
ble salts and extractive matters, and 87*510 of glo- 
bules ; — showing a diminution of 31 per cent, in the 
course of a few days, of that ingredient of the blood 
which chiefly constitutes its richness ! 

Again, what say medical authors of mercury-^ 
another favourite medicine and ''sheet anchor" — 
and its agency on the blood, Dietrich tells us, 
that soon after salivation has been established, the 
blood exhibits an inflammatory crust ; at a later pe- 
riod its colour deepens, and its coaffulabiHty is dimi* 
nisheds the proportion of clot, and therefore qf 
fibrin, to serum (or watery part) becomes smallet' ,• 

* Nouvelles Recherches sur le Sang, in Journal d$ J^kar^ 
made, September and October, 1831, 

E 2 



52 THIN BLOOD. 

the/ormatum of albumen and mucus sinks to that of 
serum : the whole organic formation of the patient 
is less consistent and cohesive,^ 

Another writer of weight says^ in the most naive 
manner imaginable ; " A frill plethoric woman, of a 
purple red complexion, consulted me for hnmor- 
rhage from the stomach, depending on engorgement, 
without organic disease. I gave her mercury y and in 
six weeks blanched her as white as a lily J* ^ From 
all which it would appear that there are shorter and 
surer modes o/ *' thinning the blood" than by water 
drinking. 

There is a diseased state denominated Anaemia or 
Bloodlessness, in which the blood is deficient both 
in quantity and quality : a familiar and too common 
instance of which is the green sickness of girls. Now, 
in all the medical works on this disease, allusion is 
never once made to water drinking as a known 
cause, — ^not even to the possibility of its being a 
cause of it. One would imagine that in writing on 
so flagrant an example of '^ thin blood," this would 
scarcely be passed oyer were it so -certabi a cause, 
as it is now said to be, of the disease in question. 
Yet for anything of the kind, it is Tain to search the 

1 Op. supra cit. 80. 

* Dr. Farre, as quoted in Fergtuon''t Essays on the Diset&e* 
of Women, Part i. p. 216, 



THIN BLOOD. 53 

pages of Becker,^ Albert,* Janson,' Chomel,^ 
RocHE,^ or Combe,* all of them authors of recognis- 
ed ability and consequence. On the other hand, bad, 
moist air, poor and insufficient food, exclusion from 
light, residence in hot rooms, and excessive secretions 
and evacuations, (purgatives and diuretics, to wit,) 
are recited as the most common causes of the im- 
poverished state of the hlood alluded to. To these 
are to be added as cause any disease of the digestive 
organs which, interfering with the proper digestion 
of the food, leads to the formation of hlood deprived 
of the red globules. Nay, Dr. Copland says that 
general bloodlessness will not take place without 
some such disease. His words are ; 

" It is probable that general anemia will not take place, 
nnleflB consecutively of remarkable torpor of the vital influence, 
or of some morbid condition of one or more of the organs 
which contribute to the formation of blood. Where the diges- 
tive powers and the functions of the liver are weakened, 
anaemia is not infrequent. I am disposed to view the liver as 

^ Diss. Resol. CasAs Pract. Ansemise. Leyden, 1663. 

* Dissertatio de Aiuemia, 1732, 

' De Morb. ex Defectu Liquidi Vitalis, 1748. 

* Dictionnaire de Med., tom. ii. Art. AnSmie, 

' Dictionn. de Med. et Chirurg. Pract. Art. En^mie 
' Transact, of Med. and Chirurg. Society of Edinburgh, 
vol. i. 



54 THIN BLOOD. 

being equally, if not more concerned in this function of blood- 
making than the lungs." 

And again lie says ; 

" Deficiency of blood, as rejects both its diminished quan- 
tity and its poor quality or the defect of red globules, is often 
associated with visceral disease^ of which it is generally the 
consequence." * 

Further on, he lays down as ^' a grand patholo- 
gical inference," the following ; 

• 

*' The interruption or obstruction of any important secreting 
or eliminating function, if not compensated by the increased 
or modified action of some other organs, vitiatei the blood more 
or less ; and if such vitiation be not soon removed, by the re- 
storation of the function primarily affected^ or by the increased 
exercise of an analogous function, more important changes are 
produced in the blood, if the energies of life are insufficient to 
expel the cause of disturbance^ to oppose tHe progress of 
change, and to excite actions of a salutary tendency." * 

Taking this sentence as a text, and haying an eye 
to those which precede it, we shall take the liberty 
of preaching a little sound physiology to those who 
disseminate their balderdash about *' the thinning of 
the blood." 

Of the patients who resort to Malvern for the 

* Dictionary of Practical Medicine, p. 174, sect. 42, 44. 

* Op,cit. p. 190, sect. 124. 



THIN BLOOD. 55 

treatment by water, air, exercise, and diet, seyen out 
of ten labour under the interruption or obstruction 
of more or fewer of the organs which minister to the 
digestion of food ; and the periods of their ailments 
date variously from two to twenty years previously. 
During these long years they have run the gauntlet 
of all the means of drug medication, and, however 
painful it may be to repeat the fact, they tell tia that 
they are worse than when they began so to run. 
During these years, too, the obstructed salivary 
glands, the obstructed liver, the obstructed bowels 
and kidneys, the interrupted or vitiated secretion of 
gastric juice, and the general disorder of the diges- 
tive mucous membrane, and of the nerves supplying 
it, have, in greater or smaller array, and therefore in 
varied degree, maintained a diseased digestion of the 
food, whence a vitiated blood comes thus to be 
formed. Besides this, more or fewer of the ob- 
structed organs ceasing to pour out their secretions 
and excretions, the elements of these are retained in 
the circulating blood, which they further vitiate. 
Add to this the want of proper elimination of matters 
from the skin, {to which, in the great majority of 
instances no attention whatever has been paid,) and, 
last not least, the absorption into the blood of the 
infinite variety of poisonous medicines that have 
been tried in the years of suffering ; — and some idea 



56 THIN BLOOB. 

may be formed of the sort of blood which is cbcur 
lating in the bodies of patients so circoinstanced, and 
the character of the solids deposited from that blood. 
In fact, the leaden or parchment complexion, the 
jellow ejCy the dry or wosy lip, the fonl tongue, 
fetid breath, diseased secretions and excretions ge- 
nerally, the pi]%, morbid &t, and flabby mnsdes, 
all testify to the vitiated condition of the vital 
fluid. 

Now supposing that the water presciibed to be 
drunk by these patients had only for flnal aim to 
" thin " the blood, we are at a loss to behold any 
great mischief in diluting such a mass of semi- 
poisonous liquid. But when we . find ihe skin be- 
coming florid, the eye clear, the Hp red and plump, 
the tongue clean and moist, the breath sweet, the 
bowels and kidneys affording healthier excretions, and 
the muscles hardening, under the operation of water 
drinking, it is reasonable to suppose that it does 
something more or something else than '^ thin ** the 
blood ; particularly when the increased consumption 
of the oxygen of the atmosphere during the exercise of 
which they take abundantly, is given into the account. 
And that changes such as these occur in the process 
of our treatment at this place may be seen by any 
one who pleases to ask patients for a comparative 
statement of their previous and present condition. 



THIN BLOOD. 57 

To account for this a few physiological data may be 
given. 

The learned Liebig infonns ns that "the two 
first conditions of animal life are nutritions matters 
and oxygen introduced into the system/'^ and that 
in the varied transformations effected by the varied 
Gombinationa of the elements of food and oxygen, 
the phcenomena of animal life consist.^ These 
transformations are all effected in the blood, derived 
as it is from the food and the oxygen of the atmo- 
sphere.^ For the due performance of the vital func- 
tions, i. e. transformations, the presence of water in 
the blood is absolutely necessary.^ This is especially 
shown by the proportion of water in healthy blood, 
which, according to Latoisier and Seguin, as 
qnoted. by Liebig,^ is eighty per cent, as well as by 
the enormous proportion which it bears in the che- 
mical composition of all the secretions. Hence it 
is essential that all the food be so changed in 
the stomach as to become equally soluble in water 

* Oiganic Chemistiy in its Amplications to Physiology and 
Pathology, p. 12. 

* Ibid. p. 9. 
« Ibid. p. 8. 

* Ibid. pp. 3, 43, 136, 140, 141, 142, 148, 153 to 159, 180, 
181. 

» Ibid. p. 13. 



58 THIN BI.OOD. 

and thus be capable of entering into tlie circala- 
tion.* 

Whilst froni the food thus changed two elements, 
carbon and hydrogen, are derived, these are carried 
round with the blood and meet with oxygen intro- 
duced at the lungs and through the skin ; and, com* 
bining with it in those places, carbonic acid gas and 
the vapour of water are formed and expelled £rom 
the body, one part of the oxygen mingling with the 
carbon to form the gas, and the other part of it with 
the hydrogen to form the water .^ Now if sufficient 
supply of carbon and hydrogen be not taken in the 
shape of nutriment and drink to meet the supply of 
oxygen afforded by the atmosphere, death by starva- 
tion or chronic disease takes place. Of this Liebig 
says .:B 

** The time which is required to cause death by starvatioii 
depends on the amount of fat in the body, on the degree of 
exerdM, as in labour and exertion of anjr kind, on the tempe- 
rature of the air, and finally, on tk$ presence or absence of water. 
Through the skin and lungs there escapes a certain quantity of 
water, and as the presence of water is essential to Hie contvnuanee 
of the vital motion»t ils dissipation hastens death. Cases have 
occurred in which a fiill supply of water being accessible to the 
su£ferer, death has not occurred until after the lapse of twenty 



> Liebig,p. 108, 109. 
f Ibid. p. IS. 
• Ibid. p. 27. 



THIN BLOOD. 59 

days. In one case life was sustained in this way for a period 
of sixty days."^ 

This certainly does not look as if the water had 
impoverished the blood. But further : according to 
the same authority, this same " thinning '' water is 
absolutely necessary in chronic disease, at least the 
want of it is a chief cause of death in them. Liebig 
tells us in the very next paragraph, 

** In all chronic diseases death is produced by the same cause 
as in starvation, viz. the chemical action of the atmosphere. 
When those substances are wanting, whose function in the 
oiganism is to support the process of respiration ; when the 
diseased organs are incapable of performing their proper func- 
tion of producing these substances; when they have lost the 
power of transforming the food (in which water so materially 
aids) into that shape in which it may, by entering into combi- 
nation with the oxygen of the air, protect the system from its 
influence, then the substance of the organs themselves, the fat 

^ RoNDXLET {De PiscUmSy Book i. cap, xii.) speaks of marine 
a-Tiinialii that can live on water alone. He observed a fish that 
lived during three years in a vase full of spring water, and 
which nevertheless grew to such a size that the vase became too 
small for it. This phenomenon is also observed in the gold 
fishes of China. This however will not prove that animals can 
be nourished by water alone, since it almost always contains 
organic matters dissolved, though in small quantity, as may be 
shewn by the formation of green mould (Pribstlbt's green 
matter,) in the midst of clear spring water. 



60 THIN BLOOD. 

of the bodj, the tuhBtance of the musdes, the neryes and the 
brain are unavoidabljr consumed." 

From all this we learn that the presence of water 
in the blood tends to quicken those transformations 
of the blood in which the act of life essentially con* 
sists. Moreover we learn that if, whilst the elements 
carbon and hydrogen are being freely and rapidly 
formed from the aliment> the body is placed in such 
a condition as to obtain a good amount of oxygen to 
combine with them, a vivid degree of vitality is im- 
parted to the entire organism, and the strides of 
chronic disease and of death are arrested. 

Now these are precisely the states brought about 
by the water treatment. The very first of its efi^cts 
is to produce appetite ; many patients being actually 
ashamed of the quantity they eat, or are inclined to 
eat. Whilst carbon and hydrogen are thus largely 
formed by food, a proportionate quantity of oxygen 
is made to be taken in by means of exercise ; for as 
the number of respirations regulates the quantity of 
oxygen inspired, and as these are more frequent in 
exercise, the result is the presence of a lai^ quantity 
of that vivifying gas to meet and combine with the 
large quantity of carbon and hydrogen supplied firom 
the aliment, that is, the solid food and water. The 
results of this more vivid vital state are to remove 
the obstructions and interruptions of the organs above 



THIN BLOOD. 61 

mentioned, and tbi^ to restore secretions ; to produce 
more rapid transmutations, and thus to renew the 
previously vitiated blood ; and, by the gradual sub- 
stitution of healthier blood, to cause a deposition of 
healthier solids. And we submit that none of these 
results give the slightest indication of impoverished 
biood.1 

We have entered into these physiological explana- 
tions in order to shew the laical reader how much and 
how little he should rely on the loose off-hand asser- 
tions of his professional friend, from whom some 
rationale of the so-called '* thinning of the blood " 
may reasonably be expected. Be that fluid thinned 
or not, the Water Cure has the results above men- 
tioned, and we might content ourselves by referring 
to the signs, in the complexion alone, of those who 

* A writer of large quantities of ^ domestic medicine/' and 
^ best methods of invigorating life,*' and who has recently sent 
forth some of the vilest English on the Water Cure, states in 
the course of its pages that Libbio is of opinion that ^ drinking 
much water breaks down the red globules of the blood V* But 
be gives no chapter and verse for this, which indeed would be 
a piece of impudence only exceeding the assertion itself, for the 
reader of Liebig's work, so often quoted in these pages, will 
seek in vain, from title page to " Finis/* a single word from 
which such an opinion can even be inferred. It were well if 
they who will publish bad grammar would at least render it 
digestible by sprinkling some- of the salt of truth upon it. 



62 THIN BLOOD. 

have tried it, of redder and richer blood drculatii^ 
\?here for years it had ceased to diculate, bong con- 
gested on some internal organs, there cansing obstmc* 
tion of function. To hear the solemn trash vented 
on this matter of the blood, one might imagine that 
water were a thing abhorrent to the human organism, 
and to be drunk only when all drugs had failed, or 
not even then. Whereas we are told by a high 
physiological authority that " water constitutes four- 
fifths of the weight of the animal tissues, and without 
it they are wholly insusceptible of vitality ."9 And 
LiEBiG states^ that 6361 parts of anhydrous fibrine, 
(i. e. fibrine deprived of all water,) are united with 
30,000 parts of water in muscular fibre or in blood." 
With these two data the laical reader and his medical 
"prompter will be the less astonished to hear, from 
good authority also, that water actually assists in 
the formation of the solid parts of the body. Count 
Rum FORD announced this long ago,^ and Pereira 
holds the same opinion.^ Bostan likewise remarks 
that ''water is the principal source of vegetation, 
itself the source of all animal life, that it acts on the 

' MuLLBR, Elements of Physiology, p. 7. 

* Organic Chemistry in its application to Agriculture and 
Physiology. 

* EssHys, ToUi. p. 194, 5th edition, 1800. 

' Elements ofMateriaMedica and Therapeutics, vol. i. p.69. 

6 



THIN BLOOD. 63 

animal both by its admixture with atmospheric air, 
(as in respiration and by the skin,) and by its presence 
in the digestive canal, where it acts directly by aiding 
in the renovation and growth of the individual"^ 
We daily behold the muscles of patients acquiring 
increased volume and firmness under the operation 
of the Water Cure, and the exercise they are enabled 
to take very soon after commencing it tells of anything 
rather than the helplessness that attends impoverished 
blood and attenuated soHds. The first surgeon in 
Europe, Dieffenbach of Berlin, recently stated 
that, in amputating limbs after accidents, he inva- 
riably found the severed muscles of those who had 
been treated by water and were habitual water 
drinkers, of a much more vivid red colour, of greater 
compactness and more contractile than, in any other 
individuals. 

But the whole assertion regarding thin blood 
proceeds on grounds that betray intense ignorance 
both of physiology and of the Water Cure. It sup- 
poses that the whole water imbibed enters into and 
remains in the circulating blood quasi water, that no 
chemical transformation of it takes place in the body 
at all ; — this is ignorance of physiology. And it 
supposes that all who are treated by water are told 
to drink the same, and that a large quantity of water, 

^ Coins El^mentaire d*Hjgiene, T. L p. 288. 



64 THIN BLOOD. 

without disciiminatioii of the indmdual cases of 
disease presented ; — this is ignoranoe of the Water 
Cure. So between the horns of this compound igno- 
rance, and of wilful, interested misrepresentation, 
we leave the declaimers about the " thinning of the 
blood." 



2. ''The Water Treatment exhausts the 



ANIMAL heat." 



From this very absurd proposition, we might, as 
in the former instance, appeal to the patients who 
have been treated at Malvern. The great majority 
of them arrive here with the skin so exquisitely alive 
to any, the smallest decrease of temperature, that, in 
some cases, we found fires blaadng in their rooms in 
the month of August. The same sensitiveness is 
testified, and indeed maintained, by the accumulation 
of flannel, silk, and soft leather, in which they are 
clothed on their arrival here. How is this to be ac- 
counted for 7 And how is it to be explained that, 
after a longer or shorter trial of the Water Cure, 
these same patients go out into all weathers, in early 
morning and at night, throw aside their multiplied 
under clothing, and defy rain and snow, and keen 
frost ? We propose, in answer, to turn to the pages 



HEAT OF THE BODY. 65 

of an authority which our medical brethren will 
scarcely gainsay. 

Referring again to the doctrine of Liebig, given 
when addressing ourselves to the question of '' thin 
blood," and which makes the vital activity consist in 
the transformations of the elements of the food into 
the blood, this again into the soHds and secretions, 
and these again into blood, containing carbon and 
hydrogen, to be consumed by the oxygen of the 
atmosphere ; — ^we find in the work of the same 
learned author, that the source of animal heat is at- 
tributed to the same process of consumption of the 
carbon and hydrogen of the food by the oxygen of 
the atmosphere. He says,^ 

** The mutual action between the elements of the food and 
the oxjgen, conveyed by the circulation of the blood to any 
part of the body, is the source of animal heat." 

This being estabhshed, let us next ask by what 
means this heat is maintained under varying circum- 
stances ? And let the same author answer ; 

** In the animal body the food is the fuel ; with a proper 
supply of oxygen we obtain the heat given out during its oxida- 
tion or combustion. In winter, when we take exercise in a 
cold atmosphere, and when consequently the amount of in- 

^ Organic Chemistry in its Applications to Physiology and 
Pathology, p. 17. 

F 



66 HEAT OF THE BODY. 

spired oxygen increases, the necessitjr for food containing car- 
bon and hydrogen increases in the same ratio ; and by gratify- 
ing the appetite thus excited, 100 obtain the moit efficient protec- 
tion against the most piercing cold. A starring man is soon 
frozen to death ; and every one knows that the animals of prey 
in the arctic regions far exceed in yoracity those of the torrid 
cone. 

'' In cold and temperate dimates, the air, which incessantly 
strives to consume the body, urges man to laborious efforts, in 
order to furnish the means of resistance to its action, while, in 
hot climates, the necessity of labour to provide food is far less 
urgent. 

'* Our clothing is merely an equivalent for a certain amount 
of food. The more warmly we are clad, the less urgent be- 
comes the appetite for food, because the loss of heat by cooling, 
and consequently the amount of heat to be supplied by the 
food, is diminished. 

** If we were to go naked, like certain savage tribes, or if in 
hunting or fishing we were exposed to the same degree of cold 
as the Samoyedes, we should be able with ease to consume ten 
pounds of flesh, and perhaps a dozen of tallow candles into the 
bargain, daily, as warmly-clad travellers have related with asto- 
nishment of these people. 

" According to the preceding expositions, the quantity of 
food is regulated by the number of respirations, by the tem- 
perature of the air, and by the amount of heat given off to the 
surrounding media." ' 

To apply this. Our ^^warmly-clad" patients come 
to Malvern without appetite, and afraid of the 

» Op. cit. p. 21 . 



HEAT OF THE BODY. 67 

slightest cold air. We subject them to the action 
of cold air by causing them to throw off their warm 
clothing : we further subject them to the action of 
cold water applied to the skin in the shape of baths ; 
— sady lo ! in a few days they get an appetite ! How 
this comes to pass, let the above quoted paragraphs 
say. We defy the whole medical fraternity to dis- 
prove the truths they contain. 

Well, then ; behold the patient with an appetite, — 
in other words, with the capability of suppl3dng car- 
bon and hydrogen abundantly to the blood ; behold 
him taking exercise, and thus augmenting the num- 
ber of his respirations, — in other words, supplying 
oxygen to meet the carbon and hydrogen which his 
appetite affords ; behold, in consequence of the mu- 
tual action of these elements, an increased rapidity 
of supply and waste, of vital activity and chemical 
combustion, — and therefore an augmented 

AMOUNT of animal HEAT. 

But it may be said that all this applies only to the 
operation of external cold, and affords no argument 
against the assertion that the drinking of cold water 
abstracts the animal heat. This is true, as far as 
the mere withdrawal of heat is concerned : but the 
ultimate effect on the increase of food taken, and of 
oxygen consumed, and therefore of animal heat ge- 
nerated, still holds. Hear Liebig again. 

F 2 



68 HEAT OF THE BODY. 

^ The cooling of the body, by whatever cauae it may be 
produced, increases the amount of food necessary. The mere 
exposure to the open air, in a carriage, or on the deck of a 
ship, by increasing radiation or Taporization, increases the loss 
of heat, and compels us to eat more than usual. The $ame is 
true of those toho are accustomed to drink large quantuies of cold 
water, which is given off ai the temperature of the body, 98*5*. 
It increases the appetite, and persons of weak constitution find it 
necessary, by continued exerciu, to supply to the system the oscygen 
required to restore the heat abstracted by the cold water," ^ 

What can be more confirmatorj of the philoso- 
phical principles, on which the Water Cure proceeds, 
than this proposition of so justly distinguished a 
writer ? And every word of it is practically proved 
on these Malvern hills, where, by exercise in the 
open air, after the various processes of the treatment 
and drinking water, the capabilities of taking food 
and of resisting cold, are gained for those who here- 
tofore possessed neither. 

To hear the absurdities uttered on this subject, 
one might be led to imagine that the evolution of 
animal heat was a process carried on to a very scanty 
degree in the human body, and that the quantity of 
it generated in twenty-four hours in an adult man, 
would be utterly expended on the water of the shal- 
low and hip-baths taken in that period. The non- 
professional reader will, therefore, be surprised at the 

» Op. cit. p. 24. 



HEAT OF THE BODY. 59 

following statement made on accurate experiments 
undertaken by natural philosophers of the highest 
character. 

** According to the experiments of Dbsprbtz, 1 oz. of carbon 
eTolyes, during its combustion, as much heat as would raise the 
temperature of 105 oz. of water at 32® (the freezing point) to 
167*, that is, by 135 degrees; in all, therefore, 105 times 
135®= 14207 degrees of heat. Consequently, the 13*9 oz. of 
carbon, which are daily converted into carbonic acid in the 
body of an adult, evolve 13*9x14207^=107477*3 degrees of 
heat. This amount of heat is sufficient to raise the tempera- 
ture of 1 oz of water by that number of degrees, or from 32® 
to 197509-3®; or to cause 136*8 lbs. of water at 32® to boil; or 
to heat 370 lbs. of water to 98*5® (the temperature of the 
human body;) or to convert into vapour 24 lbs. of water at 
98*5® ! If we now assume that the quantity of water vaporized 
through the skin and lungs in twenty-four hours amounts to 
48 oz. (3 lbs.) then there will remain, after deducting the ne- 
cessary amount of heat, 146380*4 degrees of heat, which are 
dissipated by radiation, by heating the expired air, and in the 
exonementitious matters.^' ^ 

1 Lixsro. Op. cit. p. 34. The quantity of carbon (13*9 oz.) 
stated is calculated, from the analysis of all the aliment taken 
in twenty-four hours, by a company of the body-guard of the 
Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt, consisting of eight hundred 
and fifty-five men. It was composed of beef, pork, potatoes, 
peas, beans, lentils, sour krout, green vegetables, bread in soup, 
salt, onions, leeks, fat, and vinegar : in all containing, after 
analysis, for each man, 13*9 ounces of carbon daily. 



70 . HEAT OF THE BODY. 

Why here is heat generated by one indiyidual in 
twenty-fonr hours^ almost sufficient to boil the water 
in which he bathes, and that which he drinks ! And 
yet persons calling themselves educated medical 
practitioners and physiologists, put on an anxious 
look as they mouth about the Water Cure ** ex- 
hausting the animal heat !" Quousque tandem^ &c. ? 

Should, howeyer, the reader desire to learn the 
most effectual way of destroying the power of gene- 
rating animal heat, let him pursue the plan which 
so many shivering patients who come to Malvern have 
followed. Let him drink spirits and wine, eat con- 
diments, swallow purgatives, and especially mercu- 
rials, take '^ a course of iodine,'' and, as an occa- 
sional interlude, lose a little blood ; and we stake 
our reputation that he will shiver to his heart's con- 
tent, and find himself many degrees lower in the 
scale of Fahrenheit than cold water, cool air, early 
rising, and exercise can possibly place him. 



3. " The Water Cure destroys the Tone 
OF the Stomach." 

Here is another piece of ad captandum nonsense, 
emitted to catch the fears of the community. 



TONE OF THE STOMACH. 71 

Is it the cold of the water imbibed iithich destroys 
the tone ? How then comes it to be given, by uni- 
yersal consent, in fevers, where the tone of the 
stomach is abeady low enough ? Is there a physi- 
cian in these days bold enough to assert that warm 
water destroys the tone of the stomach less than 
cold? Where is the tone of the stomach in gout? 
Yet, from Heyden^ downwards, eold water is the 
recognized beverage of gouty persons. Dr. Pereira 
tells us that the drinking cold water " facilitates re- 
covery from epilepsy, hysteria, and fainting, and 
alleviates gastric pain and spasm ;" and further, that 
''large draughts of cold water have sometimes caused 
the expulsion of intestinal worms ;''^ — effects which, 
we submit, it could not have produced, had the cold 
water had the result of " destroying the tone of the 
stomach.'' He also states, that " ice-cold water, or 
even ice, when swallowed, causes contraction (cer- 
tainly indicative of increased tone) of the gastric 
blood-vessels, and thereby checks or stops sangui- 
neous exhalation (certainly indicative of decreased 
tone) from the mucous membrane of the stomach ;" 
that on. taking ice, or ice-cold water, " temporary 

> Arthritifiigum Magnum; a PhjEical Discourse on the 
WonderAil Virtues of Cold Water. London, 1724. 

* Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, toI. i. 
P8ge32* 



72 TONE OF THE STOMACH. 

contraction of the alimentaiy canal is produced: 
that a feeling of warmth follows that of cold in the 
pit of the stomachy and quickly extends over the 
whole hodj, (so it doesno^ exhaust the animal heat !) 
accelerating somewhat the circulation, and promoting 
the secretions of the alimentary canal, of the kidneys, 
and the skin.*' ^ Finally, the same elaborate writer 
says of cold water, that ^' it is a yital itimuhu^ and 
is more essential to our existence than aliment." ^ 
In all which we are at a loss for any signs of destruc- 
tion of the stomach's tone. 

Is it by dilution of the gastric juice that cold water 
impairs the tone of the stomach 1 The last dted 
author seems to think the affirmative, when he says, 
" Water serves at least two important purposes in 
the animal economy ; it repairs the loss of the aque- 
ous parts of the blood, caused by the action of the 
secreting and exhaling organs ; and it is a solvent of 
various alimentary substances, and therefore assists 
the stomach in the act of digestion, though, if taken 
in very large quantities^ it may have an opposite 
effect, by diluting the gastric juice" < Unfortu- 
nately for the truth of this proviso, with reference to 
the Water Cure, no medical man practising it as he 
ought to do, would prescribe cold water to be drunk 
" in very large quantities" at a meal, nor for two 
1 Op. dt. p. 34. * lb. pp. 68 and 69« 



TONE OF THE STOMACH. 73 

hoim at least afterwards ; on the contrary, not more 
than a small tumbler should be taken whilst eating. 
And, as regards copious drinking of it when the 
stomach is empty,— in the early morning, for in- 
stance, when it is especially recommendable, — we 
have the best authority for saying that no gastric 
juice at all is secreted in the stomach, untQ the na- 
tural stimulus of nutritious aliment is applied to its 
cavity,^ and that therefore no dilution of it can 
take place, and no ^diminution of tone thence be 
caused. 

Lastly, is it by its bulk that cold water impairs 
the tone of the stomach ? If the six or eight tum- 
blers of water, imbibed by a person before breakfast, 
all remained in the stomach unabsorbed, its bulk 
would probably irritate the stomach to the point of 
vomiting, and the exhaustion of the stomach subse- 
quent on such effort, frequently repeated, might in- 
duce atony of its coats, as repeated vomiting firom 
any cause tends to do. But this cannot take place 
in the course of the Water Cure ; first, because its 
practice does not countenance the taking of more 
than one tumbler at a time, and insists on exercise 
in the intervals between each ; and, secondly, be- 

1 Case of Alexis St. Martin, in Dr. Beaumont's ^ Experi- 
menu and ObservoHons on the Gasirio Juice and the PhyMogy 
qfDiffestknh" p. 96, Edinbuiigh, 1838. 



74 TONE OF THE STOMACH. 

cause it is well ascertained that the absorption of 
water by the stomach is a /surprisingly rapid pro- 
cess, '* all drinks/' according to Dr. Beaumont^ 
" being immediately absorbed^ none remaining on 
the stomach ten minutes after bemg swaUowed." » 

We heard a medical practitioner, who had seen a 
case similar to that of St. Martin, (a perforation 
from the surface of the belly into the cavity of the 
stomach,) say, a short time ago, " that the sucking 
up of water by the coats of the stomach, resembled 
the manner in which rain is taken up by the burning 
sands of a desert." ^d all physiological investi- 
gation proves that the empty stomach has amazing 
vivacity of function in this particular. For the rest, 
we are contented to refer again to the words of 
LiEBiG, (at page 68,) that *' large quantities of cold 
water increase the appetite :" and to the daily ex-» 
hibition of this fact in our patients. And we there- 
fore contend that that which augments the appe- 
tite of the stomach cannot he deetructive of its. 
tone. 

Modem pathology has placed beyond all dpubt, 
the important fact, that atony of the stomach is in- 
variably the consequence of long-continued irritation 
of its nerves and mucous lining. There is no more 
certain way of producing and maintaining such irri- 

> Op. cit. p. 99. 



TONE OF THE STOMACH. 75 

tation than the taking of improper food, alcoholic 
liquors, and medicines of any kind. We say of any 
kind, for even those which are called *' sedatives/' 
cause mucous inflammation of the stomach, of a 
character precisely similar to that induced hy spiri- 
tuous liquors, as the learned and accurate Dr. 
Craigie informs us.^ And, as regards the long 
array of purgatives and tonics, so commonly em- 
ployed to palliate the consequences of improper food, 
the very epithets they hear imply an augmented and 
irritative condition of the nerves, as well as the 
mucous memhrane of the gveat organ of digestion. 
For the rationale of their irritating action, the reader 
is referred to a work recently published by one of the 
aathors.^ In the meantime allusion is made to the 
subject here for the purpose of leading the reader 
to the facts ; 1st. that the history of nine-tenths of 
the cases submitted to the Water Cure in Malvern, 
tells of the previous alternations of improper food and 
medicines : 2nd. that all these give the undoubted 
signs of chronic irritation of the stomach : and 3rd. 
that this organ is invariably found in a state of atony 
as regards appetite and the power of digesti9n. 
Thus it requires no action of water to destroy the 

> Elements of the Practice of Physic, vol. i. p. 872. 
* Stomach Complaints and Drug Diseases, their Causes, 
Consequences, and Cure, hy J. Wilson, M.D., port i. passim. 



76 DROPSY. 

tone of the stomach : that is abeadj done before the 
patients come under the water discipline^ — ^in short, 
they have recourse to it in order to regain the tone 
in question. And, however astounding some of our 
medical readers may consider it, they do regain that 
tone : the appetite for breakfast, after sundry tum- 
blers of cold water and a walk, bearing ample testi- 
mony to the interesting fact. It were well for man- 
kind had they no more effectual way of destroying 
the tone of the stomach than by drinking water ! * 



4. ''The Water Cure produces Dropsy:" 
and, 

5. '' The Water Cure injures the Kidneys 
by inducing excessive action of them." 

We place these opinions in juxta-position, in order 
that the reader may form some idea of the anilities 
which mere prejudiced opposition is capable of utter- 
ing. Here are two states : one supposing a want of 
action in the kidneys, the other an excess of action 
in them. How in the name of logic can both ac- 
knowledge an identical cause ? Yet both are gravely 
asserted to arise from drinking water. Our medical 
opponents are dearly in a state of nncertainty in the 



DISEASED KIDNEY. 11 

matter^ some holding by the retention of the water 
in the body, others by its too rapid exit therefirom. 
N<m nobis has componere lites. We presume that 
they ** agree to differ/' finding that one opinion acts 
upon those who have the fear of dropsy before their 
eyes^ and the other upon those whose kidneys are 
their especial care. We will endeavour to place either 
class at its ease on these points. 

Two kinds of dropsy are described by all medical 
writers on the subject : that which arises from in- 
flammatory, or some analogous action in the seat of 
the dropsical collection, (the chest, belly, or the 
cells underneath the skin :) and that which ensues 
upon obstruction of the circulation by reason of dis- 
ease of the heart, the lungs, the liver, the spleen or 
some of the large veins of the body. Of late years, 
it has been shown by Bright,^ Ghristison,^ 
Gregory,^ Osborne,^ Martin Solon,^ and 
Rayer,^ to be connected in some instances with a 

* Reports of Medical Cases. London, 1827. 

* On Dropsy from Disease of the Kidney. Edin. Med. and 
Slug. Journal, toI. xxxii. p. 262. 1829. 

* Edinburgh Med. and Suig. Journal, toI. zxzvi. p. 315, 
1831. 

* On Dropsies, &c. &c. London, 1835. 
» De rAlbuminurie. Paris, 1838. 

* Txait^ des Maladies des Reins, &c. Paris, 1839-40. 



78 DROPSY. 

particular organic disease of the kidney : of which 
we shall hj and by say more. 

With whatever condition, however, of the drop- 
sical part the disease may be allied, one fact is in- 
variable in the history of dropsy, viz. the diminished 
action of the kidneys, and therefore the diminished 
quantity of fluid evacuated by them ; a diminution, 
of which patients in the Water Cure, we venture 
to say, never yet complained. Referring to the 
dropsy connected with local inflammation, we find 
the greater number of authors attributing it to sup- 
pression of the perspiration, or of any of the natural 
secretions and discharges, and to the driving in of 
any eruption. Referring also to the dropsy de- 
pendent on disease of the heart, lungs, liver, &c., 
we And all medical writers explaining this by the 
stoppage of the circulation in consequence of ob- 
structions in those organs, and the subsequent con- 
gestion of blood and effusion - of its watery parts in 
some of the cavities. But in all the treatises on 
this disease, from Hippocrates^ downwards, the 
medical or the non-professional reader will seek in 
vain for the use, or even the abuse of water as a 
cause. It is true that many of the older writers 
tortured their dropsical patients (who are always 
thirsty) by forbidding liquids ; but every practitioner 
* Aphorism. 3 to 7 ; et Opera, passim. 



DISEASED KTDNEY. 79 

is now well aware of the absurdity, and even injury 
of the restriction, which, however, still obtains as 
correct with very many of the laity. Upon this 
erroneous and injurious notion, the opinion that 
''water drinking causes dropsy" is calculated to 
play, as they who emit it well know. But would 
any educated practitioner venture, in a case of dropsy, 
to act upon such a notion, and debar his patient 
from as much water as he chose to drink ? We opine 
that he would be pointed at as an ignoramus of the 
first water, and scouted by his brethren for his utter 
want of scientific and practical knowledge. If, then, 
the free taking of water be not conducive to the in^ 
crease of dropsical disease, when the kidneys and 
8kin are carrying off liquids imperfectly, how should 
it produce dropsy when both the kidneys and skin 
are acting freely — ^nay, carrying off more than the 
usual quantity of fluids by virtue of the exercise en- 
joined in the Water Cure ? The proposition carries 
absurdity on the face of it. 

But we further maintain, that in those cases wherein 
the dropsy is attributable to obstruction of circulation 
in the liver, spleen, or sweetbread, the copious drink- 
ing of water, aided by the other applications of the 
Water Cui'e, is a powerful agent in the cure of 
dropsy. If there be a diseased state which our 
plan of treatment is more especially calculated to re- 



80 BEOP9Y. 

moTe» it is to be found in that obstruction of the 
liyer and other solid oi^|;an8 of digestion, whidi^ in 
the majoritj of instances, gives rise to dropsy. Of 
the removal of such obstruction, we have already 
given' the rationale. And inasmuch as in the case 
before us, the dropsy is attacked in its source and 
the torpid liver, &c., put into action, we have good 
reason to prefer the water treatment before that which 
only aims at stimulating the kidneys by all kinds 
of irritating diuretics, leaving the original seat of the 
mischief in the liver to take its chance, or, possibly, 
to be deteriorated by those very diuretics (calomel, 
colchicum, squill, and so forth) applied to the 
stomach. 

This leads us to the consideration of that species 
of dropsy which is connected with the organic dis- 
order of the kidneys denominated *' granular dis- 
ease," and described by Bright, Christison, and 
others. When it is alleged that the Water Cure 
causes disease of the kidneys, we are not aware that 
particular allusion has been made to this " granular" 
condition; — very probably, the wiseacres who pro- 
nounce the opinion never heard of such a condition. 
But as medical writers have never yet spoken of any 
other state of the kidneys as productive of dropsy, 
we conclude that the disease in question is the one 
intended to be seen through the haze of prejudiced 

10 



DISEASE OF THE KIDNEY. 81 

ignorance which surrounds this professional opinion. 
If the authors who have pubHshed on this subject 
are to be rdied on, (and they comprise the most re- 
spectable names in medicine^) the causes of the com- 
plaint in question are, I, suppressed action of the 
skin ; 2, drinking of spirituous liquors ; 3, the em- 
ployment of stimulant diuretics ; and 4, courses of 
mercury. But none of them allude in any way to 
copious dilution with water as a cause. 

With regard to the suppressed action of the shiny 
it can scarcely obtain in the Water Cure, where the 
increased action of that important surface forms a 
prominent feature, and wherein sweating is a prin- 
cipal agent. On this last, indeed, Dr. Osborne 
places his greatest reliance in the cure of dropsy :^ 
asserting that '^ sweating being accomplished, the 
disease, if free from complications, never fails to be 
removed." ^ 

Neither do spirituous liquors figure in the Water 
Cure, which may, therefore, ^pioad hoc, be declared 
gnildess of causing ren4 dropsy. Why do not 
our medical brethren, who utter warnings about 
water and dropsy, raise their voices On the subject 
of spirits and dropsy 7 for all the writers above cited 
speak of spirit drinking as the most fertile cause of 
this kind of dropsical disorder, which, according to 

» Op.cit.p.44* a Ib.p, 61. 

G 



82 DISEASE OF THE KIDNEY. 

Dr. Bright^ destroys not less than five hundred 
persons annually in London alone. 

Then, as regards the employment of stimulant 
diuretics, they enter not into the simple pharmaco- 
poeia of the Water Cure. Dr. Osborne states, that 
these medicines, as squills, cream of tartar, and even 
the diuretic salts, are not guiltless in contributing to 
the production of this disease of the kidney ; and 
that by over-stimulating the kidneys, they become 
the means of stopping the urinary secretion, and in- 
ducing the renal disease and its consequences.^ 
And Dr. Gregory, in his report of cases,^ says, 
'* that the most remarkable diminutions in the uri- 
nary secretions took place after the administration 
of squills and cream of tartar :*' evidently pointing 
to their effect in exasperating the malady. Further, 
in quoting these authors, it is necessary to remark 
that they speak of the '' stimulant diuretics,'' and 
particularize some of them, as above. The laicd 
reader will understand the force of this when he 
learns that diuretics are classed by physicians into 
the '^ aqueous" and the *' stimulant," the latter in- 
cluding the saline, the acrid, the oleaginous, &c.' 
It is not probable that accurate writers should have 

1 Op. cit. p. 34. 

' Ed. Med. and Surg. Journal, ubi supra, 

' Pereira's Elements of Materia Medica, vol. i. p. 200. 



RENAL DROPSY. 83 

passed over the *' aqueous" diuretics had they been 
detectable as a source of dropsy from the cause in 
qaestion ; the rather asy besides simple water^ these 
include the infusions of sunple herbs and grains, 
copiously imbibed. So that, taking authority of a 
high character, that terrible agent, water, does not 
produce dropsy so frequently as those pleasant me- 
dicmes, squill, oolchicum, &c. 

Lastly, a reviewer in the Edinburgh Medical and 
Surgical Journal,^ (supposed to be Professor 
Ghristison,) accuses mercury of causing diseased 
kidney leading to dropsy, and alludes to Dr. 
Blackall's observations to the same effect. He 
says : " Two decided examples, if not more, we 
have seen, in which no doubt could be entertained 
as to the influence of this mineral in producing the 
morbid degeneration of the kidney. Mercury seems 
in this case to act very much like other excessive sti- 
mulants, and by over-exdting the glandular part of 
the kidneys, to lay the foundation of the morbid 
change." 

Sir AsTLEY Cooper also classes mercury as a 
not infrequent cause of dropsy of the belly, speaking 
of it in that agency as ** by no means an extraordi- 
nary case.' 



»»« 



1 No. czzviii. p. 199. * Lancet, April 3, 1824. 

G 2 



84 RHEUMATISM AND WATER. 

Still we have nothing of water in all this ; and 
mercury is assuredly no part of the Water Cure. 
The fact is, and educated medical men know it, that 
when a large quantity of water is introduced into the 
circulation, it passes ofiP hy the skin in the shape of 
sweat, if external heat he applied : or hy the kidneys, 
if the surface i)e kept cool, this heing a process of 
filtering only, and unaccompanied hy the stimulation 
which marks the operation of saline and acrid 
diuretics, whose aim is to force the kidneys at the 
expense of other organs. It requires no depth of 
reflection to conclude which is the more Hkely to 
hring on renal dropsy. 

"We may add, hy way of rider, that Dr. Copland 
enumerates ** the drastic operation of purgatives" 
among the causes of dropsy :^ hut does not place 
copious dilution in the Hst. 



6. "The Water Cure causes Rheumatism." 

If so, the dogma on which Homoeopathy is hased, 

and which asserts that the same remedy which cures 

will cause a disease, is correct. For in no complaint 

hitherto suhmitted to the Water Cure are its cura- 

4 Dictionary, p. 627. Asim Dntpsy cf the Abdomen, 



RHEUMATISM AND WATER. 85 

tire effects more decided^ and even surprising, than 
in rheumatism^ whether acute or chronic. But the 
comfortable prejudices in favour of abundance of 
flannel^ a wilderness of fur» and the atmosphere of 
ovens^ stamps the promulgation of this dread of 
rheumatism with the only ingenuity that it can fairly 
claim : for daily ^and hourly experience leave it with- 
out a vestige of foundation. To obtain rheumatism 
by the joint operation of cold and moisture, two con- 
ditions are necessary; first, that the individual 
should be predisposed by a certain irritative condi- 
tion of the digestive organs, especially the liver, and 
of the nervous system ; secondly, that evaporation 
of the moisture from the surface of the body should 
be unimpeded, and the individual in a state of rest. 
Place a man with sound digestive organs between 
damp sheets, covered by dry blankets and counter- 
pane, and let the whole be arranged so as to forbid 
the passage of air underneath the bed-clothes, and it 
is altogether impossible for him to become rheumatic. 
In such case the warmth of the body quickly trans- 
forms the damp of the sheets into vapour, which 
being confined about the skin engenders an atmo- 
sphere warm enough to satisfy the most comfort- 
loving matron that ever smothered her husband with 
infinite coverings. More than this ; the consequence 
is not rheumatism, even when there is the predispo- 



86 RHEtTMATISM AND WATER. 

sition in the digestive organs ; witness stage-ooach- 
men and postboys, who invariably suffer their under- 
coat to be well-soaked with rain before they put on 
the upper dry one kept in reserve: and who, al- 
though given to those ways which irritate the diges- 
tives, neither get cold nor rheumatism by this pro- 
ceeding. The like applies to the well-known habit 
of the Highland shepherds, of ^wringing their under- 
garment out of cold water, and covering all with a 
dry coat, m the best means of keeping themselves 
warm, when they sleep on the mountain-side : yet 
they are not celebrated for their abstinence firom 
whisky, nor for attacks of rheumatism. All that is 
required is, that evaporation of the damp clothing 
by the passage of air should be avoided ; experience 
teaches this, and the reason of it should be evident 
to every medical man. 

On the other hand, let a man's stomach and 
bowels be maintained in a state of irritation by pur- 
gatives, let him, more particularly, be in the habit 
of taking minute or large doses of mercury or iodine, 
it will be found how readily he takes rheumatism 
even by exposure to cold air, not to mention the 
dampness that is its usual concomitant in this island. 
Tet pack the same man in damp sheets, and keep 
all but his face hermeticaUy excluded from the air, 
and though he were brimful of the results of mercury. 



RHEUMATISM AND WATBR. 87 

he nms no more risk (not as much in the ultimate) 
of becoming rheumatic by it than if he were in a bed 
heated by half a dozen warming-pans. It is mere 
idleness to deny this without experience; we have 
seen the fact scores of times : we have never seen 
rheumatism ensue on such treatment ; and we take 
leave to doubt whether the persons with this rheu- 
matic crotchet in their heads have ever tried or 
seen tried the wet sheets or any other portion of the 
Water Cure. 

Would they desire to have other medical authority 
than out's for the harmlessness of cold water and 
damp clothes ? Dr. Heberden> the first physician 
of his day^ says; 

^ In England, few make any doubt of the great danger at- 
tending wet loomB and damp clothes or beds* Is this opinion 
foimded upon experience which hat been suffered to grow vp and 
get strength merely for want of being examined 7 If we inquire 
into the arguments in favour of this notion, we shall hardlj 
find any other than the random conjectures of the sick about 
the cause of their illness, or than their artftillj substituting this 
ongin of it instead of some other, which thej are unwilling to 
own. I haidlj know a distemper, of which at different timeSf 
I have not been told, that it was occasioned hy lying in a damp 
bed or hy sitting in a wet room ; and yet I do not know any one 
which vriU certainly be produced by these causes ; and people fre- 
quent! j expose themselves to such causes without suffering any 
ill«efiect8» * * * It IS a common practice in 



88 RHEtTMATISM AND WATER. 

certain disorders to go to bed at night with the legs or arms 
wrapped in linen cloth soaked in Malvern water ; so that the 
sheets will be in many places as wet as they can be ; and I 
have known these patients and their bed'/ellowt receive no hann 
from a continuance of this practice for many months. Nor can 
it be said, that the Malvern water is more innocent than other 
water might be, on account of any ingredients with which it is 
impregnated ; for the Malvern loater is purer than that of any 
other springs in England, which I ever examined or heard of. 

Is it the coldness of wet linen which is feared ? but shirts 
and sheets, colder than any unfrozen water can be, are safely 
worn and lain in by many persons, who, during a hard firoet, 
neither warm their beds nor their shirts. Or does the danger 
lie in the dampness ? But then how comes it to pass that a warm 
or cold bath and long fomentations can be used without the de- 
struction of those that use them ? Or is it from both together ? 
Yet we have long heard of the thickness and continuance of 
the cold fogs in the north-west of England ; but have never 
yet been told of any certain ill effect which they have upon 
those who live in them/* * 

. We trust there is no imbecility in deferring to the 
opinion of so great a name as Heberden rather than 
to the hap-hazard announcements of men who^ how- 
ever fashionable their practice^ are^ in the matter of 
scientific and practical acutenes9> unfit to unloose 
the latchets of his shoes. Another great name in 
medicine^ Dr. Beddoes> may be quoted for the 
purpose of justifying us in this scepticism of the 

' Medical Transactions, vol. ii. 



RHEUMATISM AND WATER. 89 

Talne of certain medical opinions. One of his cor- 
respondents had mentioned to. him a case in which 
" a patient had received almost entire ease from cold 
water> and the inflammation seemed to he held in 
cheeky when firom the anxiety of friends another (a 
fiishionahle practitioner) was called in.'' 

** His duapprobation of our practice,'^ says the account, '* was 
immediately manifested by the preference he expressed for the 
old plan of treatment by emollient applications and poultices, 
mingled with affected admiraUcn of the courage which had 
puthed to euch extent the trial qf a new remedy!^ *' From part 
of the following sentence," continues Dr. Bedooes, ** may one 
not suppose that the eye of a keen observer had been caught by 
those members of the medical fraternity, that, without reflec- 
tion or remorse, go on eternally repeating the same vain pro- 
cesses of their art ; and never let slip an occasion of blasting 
by insinuation, the character of a rival, who, to assuage pain 
or preserve life, shall dare depart from precedent ? Est-il une 
fin plus triste (says Rousseau, lettre a M. de Voltaire, Adut 
1756) que oelle d^un mourant...que lea medicina aiseuHnent 
dans son lit a leur aise<, et que les prdtres barbares font avec 
art savourer la mort ?^* The italics are by Dr. Bkddoes.> 

This is sufficiently allied to the present head of 
our inquiry to warrant its introduction here. For 
it is *' the eternal repetition of the same yain pro- 
cesses of their art " which renders so many of the 
medical fraternity incapable of investigating the f€u:t 

* Contributions to Physical and Medical Knowledge, p. 320. 



90 RHEUMATISM AND WATER. 

with regard to the mfluence of the Water Cure either 
in the production or eradication of rheumatism. In 
their minds this disease is irrevocably connected 
with damp, and its treatment with internal stimula- 
tion hj mercurials and emetics, and external stimu- 
lation by heat. But such was once the case with 
the treatment of fever, small-pox, and other eruptiye 
disorders, and the substitution of cold air and drink 
in those diseases was similarly maligned. Tet the 
very men who would now deride the hot treatment 
of fever, cling to the fag-end of that exploded mischief 
in their present mouthing about rheumatism and the 
Water Cure. They would coddle rheumatic fever 
just as other fevers were formerly coddled, the 
patients passing with astounding certainty from their 
hot to their cold bed. So lamentably slow is the 
retreat of error ! so inveterate the prejudices of ig- 
norance! We demand the enumeration of facts, 
hard, telling, indisputable facts. But error will not 
if it could, and ignorance cannot, give them. And in 
the absence of such we must rest upon the facts 
daily passing before our eyes in practice here, and 
which are totally at variance with the opinion that 
the Water Cure, in any of its parts, produces rheu- 
matism. 



crises of the water ct7re. 91 

7. " The crisis induced by the water cure 
is dangerous." 

A yeiy flimsy and feeble writer in the Quarterly 
Bmew for December 1842, dubs this ''word of 
fear" with the last named, prophesying that ''the 
Water Cure will flourish until some person of note 
is crippled by a rheumatic feyer or dead firom a 
carbuncle." The employment of this term " car- 
buncle " as indicative of the crisis, lays bear either 
the gross ignorance of the writer on the subject of 
the Water Cure, since he gives it as the only critical 
result, or the dishonesty of his purpose in thus 
attempting to flx a formidable name on the agglome- 
ration of two or three simple boils. Let us inquire 
what "carbuncle" really is, and what the water boil 
really is. 

"Carbuncle," says Dr. Copland,^ "has very 
generally been confounded with malignant pustule." 
This is so true that, putting aside non-professional 
persons, who evidentiy attach the idea of mortifica- 
tion, &c. to the term, (on which account we presume 
the reviewer employs it,) we venture to say that seven 
out of ten medical men, if asked to define carbuncle, 
would call it " a malignant tumour." The author 
JQst cited offers a distinction between carbuncle and 

1 Dictionary of Practical Medicine, p. 1056. Art Furunouiar 
I>Uease8, 



92 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

common boil by representmg the latter as '^ having 
only a single opening, being smaller and more conical, 
and by several appearing in sncoession." Now, 
although the critical boil of the Water Core some- 
times (by no means always, nor even in the majority 
of instances) has more openings than one and is not 
so conical nor narrow based as a single ordinary boH, 
yet it agrees with the account of this last in appearing 
in more than one place. To reconcile the discrepancy 
and to fix the true character of the water boil, we 
beg to refer, Jirst, to the opinions of Dupuytren* 
and Rayer,^ who describe carbuncle as '' a tumour 
formed by the conglomeration and confluence of 
several boils :" secondly, to the facts announced by 
Dr. Craigie,^ viz. 'carbuncle ^'is accompanied by 
sickness, languor, restlessness, and sleeplessness: 
that the patient generally suffers much headache and 
thirst, and his tongue is loaded with a thick, brown, 
dry fur : that he generally loathes food, and in some 
cases vomits more than once : that he raves, faints," 
&c. &c. ; and lastly, to the predisposing causes of 
carbuncle, which are lai^ down by Dr. Copland,^ 

1 Lectures in the Lancetie Fran^aise for March 1 833. 
^ Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Skin, 
translated by R. Willis, p. 549. 
' Elements of Practice of Physic, vol. i. p. 640. 
♦ Loc. cit. • 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 93 

as consisting in " high, rich^ or gross living, with in- 
sufficient exercise, a ftdl, gross habit of body, and 
neglect of personal cleanHness/' — causes, which, he 
says, " not only predispose, but even more directly 
produce it." 

It so happens that the Water Cure boil is never 
accompaxiied with the constitutional symptoms above 
recited by Craigie ; the patient loses neither sleep 
nor appetite : there is no disorder of the tongue nor, 
by any chance, any vomiting : and delirium and 
fainting are circumstances altogether unknown in its 
history. If any of the patients treated by us at 
Malvern, who have had the crisis of boils, will assert 
that any one, or all of these symptoms of carbuncle, 
usually so called, accompanied such crisis in their 
persons, we are ready to give up the point, and 
allow that the Water Cure boil is of the genuine 
carbuncle species, and of a dangerous character. In 
the meantime, as the like cause generally produces 
the like effect, and as the boil induced by our treat- 
ment does not produce the same symptoms as the 
" carbuncle" of authors, we are justified in denounc- 
ing the dishonest motive displayed in attaching that 
much-feared name to it. 

Further, it so happens that the Water Cure boil, 
so far from bemg connected with '" high, rich, and 
gross living, with insufficient exercise, with gross 
8 



94 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

habit of body, or with neglect of personal cleanli- 
ness/' as is the case with the ** carbuncle" of authors, 
appears, after strict but nutritious dieting, abundant 
exercise, diminution of morbid fulness of habit, and, 
most assuredly, after no neglect of personal cleanli- 
ness, if water applied in all manners can clean the 
human skin, or purify the human ftrame. The 
identity of true carbuncle with the water boil 
thus fails in the comparison of causes, as well as 
of symptomatic effects : neither being traceable to 
the like causes, nor marked by the Uke results. 
Where, then, is the honest motive in maintaining 
their identity ? 

The only point in which they agree is the forma- 
tion of more than one opening, in which case they 
also agree in the more extended base and less coni- 
cal shape than an ordinary boil. But, as we said, 
this is an occawmal occurrence only ; in very many 
instances, none but simple and single boils are pro 
duced, to which it would be as fair to attach the 
name and attributes of " carbuncle,'' as to the lai^r 
species alluded to. What then is the genuine water 
boil about which such a hubbub is made ? It is a 
conglomeration of several simple boils, and in so far, 
according to Dupuytren's and Rayer's definition, 
a carbuncle ; but inasmuch as these are generated 
in, and are indeed the signals of, a body cleansed of 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 95 

its grossness and impurities afler weeks or months 
of wholesome diet^ exercise^ and watery applications, 
and not of a body in all the flash of dietetic iniqui- 
ties> these congregated boils have neither the car- 
boncular discharge, nor are accompanied with the 
severe and dangerous constitutional symptoms at- 
tendant on the genuine carbuncular inflammation. 
Inasmuch, too, as the danger of an external diseased 
point is in exact proportion with the condition of the 
stomach, and other vital organs within, and these 
are invariably put into order before the appearance 
of a crisis of boils, the reason wherefore these latter 
induce no constitutional derangement, and are there- 
fore attended with no danger, whilst the " carbuncle" 
of authors is, vrill be clear to the reader. The water- 
boil of the most extensive kind is only a " carbuncle" 
in the arrangement of the several boils which form 
it ; in all other particulars it is no more a carbuncle 
than an ephemeral pimple on the nose is : nor is 
there any reason why persons — ^great or small — 
should be '* dead from it," as the sapient Quarterly 
reviewer somewhat gleeAilly anticipates.^ 

^ Whoever the writer of the article In the Quarterly Review 
entitled " Brandy and Salt, Homoeopathy, Hydropathy," may 
be, he is certainly neither a learned nor a forcible writer ; but 
he endeavours to supply this deficiency by a copious use of the 
most stale tricks of the most vulgar reviewer. Thus in the 



96 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

** But," we may be told, ** you have quoted a 
case in which death occurred from water boils.'* 
Not so : we denied the chain of causality in that 

title of the article he would have the reader impressed with the 
idea that the juxtaposition of hrandy and salt, honKsopathj, 
and hydropathy, implies also their parrallelism as remedial 
means in disease ; whereas hrandy and salt is one remedy em- 
ployed only in one way, whilst homoeopathy is a new plan of 
employing a vast number of the old medicinal remedies, and 
hydropathy is the systematic employment of water in a great 
variety of ways. Whence it will be perceived that in &ct and 
in candour they have not the remotest connexion with each 
other. But as the object of the reviewer is to bring them all 
under the category of " quackery," on which he perorates, it 
is convenient to make such connexion appear, although this is 
done more coarsely than cunningly. 

But further : by an enunciation of various individual remedies 
which have taken possession of the public mind from time to 
time, such as tar water, Mrs. Stephen^s powder, metallic tractors, 
mustard seed, &c. &c., he strives to place the Water Cure on 
the same level as these wonders of a day. Throughout the 
article he also preaches up the in&llibility and foresight of the 
medical profession, and shows up the gullibility and shortsighted- 
ness of the general public, with reference to these remedies. 
The former he pictures as altogether incapable of adopting any 
remedy without the most accurate and repeated examinations 
of its powers, and therefore as altogether unlikely to be carried 
along by the stream of public opinion in these matters. And 
he closes this part of the subject with these words : '< What 
has been already stated will of itself sufficiently explain how it 



" BRANDY AND SALt" ARTICLE. 97 

instance until all the links of treatment were in- 
serted: and our denial is justified by the proceed- 
ings of the patient up to the time of his application 

IB that the medical profesuon, as a bodj-, are led to form a 
different estimate of the dealers in nostrmns, and proposeiB of 
short cuts to caret from that which is formed by a laige portion 
of the pubhc. The farmer are behind the scenes, and know all 
the eecreU of the pantomime* The latter only see the performances, 
andy where the tricks ate cleverly managed^ it is not very won- 
derful that they should sometimes mistake them for realities,** 

Now, as regards the Water Cure, we would ask what the 
** secrets" are, bejond those which medical education in the 
capabilities of the human bodj imparts to its practisers P Is 
there» can there possibly be as much mystery, juggling, or pan- 
tomimic play in that mode of treatment, as in the method 
which, by the complexity of its agents, and by their prescrip- 
tion in a jargon unintelligible even to Latin scholars, sets at 
defiance all inquiry into its machinery by any one, save the 
few ^^ who are behind the scenes?" Books are published in 
plain English, describing all the processes of the Water Cure, 
how and when they are to be applied : there is no necessity for 
macadamising technicalities, as is the case in works on drug 
medication ; and, if we are to credit our medical brethren, it 
has not even the mysterious power of novelty to recommend it. 
Where then are its pantomimic characteristics ? May we not 
venture the opinion, that the dislike of the Water Cure enter- 
tained by a great part of the medical profession, is based on 
the very fact that it admits the public behind the scenes, 
that it gives no scope for pantomimic tricks, that it trenches 
upon, nay, demolishes all opportunity of, professional craft, 

n 



98 " BRANDY AND SALT" ARTICLE 

to a phTsicuiii, — ^proceedings that would strain the 
organic powers of a much stronger man than he ap- 
pears to have heen. Before we assert what killed 
the patient, let us hear what the physician did. 

and thus lenders " the medical profeanon, as a bodj,** liable 
to the eager questioning of anxiona and suspidous sick- 
ness? And shall we own the judgment which, while it 
seeks to brand so overt a system with the name of quackeiy, 
sees not the &r closer resemblance between that other system 
whose remedial agents are unknown and unknowable by the 
community, and those compounds, the knowledge of which is 
forbidden by the Stamp Office, and hedged about by a 

patent? 

But granting that ^ the medical profession, as a body, are 
behind the scenes, and know all the tricks of the pantomime,** 
what shall be said when we find that, on repeated occasions, 
they have been duped by members of their own body into the 
very belief in panaceas for which the reviewer visits the stupi- 
dity of the laical public ? Yet it were by no means a difficult 
task (though scarcely worth the space) to lay down a minute 
historical sketch of professional delusions regarding the infiil- 
libility of individual remedies quite as complete and monoma- 
niacal in character as any under which the public have at any 
time laboured. And in such case fox-glove might be pitted 
against tor water; Fowler^i Arsenical Solution against Mrs» 
Stephen's powder ; drawing of blood against metalUc tractors^ and 
■o forth. For several jeaxs fox-glove was given, and with 
strongly-asserted success, in diseases of the most opposite cha- 
racter ; but the profession waxed weary of it. Bleeding, with 
caiomel and opium, then composed the heal-all, and all but Im- 



^^ 



'^ 



^Tjarterly review* 99 

^tood, however^ that we by no 

^^s with those practisera of the 

ar to consider a crins of bad* 

efore^ are much given to sti- 



q thereby ; but the remedy, as 

V "v < ^ be mortal. Iodine had a 

V **" That the disease, iodine 

\ t lor a time, and, accord- 

.^anaiy ills ; but it fell, and, as the 

.^uishes another instance of the transitorj 

-ortfalj glory." Prustie acid filled the professional 

.a fot some years ; it 'was applicable in-^ay, and cured — 

all manner of ailments, consumption not excepted. In 1826, 

8ii H. Halford prescribed broom tea for the Duke of York, and 

straightway its Latin name {Cytisus scoparius) was detectable in 

almost eveiy prescription written. Not to prolong the list, we 

may just add, that some time last year an ingenious chemist 

in London hit upon the citrate of iron^ a soluble salt which 

makes a beautiM maroon-coloured mixture highly pleasant to 

tlie sight, and tolerably so to the taste, puffed it well, sent 

parcels of it to a few fiishionable physicians, and that at this 

time any one may make a safSe wager that it is to be found in 

eight out of ten prescriptions, whatever the disease may be 

pronounced. 

Thus it appears that our medical brethren, although behind 
the scenes, are as liable to be deceived by the tricks of panto- 
mime as the so-called besotted public; the only difference 
being, that the former are content that the tricks should be 
played with the old machinery newly arranged, whilst the 
latter, tired of the same manoeuvres, seek amusement or benefit 

H 2 



100 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

mulate the system without precise measnremeDt 
of its capabilities. Let it further be understood, 
that were we bent upon such coarse practice, there 
is scarcely more than one case in twenty in which it 
is passible to induce the crisis in question. Of up- 
wards of five hundred patients who have been under 
treatment at Malyem^ not more than twenty-two 
have had an eruption of boils^ large> small, or con- 
glomerated. But we can truthftdly aver that not 
one of these was depriyed of an hour's sleep, nor 
debarred the usual exercise and diet for a single day ; 
and, as we said before, there is no reason why they 
should be, if sufficient measurement of the constitu- 
tional powers of the indiyidual be made throughout 
the progress of the case, and common sense with 

from some fresh souice. The Water Cure breaks up the old 
machinerj- and repudiates all tricks; this is the undoubted 
reason for its unpopularity with the medical profession, and 
should be, if the reviewer'^s estimate of the general public be 
correct, a reason why that public should not receiye it. 
Holding the public mind of 1843 in higher estimation, we 
opine that it receives the Water Cure for the same reason that 
the profession revile it : its wide-spreading popularity is the 
triumph of simplified art and common sense over mystifying 
practice and complicated craft. Surely out of the medical 
ranks a more learned, and more forcible defender might have 
been found than the trashy stuff of the Quarterly Review 
shows its author to be ? 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE* 101 

simple means take the place of mystifying practice 
with complex means^ when boils make their ap- 
pearance. 

But how does it happen that the public have only 
boUs and *^ carbuncles'' held up in terrorem, — that 
species of crisis which is the most rarely obtained ? 
We think this question has been answered in the 
preceding pages. Yet it were well that the reader 
should further learn that other crises exist to which 
neither the formidable prestige nor name of '^ car- 
buncle" can, even by an effort of trickery, be ap- 
pended. 

There is the simple efflorescence of the skin which 
is apt to occur in females. 

There is also a scattered and itching eruption of 
pimples scarcely above the level of the skin, whicL 
is not an infrequent termination of nervous cases. 

There is the crisis of an attack of fever of a few 
days' duration, a very desirable ending of inveterate 
hypochondriasis. 

There is the critical sweating ; and the exudation 
ofglutinouSf acid^ and sometimes fcetid matter. 

Any of these is much more frequently met with, 
in the treatment of chronic disease, than the boib, 
the appearance of which depends quite as much on 
the constitution of the indhddual, as on the appli- 
ances of the Water Cure ; for, as we said, in some 



102 ' CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

eonstitntions it is impoaaibl^ do what one will^ to 
produce this laat-named species of crisis. 

Another fact which is> through ignorance or for a 
purpose, kept out of sight b> that, in a great number 
of cases, it is altogether unnecessary to have a crisis 
of any kind on the external surface. Where disease 
is not of yery long standing, or where it has not been 
exasperated or complicated by mode of life or irri- 
tating medication^ all that is required from the Water 
Chire is to remove causes, and to place the organs in 
such a position that they shall be able to cast off 
disease without any extraordinary efforts. Thus, in 
instances of functional disorder of the liyer, occurring 
in young men, and the product of youthAil absurdi- 
ties of irregular hours and the " wassail bowl," a 
short course of water drinking, wet sheeting, and 
hip-baths, will bring on a mucous and bilious diar- 
rhoea, which is to all intents critical, and terminates 
the con^laint. Here, by improying the condition 
of the skin, and making it perform its share of the 
vital processes — ^which the wet sheet and exercise do : 
by drawing blood towards the lower bowels — which 
the hip-baths do: and by diluting constantly the 
morbid secretions of the stomach, liver and bowels, 
as well as stimulating the nerves and muscular 
coat of the intestines by the combined cold and bulk 
of the water — which the water drinking does ; the 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 103 

diseased liver and mucous membrane of the alimen- 
tary canal are placed in snch a condition as to be 
enabled to relieve themselves^ and this they do by 
pouring out an extraordinary quantity of bile and 
mucus ; and what may be called an internal crisu 
is in this manner efiected : to attempt to improve 
upcm which, by endeavouring to bring on an external 
crisis also, is altogether superfluous. It may be said 
that a mercurial and a purgative would do the same ; 
but there is a wide difference between placing the 
parts so that they may relieve themselves, andybm^ 
them to an unusual secretion, the former leaving 
them free after a natural effort, the latter leaving 
them exhausted after the unnatural and excessive 
effort consequent on the irritating stimulation of the 
medicine ; add to which, that in the one case the 
antagonistic surface of the skin is brought into play, 
and acts as a derivative from the internal skin, whilst 
in the other it is utterly neglected, and the whole 
Tehemence of the remedies is left to play upon the 
already excited mucous membranes. In short, when 
^burhoea occurs consequent on the natural endeavour 
of the organs, it is truly critical and permanently 
beneficial. "Vi^en it is a process forced upon the 
organs in order to lid themselves, not of the primary 
ditease, tut of the eeeondary irritation of the modi' 
ernes, it is not a genuine crisis of the digestive disease. 



104 CRI8S8 OF THE WATKR CURE. 

but of the drag disease set up for the nonoei and the 
fonner therefore remams untouched, notwithstanding 
the outpouring of bile and mucus. 

Again, in acute disease, BwetUing is the most com- 
mon crisis induced by the Water Cure. But mark 
how it is induced. After repeated wet sheets, the 
patient is laid in bed, drinks water, and sweats. Or, 
in chronic disease, he is laid in blankets until the 
skin begins to act, when the process is aided bj 
draughts of water. In either case the sweat is cri- 
tical : for the treatment has on one hand pkced the 
internal organs in a condition to throw off their dis- 
ease, and, on the other hand, has rendered the skin 
the part by which they should relieye themselyes. 
Meantime no irritation whatever has been applied to 
them, so that when sweat flows they are relieved of 
the original and only irritation which obtains in them. 
Contrast with this safe and simple mode, the irritat- 
ing process implied in the production of sweat by 
medicinal sudorifics, which are usually emetic drugs 
— ^tartar emetic, ipecacuanha, James's powder, &c. 
and therefore the most violent stimulants to the 
digestive organs. In fact, it is by arousing an ex- 
cessive irritation in these last that sudorific medicines 
act : the internal organs striving hard to throw it on 
the surface. But inasmuch as the medicines have 
produced additional irritation in the ^already irritated 



CRISES OF THE WATER Ct7RE. 106 

stomacli^ the effort they induce only suffices to cast 
off the morbid state themselves have caused therein^ 
and the original malady remains untouched — the 
sweat is not critical^ and the mode of causing it is 
injurious. That such is the case is corroborated by 
the fact, that in the drug treatment of common fever, 
for instance, or acute rheumatism, sweating may be 
continued for days together by these means, and the 
fever and pains actually get worse : and why ? The 
sweat is the effort of the body to rid itself of the 
irritation of the medicine, and not of the original 
diseased condition of the internal organs. And such 
will ever be the case when sweating is induced by 
internal irritants. The father of medicine, Hippo- 
crates, never employed them for the purpose, but 
simply poured warm water over the head and body, 
and then heaped clothes on the patient.^ 

Here, then, are two well-recognised critical acts — 
diarrhoea and sweating — brought about by the pro- 
cesses of the Water Cure without the damage to the 
internal parts which attends the operation of purga- 
tive and sudorific medicines, and with infinitely 
better claim to be truly critical of the malady for 
which they are induced. They are very common 
also in the course of the Water treatment, and, in this 
particular, bear a proportion of ten to one at least as 
* Epidemiconun Histoiia, lib. vi. sect. 2. 



106 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

compared with the crisis of boUs. Wherefore, then, 
are these spoken of as the only crisis, whilst those 
are not even alluded to? Is it ignorance or some- 
thing more reprehensible ? 

As regards the crisb of a feverish attack, it is 
most desirable and most frequent in cases of long- 
standing hypochondria, and other forms of nerrous- 
ness. For, the essence of those intcderable com- 
plaints, consisting in the concentration of irritation 
on the nerves of the internal organs — ^those of the 
stomach especially, — ^the adyent of a feverish attack, 
shows that the internal mucous membranes and the 
external skin have become the receptacles of that 
irritation : and the nervous system gets relief by the 
transfer. Other diseases, which are not on the 
nerves, produce the same result. Dr. Copi.akd 
says ; " Hypochondriasis has been removed by the 
supervention of other diseases, as diarrhoea, dysen- 
tery, fever, jaundice, dropsy, &c. ;"i in which he 
only confirms the statements of all writers on the 
stlbject of nervousness. In a work on Neoropathy, 
published some years ago by one of the present 
writes, it is stated ; ^^ A sudden attack of acute in- 
flammation,' or the origination of a smart fever often 
dissipates neuropathic symptoms. Many curious 
cases are related by Hoffmann and Van Swietkk, 
1 Dictionary, p. 266. Art HypochondiiasiB. 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 107 

of nervous individuals who were permanently cured 
by small-pox, critical evacuations of blood and sweat, 
collections of matter, cutaneous eruptions, &c." ^ 
This occasional interference of Nature to rescue the 
individual from tormenting sensations is copied by 
the Water Cure, and a feverish attack of a few days 
duration, and easily managed by wet sheets, is the 
crisis it usually brings about for such cases. The 
same might be roused by internal irritants, violent 
tonics, mercurials, and such like t but inasmuch as 
these are applied to the nerves of the stomach, 
whereiB the essence of the malady lays, it forms, as 
in the previous instances, only a drug fever, and the 
exhaustion consequent on the excessive excitement 
of those nerves, leaves them in a worse condition 
than ever. " My objection,** says Dr. Copland,* 
" to mercurial purgatives in hypochondriasis, are not 
altered by what has been advanced by Wintrino- 
HAM, BiEFF, Curry, and others, in their favour. 
At the commencement of this century, a calomel 
epidemic prevailed in British practice, and this me- 
dicine was prescribed very generally, and very often 
i]]^iiriously, in. this and many other complaints. The 
repeated doses of it, directed by the late Dr. Curry, 

* An Exposition of the Symptoms, &c., of Neuropathy or 
Nervousness, hy J. M. Gully, M. D., p. 23. 
« UW supra, p. 270. 



108 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

not nnfrequentlj aggravated the disorder, or con- 
verted it into melancholia." If our learned friend, 
the author of this sentence, had said, ^^ during the 
whole of the passing century," his remark would 
still have heen true. It is true also, that nervous 
patients will prefer a feverish attack, which termi- 
nates their torments in health, to the aggravation of 
their disorder, and its conversion into insanity, even 
although the former he caused hy heterodox water, 
and the latter hy orthodox physic. 

Another form of crisis deserves a few words ; we 
allude to the exudation of glutinous, acid, and some- 
times foetid matter from the sur&ce of the body. 
This takes place either in the sweating process, or 
in the wet sheet appHed over the whole skin. Occa- 
sionally, also, it occurs under local compresses, on 
the belly, on the joints, &c. The glutinous and 
foetid matters generally proceed from those whose 
stomachs have been deteriorated, and blood vitiated 
by a long course of mal-digestion. and long-continued 
attempts to remedy it by purgatives, especially those 
of the vegetable kind, senna, aloes, scammony, and so 
forth. At this time we have a patient firom whose 
abdomen a brown glutinous matter, redolent of aloes 
and scammony, is oozing, staining the compress, and 
rendering it, as it dries, as stiff as if it had been well 
starched. Thb patient had essayed, during ten 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 109 

jears^ all kinds of medicinal remedies for the cure of 
headache. After mercurial courses the exudation 
on the heUy compress stains it of a hluish colour. 
As regards the odour of these cutaneous excretions, 
they sometimes resemble that of a mouse : at others 
they have no fixed resemblance, but are intensely 
foetid, especially when the patient is coming out of 
the wet sheet. This last is not unfrequently ren- 
dered rose-coloured by the yapour from the body, 
which, in such case, is of an acid character. The 
gouty and rheumatic exhibit this most commonly ; 
but it is also found in several forms of indigestion, 
particularly when the function of the liyer is dimi- 
nished. Eliminations of morbid matter of this kind 
constitute the only crisis in the great majority of 
cases that are treated properly. 

But in very many instances there is no perceptible 
crisis whatever. Take the case of a suspension of 
the evacuations of the bowels, or of that of the 
womb ; in these the derangement of the whole sys- 
tem depends on the retention of what should be given 
out by those organs. The Water Cure re-establishes 
these evacuations, and the rest of the system returns 
to its healthy action ; in which act no critical pheno- 
menon is at all necessary. And such cases are fre- 
quent. But if, in addition to the original morbid 
state which caused the retention, another one shall 



110 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

have been erected by the irritatiye character of the 
means previously employed against it^ the patient 
will not be cured^ even though the bowels and the 
womb return to their Action, inasmuch as^ be- 
sides the mjurious impression made on the nerves 
by those means^ they have assisted in formiug 
diseased blood which is drculathig through all the 
Cleans, and imparting to them an unnatural kind 
and d^ree of vitality. In cases of this sort it is 
desirable to have some of the crises above enume- 
rated ; and, as we before said, the particular crisis 
will depend as much on the constitutions of the in- 
dividuals as on the processes employed : and these 
should be appHed after an exact measurement of 
those. 

To sum up the principles and the facts of the 
crisis. 

Whenever an organ or series of organs in the 
state of morbid excitement, which is present in acute 
and chronic disease, is placed, by art, in a condition 
to cast oiF that excitement, the act is annoimced 
by a change in some other organ, or series of 
organs. 

This change is a crisis. 

The nature and amount of this change, as well as 
of the organs in which it takes place, depend on the 
constitution of the individual, the nature and amount 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. Ill 

of the means employed, and the part to which they 
are applied. 

Bnt as this change never takes place until the 
organ first diseased has cast off its morbid excite- 
ment, the change alluded to, i. e. the crisis, does not 
itself relieve the former, but is a signal that it has 
relieved itself; in the same manner that tears do not 
bring relief to the mind, but are a sign that relief 
has been brought. It is for this reason that a crisis 
of some sort is desirable ; it is an evidence of good 
having been effected. 

Still as, after all, the crisis is itself a morbid state, 
it is desirable to produce it on some organ not im- 
mediately and strongly connected with the central 
vital parts, the stomach and bowels, brain, &c. 

For the same reason, a crisis appearing, it is un- 
necessary and imprudent to urge the means with the 
view of increasing its amount. It is a sign of relief, 
and should be accepted as such simply. 

Now the processes of the Water Cure place the 
primarily diseased parts in a state to cast off their 
excitement : they further tend to make the skin (an 
organ not immediately involving the great central 
organs) the recipient of that morbid excitement ; and 
it remains for the practitioner to regulate the amount 
of this new excitement or irritation, not suffering 



112 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

boils, erapdonsj sweat, &c., to tax the powers of the 
patient beyond the requirements of the case. 

When the malady consists simply in the retention 
of some evacuation, and is not of such standing as to 
have vitiated the drculating blood, the restoration 
of the evacuation is in itself a critical act, and no 
change in any other organ is likely or desirable. The 
early stages of constipated bowels, of retained 
monthly flow, or of suppressed perspiration, come 
under this category. 

When also the organic constitution of the indivi- 
dual is of a vivid character, and the disease of the 
internal organ of comparatively short duration ; this 
last is found not unirequently to throw itself on some 
other internal organ whichdoes not so much involve the 
centres of life : then is there an internal crisis. This 
has been instanced in the appearance of loose bowels 
after irritated stomach and liver, which being more 
important parts, have their disease carried off by the 
lower bowel, a part of infinitely less importance to 
the individual's life. The same applies to the pour- 
ing off by the kidneys of acid and saline matters, as 
sometimes is the case. 

Thus the crisis effected by the Water Cure occurs 
either on the skin, the lower bowel, or the kidneys, 
the parts which Nature, when she is allowed to ter- 



CRISES OF THE WATER Ct7RE. 113 

miiiate dbease by her own efforts^ chooses for the 
same purpose. In doing this the practitioner of the 
Water Cure only follows Nature ; but to hear the 
hue and cry about the crisis, one might imagine such 
an act had never been perpetrated by Nature, or 
assisted by art, before the time when Priessnitz deve- 
loped his mode of treatment. Yet it would perhaps 
be difficult to find a subject in the whole range of 
medicine which has engaged the attention of so many 
eminent medical writers, from Hippocrates,^ to 

GULI«EN,^ RlCHTER,^ FrANK,^ HiLDENBRAND,^ 

Kretssig, who all insist on the importance of acting 
upon the broad hint given by Nature for her own 
relief. And the crises enumerated by all authors are 
precisely those we have alluded to, not excepting the 
terrible boils which our medical brethren would fain 
make the world beHeve had never been heard of. The 
fact is that the nimta diligentiay the incessant activity 
of the ordinary mode of medication could ill brook 
the slower but surer processes of Nature, and nothing 

' Opera, ed. Yander Linden, t. L «t pa«stm. 
' Works bj Thomson, t. i. p. 593. 
' Die Spedelle Therapie, b. i. p. 57. 

* De curandis Hominum Morbis, t. i. p. 56. 

* Institutiones practico-medic®, v. i. p. QQ, 

* Encyclopad, WSrterbuch der Medicin, Wissenschaften, b. 
8, p. 646. 

I 



114 CRISES OF THE WATER Ct7R£. 

-serving but to force the disease^ the observation and 
the doctrine of critical acts on the part of the body 
vere merged in flashy attempts to produce sudden 
and extraordinary results by operating with violent 
remedies on the vital organs themselves. These 
being diseased, attempts were made to change the 
degree of action in them or to transfer that action to 
other vital organs, whereby rapid, but often disastrous 
results, and invariably deceptive as regards cure^ 
were obtained ; in short, one disease was masked by 
creating another. Thus, when the Hver secretes bad 
bile, or secretes it sparingly, calomel is given Ui force 
'On a new action which, /or the time, causes a better 
or more copious supply of that fluid, the exhaustion 
after this process of forcing is over leaving the liver 
in a more helpless state than ever, besides producing 
an inflammation of an important vital organ, the sto- 
mach ; whereas by inducing sweat on a less important 
organ and diluting the contents of the stomach and 
bowels, a crisis is produced on the skin indicative 
of the liver having relieved itself Had not the rage 
for medication blinded the eyes of observation, it 
would have been clear that sweating is the crisis which 
Nature chooses in the kind of liver disease just men- 
tioned. But Nature alike and her crises go for 
nothing in modern English medical practice. Both 
have been lost sight of in the rank growth of phar- 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 115 

maceiitical weecU ; and^ accordingly^ when in these 
days tlieimportanceof attending to them is re-asserted, 
as in the Water Cure^ the great mass of practitioners 
look upon them with as much horror and disgust as 
if they were ghosts risen from the grave to remind 
them of their sins of omission^ — sins which have also 
led to those of commission. 

It has been said above^ that a crisis is the signal 
that the internal disease is relieved. It is, in fact, 
an effect not a cause ; it does not bring about a cure, 
but is an evidence that a cure is brought about. 
'^ Much mischief," says Dr. Copland, '* has accrued 
from considering critical evacuations as the causes, 
and not the consequences, of changes that take place 
in the economy."^ This is most true ; and it is an 
error into which persons who are foolish enough to 
treat themselves, and tbey who are impudent enough 
to treat others, without having a medical education, 
are liable to fall. Being a good sign, they think they 
cannot have too much of it, and therefore go on 
exciting the already irritated skin, until the very 
crisis becomes a source of disturbance to the entire 
system of the individual. This egregious blunder 
would appear to have been perpetrated in many cases 
in the Water Cure establishments of Germany, which 
are undertaken by non-medical speculators, and there 

1 Dictionary of Practical Medicine, p. 446. Art. Or'ues, 

I 2 



116 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

can be small wonder if similar mischief should attend 
the ignorant attempts of similar traders in this 
country ; men (and women too !)* who, after breaking 
down in varions callings, take to the treatment of 
disease as if it were only a series of baths, and take 

1 Thus a Miss Somebody distributes " a card," informing 
the world that ^^ having completed a course of study and prac- 
tice under Professor Thingummy at the Hydropathic Institu- 
tion at , she can now be consulted, &c.'* Who the pro- 
fessor may be, who made him such, or when he could have 
learned the Water Cure, we know not ; we only remember to 
have once seen some such name as his painted over tbe shop 
of a pains-taking apothecary in the village alluded to, and to 
have heard that he is a retired seijeant of the guards. But be 
he " professor," apothecary, or seijeant, he must possess astound- 
ing tact in communicating, and Miss Somebody must have 
superhuman aptness in receiving, in a few weeks, the requisite 
amount of information to render her ** consultations ** either 
desirable or safe. If the *' professor " desires fair play for the 
Water Cure, he should repudiate similar abuses of his profes- 
sional name. So also in other places we find people advertising 
the price of each process ;so much for " a perspiring couch,*' so 
much per minute for the douche, &c., as if these were to be 
taken at the sole will of the patient and paid for as they are 
at *' bath and billiard rooms." To such disgusting vulgarities 
there must ere long be an end, but in the meantime we point 
them out only to protest against their perpetrators being con- 
sidered as having the smallest knowledge of what the Water 
Cure or its aim is. Under such ^ professors," it or any other 
plan of treatment would be dangerous. 

8 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 117 

measure of the patient's purse rather than of his con- 
stitutioaal powers. But where by a strict examination 
of these latter^ and a nice and regulated adaptation of 
the processes of the Water Cure to them, the efforts 
of Nature are assisted towards a crisis, and this re- 
ceived as a favourable omen of cure^ but not exa^e- 
rated by treatment into a new disease^ it is no more 
a subject for alarm than is the outbreaking about 
the nose and mouth in a simple cold in the head^ of 
which it is a crisis. Meantime, the same medical 
observation and reasoning which are necessary to 
determine how best to aid Nature in this matter, are 
also requisite to distinguish between a true and a 
spurious crisis, the latter being a not unfrequent 
occurrence in the course of the salutary struggles of 
the economy. As, however, the phenomena which 
determine this include many minutise of the pulse, 
condition of the brain, &c., it forms too extensive a 
subject for the pages of this volume, and is alluded 
to inter alia only to show in how many ways the 
ignorance of the pretenders to the practice of the 
Water Cure may serve as a weapon of attack on the 
treatment itself. 

But if it be an important error to mistake the 
crisis of disease for a cause instead of an effect, and 
to act upon it, the interference with this effect is not 
a less serious error, and may lead to most disastrous 



118 CRISES OF THE WATER CT7RE. 

results. The acute writer last quoted justly remarks 
that if crises he " interrupted hj accident or by an 
injudicious and meddling practice, they are followed 
hy unfavourahle metastases (transfers of disease) and 
complications, or sequelae, sometimes terminating 
in organic change and death."^ And further on< he 
ohserves : 

^ The large depletions and the copious and repeated alvine 
evacuations very frequently resorted to, often manifestlj pre- 
vent the accession of regular crises,— 1st, by debilitating the 
patient, and thereby rendering the vital resistance insufficient 
for their Aill evolution ; and 2nd, from the drcumstance oi 
these means of cure being substituted for artificial evacuations, 
or crises, and preventing by anticipation and substitution those 
which are natural." 

It is against these artificial crises induced hy medi- 
cines and bloodletting that we protest ; they merely 
mask the original disease, and are the cause of its 
temporary disappearance, and not the efect of its 
final expulsion by the diseased organs. Like modem 
miracles, they are shams, deceiving for a period the 
practitioner and the patient, hut attended with ulti- 
mate discomfiture to both. The attempt to heal 
the wounds of Nature by constraining her, may 
appear a brilliant idea, but is a deceptiye and disas- 

* Dictionary, uhi supra, « Loc. dt. p. 448. 



CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 119 

trous practice. You may speedfly relieve the breath- 
ing in pleurisy by copious bloodletting ; but what 
frequently follows on thb artificial crisis of blood ? 
Dropsy of the chest — one of the most intractable 
and dangerous diseases. Ton may ease bilious 
headache in an hour or two by a strong purgative ; 
but you get stomach inflammation instead. And in 
both (hese instances you prevent the true natural 
and curative crisis by sweat on the skin. 

So also in the extrinsic efforts of the internal dis- 
eased organs aroused by the processes of the Water 
Cure, and tending towards a crisis, if *' injudicious 
and meddling practice/* such as the introduction of 
medicinal and dietetic stimulants, be resorted to, not 
only are those efforts checked, but confusion, perhaps 
of a hopeless character, is substituted for the 
rhythmical tendencies of the organs towards self- 
relief, which existed. Still more cogent is the objec- 
tion to this meddling, when a crisis of boils has been 
rendered excessive by imprudencies on the part of 
the patient and ignorance on the part of the practi- 
tioner of the Water Cure, as in the case previously 
quoted (at page 24.) If bad practice caused this 
excess of critical action, making it a source of irrita- 
tion to the system, the pouring in of stimulants is 
certainly making bad worse. It is precisely as if, 
during the eruption of small pox, a quantity of spirits 



120 CBISBS OV THS WATSB CURB. 

or drastic purgatives were administered to the patient^ 
the result of which would be to throw the internal 
organs (of whose tendency to self-relief the eruption 
is a sign) into new and more dangerous disorder than 
before ; and we have seen such illustrations^ as regards 
purgatives^ in actual practice. 

A practitioner therefore who has induced, by the 
processes of the Water Cure> a crisis of any of the above 
kinds^ and who has good data for pronouncing it a 
true one, ceases at once those processes, and confines 
himself to the local treatment of the crisis if it be of 
an eruptive and local character ; and this soon sub- 
sides with the subsidence of the internal effort which 
the treatment had aroused. And this local treats 
ment consists in the application of moist linen or 
lint frequently changed. 

If the eruptions be so general (as sometimes 
happens with the itching crisis after nervous disorders) 
as to preclude more local treatment, tepid abluticmSy 
either by sponging or in the shallow bath, are had 
recourse to frequently, in order to diminish the pru* 
rience of the skin. 

In the case of an internal crisia of diarrhoea, all 
that is requisite is, to watch the pulse and the indi- 
cations of the patient's powers, so as not to allow of 
their excessive depression, and to arrest it within 
that point. This is readily done by injections of 



CRISES OF THE WATER Ct7RE. 121 

cold water, the cessation of all treatment except short 
sitz baths> and occasionally by warm fomentations 
over the abdomen. More generally, however, nothing 
is required but to cease active treatment. Critical 
mrine ceases of its own accord after the deposition of 
certain white or red matters which render it turbid, 
or of Hthic add, which gives a carmine sediment. 



So much for the Crisis of the Water Cure, 
about which more nonsense has been uttered and 
ignorance exhibited than can be comprehended, ex- 
cept on the theory of dishonesty propounded in the 
early pages of this volume. That the fears instilled 
into the minds of non-professional persons by pro- 
fessional men have had the effect of deterring many 
of the former from attempting to obtain from the 
Water Cure the relief which the latter cannot give 
them, is true ; we have had abundant evidence of 
this^ in the letters of invalids, who, in many instances, 
quote the confession of their medical attendant that 
" he has done all that can be done," yet who still 
remain untouched in their maladies. But having 
strong faith in the ultimate triumph of Truth and 
Facts over Error and Falsehoods, we may safely 



122 CRISES OF THE WATER CURE. 

leave the question to the arhitration of time, which 
ever lays hare the merits and demerits of whatever 
suhject is ohscured hy present prejudice and partizan 
interests. Tacitus says, " Veritas visu et mord 
valescit," — ^truth is estahlished hy investigation and 
delay : let it he so in the present instance ; hnt let 
not those who, flattering themselves that the Water 
Cure is an ephemeral mode of treatment, seek to 
hring it into early discredit hy reckless statements, 
also flatter themselves that these will stand as a 
suhstitnte for investigation or always pass current for 
truth, even with the greatest gohemouchea. Cases 
cured are now daily spreading the real facts of the 
Water Cure over the kingdom, and sooner or later, 
whether our medical hrethren think fit to investigate 
it or not, whether they persist in their wild assertions 
regarding it or not, these facts, in the shape of 
recoveries after all other treatment had failed, will 
verify our remarks on the Water Cure as well as on 
its detractors. The crisis may serve their purpose 
for the nonce ; hut they would scarcely take the pains 
they do to misrepresent it and other points, did there 
not exist in their minds a suspicion that the crisis of 
the efiete system of medication is involved in the 
advance of simplicity and of nature, as these are em- 
hodied in the Water Cure. 



FALSE RUMOURS. 123 



From the opinions adverse to the Water Cure as 
a system of medical treatment, we pass to the re- 
ports which have heen scattered ahroad concerning 
our practice of it at Malvern. These will require a 
very short notice ; since, beyond our strong negation, 
their falsity can only be proved by a reference to 
those who have witnessed or experienced our treat- 
ment and its results. To each and all of these we 
confidently appeal, desiring them to make publication, 
in any way that admits of reply, of all accidents in 
the course of, and of all deaths consequent on, our 
treatment of disease by the Water system in this 
place. Let this be done by themselves, or by others 
authorized to do so, should there be delicacy in 
making public their names ; but let the circumstances 
involved in any accusation be minutely given, and 
not in the slipshod manner which usually attends an 
improper, but never a truth-seeking, motive. Above 
all, let it not be done in the whispers of a coterie, nor 
handed about in society and upon occasions in which 
further inquiry would be deemed impertinent and a 
doubt insulting. To call this mode of statement a 
rumour is to give it too dignified a name ; it is the 
small, low, pettifogging, malicious gossip, of small, 
low, pettifogging, malicious minds. And were it 



124 FALSE RUMOURS. 

not a duty to show the latter to the world in their 
microscopic meanness and grovelling impurity, we 
should not trouhle ourselves to recapitulate, as we 
now proceed to do, two or three of the falsehoods 
which have been repeated to us after being uttered 
by men whose self-gratulation on possessing the 
highest respectability would appear of exceedingly 
doubtful right, were it lawful to mention their names. 
Thus, a surgeon of considerable renown conde- 
scends to state for the benefit of a party assembled at 
the dinner-table of a well-known political personage, 
that '' he knew of several instances in which death 
had been produced during the water treatment at 
Malvern." Another medical man present at the 
time, not doubting, from the professional station of 
the reporter, of the truth of his report, repeats this 
in a written form, and we thus hear for the first 
time that several of our patients were dead without 
our discovering it, although in the habit of seeing 
them at least three times a week. Wine is said to 
develop the genuine characteristics of a man ; if so, 
we have to remark that in the instance before us, 
truthftilness is not one of the virtues constitutionally 
resident in the surgeon alluded to, for the hosfs 
wine failed to elicit it : a more impudent or more 
malicious falsehood could not proceed from one utterly 
uneducated and ignorant of all moral responsibility ; 



FALSE RUMOURS. 125 

what then shall we say of the morality of a person 
belonging to a learned profession, and placed among 
its highest seats, who scatters abroad as a fact what 
he knovos to he faUcy what he cannot prove to be 
true, what, if true, would, and should too, long ere 
this, have found its way into every printed paper to 
which the medical profession has access ? A single 
case of death occurs, during the crisis of boils, (thQUgh 
as we have shown, not therefore in consequence of 
the crisis,) a case treated at some place on the Rhine, 
and every one is aware how much is made of it ; is 
it likely that '' several cases " of death, could have 
happened here in Malvern without a blazon as com- 
plete and extensive as a hundred professional pens 
could make it, were there the smallest grounds for 
their authenticity ? 

Another surgeon, of provincial celebrity equal to 
that enjoyed in the metropolis by the last referred 
to, in order to ofiPer an air of greater precision and 
likelihood to his statement, actually gives eipht as 
the number of patients who have come under his 
care after being sent from hence in a paralytic con- 
dition induced during and by our treatment.^ 

' We have treated some eight or ten cases of patients who 
came here with sh'ght paralysis; hut this, the reader will allow, 
is somewhat different from the &ct of having produced it. 
Where and hy whom was it produced in these cases 1 



126 FALSE RUMOURS. 

As falsehood always vires aeguirit eundo, we are 
not surprised to find a physician, not far removed 
from the Midland notable just hinted at> publishing 
that we have sent him twelve persons — exactly 
twelve /—crippled in palsy and rheumatism by that 
fearful agent, water. We are further not surprised to 
hear that upon his being addressed by a lady of rank, 
who had been imder our care, to give her the 
particulars of these cases, as a duty he owed to society, 
he returned no answer whatever to the demand. For 
although any blockhead may publish a falsehood 
generally, it requires a clever fellow to coin particu- 
lars, and knowledge of English composition to write 
them, in neither of which predicaments our veracious 
doctor stands. 

We are unwilling to prolong the list of instances 
of similar mendacity, as we could do ; first because 
they are intrinsically disgusting, and next because 
it is not our object to intrude what is personal to 
ourselves upon the reader, whom we rather desire to 
enlighten on what concerns the admirable plan of 
treatment we adopt in the cure of disease. Indeed 
we should not have adverted to these morsels of petty 
malice but to warn those who hear them that great or 
notorious names in art and science are not always to be 
taken as guarantees for orthodoxy in morals and truth- 
folness ; all history affords examples of the minimum 



FALSE RUMOURS. 127 

of the latter coincident with the maximum of the 
former in those whom the interests of wealthy power^ 
and a certain reputation will, nevertheless, not allow 
to keep a conscience, — that most expensive and to 
some unattainable portion of an establishment. Let 
the reader who hears the opinions of these great 
physicians touching the Water Cure recall, that 
knowledge of a subject is essential to a right judg- 
ment upon it, and let him inquire, after perusing 
this work, what they know about the treatment in 
question. And when he hears of the slaughter 
committed by water, let him turn to the eon/essiona 
of practitioners of drug medication recorded in these 
pages, and say whether such persons are the best 
authorised to animadvert upon the destruction per- 
petrated by others, even supposing this to be more 
than the coinage of their own brains. Finally, let 
him remember that the surgeon who is skilful in the 
amputation of limbs may also be reckless in his ope- 
rations on the characters of individuals : that the 
physician whom fashion has pronounced learned in 
uttering prescriptions, may also be capable of utter- 
ing Hbels : — the t^o attributes are quite compatible. 
For ourselves and our own satisfaction, we have 
one convincing, unalterable fact to place against all 
that is stated in opinion and rumour to the prejudice 
of the Water Cure ; namely, that out op upwards 



128 false rumours. 

of fits hunj>rbd patients treated by the 
Water Cure at Malvern during the last 
ten monthsi not one death has occurred, 
nor a single disagreeable result, attribu- 
TABLE IN ANY WAY TO OUR TREATMENT. Couid 

the same be said of a&j other plan of medical treat- 
ment, especiallj when reference is had to Ihe forlorn 
nature of the majority of the cases that are sent to 
us ? And what does the announcement say for the 
" Dangers" of our mode of treatment ? 

The truth is, as we stated in the commencement, 
that interest and prejudice combine to misrepresent 
the facts, while ignorance blinds utterly to the 
principles, of this formidable innoyation on the worn- 
out and inefficient system of drug medication. It is 
too much perhaps to expect from the human nature 
of the professors of this last that they should embrace 
that which stamps their own practice as foolishness ; 
but claiming as they do to be members of a learned 
and honourable profession, it is but just to expect 
from their learning that they should study before 
they pronounce an opinion on a new treatment, and 
from their honour that they should propagate nothing 
but the truth concerning it. 



propositions of the water cure. 129 

Propositions on the principles and practice 

OF the Water Cure. 
The preceding pages being occupied with the refu« 
tation of opinions concerning the Water Core^ and 
of reports concerning ourselves as adherents of that 
mode of medical practice^ it appears to us advisable 
to dose this part of the Tolume with a resume of the 
physiological and pathdogical bases on which the 
treatment is grounded. This is the more necessary 
as, among the many animadversions on it, uttered 
by those who, if they knew their profession, ought 
to know better, it is described as amenable to no 
recognized principles connected with the plisenomena 
of healthy and diseased life. Moreover, this is 
necessary inasmuch as it will serve to demonstrate the 
absurdity and iniquity of persons attempting to prac- 
tise the Water Cure, whose qualifications with re- 
ference to the knowledge of physiology and the capa- 
bilities of the human body are altogether uncertified, 
and who, as we before stated, are merely trading 
speculators. Now the following propositions will at 
once show that the applications of the Water Cure 
are in strict accordance with the facts and phaenomena 
of the living organism ; and that without an intimate 
acquaintance with these last it is utterly impossible 
to make the appHcations with safety to the patient 
or with credit to the practice or the practitioner. 

K 



130 PROPOSITIONS OF THE WATER CURE. 

Let the critical medical reader appeal^ if he pleases^ 
from our propositions to the doctrines of the schools 
as embodied in the works of the most celebrated 
modem writers on health and disease^ and say whether 
we have not accepted those doctrines. In truths the 
premises of health and disease^ established by expe- 
riment and observation, stand mitouched, as far as 
thej go ; far be it from us to contravene them. It 
is only in the conclusions of practice that we differ 
from the great body of our medical brethren. We 
assert the perfect right to do this, so long as we can 
give scientific reasons for it. Such reasons are con- 
tained in these propositions. Time and experience 
are also daily accumulating facts of cure which come 
to the support of the justness of these reasons. And 
we subsequently offer a few cases in confirmation of 
the assertion. 

I. A series of unnatural symptoms constitutes a 
disease. 

II. This disease is referable to a morbid condition 
of some of the textures of the body. 

III. All disease is originally acute, that is to say, 
the symptoms are more or less rapid and pressing 
In their character, and more or less characterized by 
fever. 

lY. Acute disease is the effort of the morbid organ 
or organs to throw off their disorder upon some less 



PROPOSITIONS OF THE WATER CURE. 131 

important organ or organs. Thus acute inflamma- 
tion of the liver, stomach, or lungs, causes fever, that 
is, an effort to throw the mischief on the skin, the 
bowels, or the kidneys. 

V. If, from the great extent of the mischief to be 
thrown off, and the feeble constitution, acquired or 
natural, of the individual, this effort is not successful, 
the body dies from exhaustion. 

YI. If this effort be only partially successful, more 
or less of the internal mischief remains, but gives 
rise to symptoms of a less rapid and pressing and 
more permanent character. These symptoms then 
constitute a chronic disease. 

YII. Except in the case of accidents to the limbs, 
we know of no disease which is not essentially in- 
ternal. Skin diseases are invariably connected with 
disease of some internal organs, especially the sto- 
mach and bowels, and are regulated in their cha- 
racter and intensity thereby. This is so true, that 
where there is a skin disease the crisis effected by 
the Water Cure invariably takes place on the spot 
where it exists. 

yill. Acute disease, then, is the violent effort of 
internal and vital organs to cast their mischief on 
external and less important organs. 

IX. Chronic disease is the enfeebled effort of the 
same organs to the same end. 

K 2 



132 PROPOSITIONS OF THE WATER CURE. 

X. But as from the diminished power of the con- 
stitution this is always inefiPectual, the morhid state 
of the organs tends constantly towards disorganiza- 
tion^ or what is called organic disease. This is more 
certainly the case^ if the original causes of the malady 
are at work. 

XI. Disease therefore is curable when the power 
of the system is sufficiently strong to throw the 
morhid action from a more to a less important 
organ. 

XII. Disease is incurable "when the power in ques- 
tion is insufficient for the last-named purpose ; and 
when it has hecome organic^ that is, when a change 
of structure has taken place. 

XIII. From these premises it follows that the 
aim of scientific treatment should he to aid the 
developement of the power of the system and its 
efforts to rid its vital parts of mischief. 

XIY. That mischief invariahly consists in the 

retention of an unnatural quantity of hlood in them, 

to the detriment of other parts of the organism, — ^a 

retention commonly known hy the terms acute tn- 

flammation^ chronic inflammation, and cofCgestUm* 

XV. In endeavouring to develope the powers of 
the system, the dissipation of this inflammation or 
congestion must he constantly kept in view, as the 
end of which the constitutional efforts are the means. 



PROPOSITIONS OF THE WATER CURE. 133 

-XVI, But as the circulation of the blood every- 
where is under the influence of the organic system 
of nerves^ the power and efforts of these last are 
essentially to be strengthened in order to dissipate 
the inflammation or congestion referred to. 

XVII. Curative treatment is therefore made 
through the instrumentality of the nervous system. 

XVIII. Violent and sudden stimulation of the 
nervous system of the internal organs^ is invariably 
followed by exhaustion and increased inflammation 
and congestion. Hence the impropriety of alcoholic 
and medicinal stimulants. 

XIX. But the gradual and judiciously regulated 
stimulation of the nervous system according to the 
organic powers, conduces to the developement and 
maintenanee of its strength. 

XX. This stimulation is the more steady and 
certain in its results the more imiversally it is applied 
to the entire nervous system. 

XXI. To the external skin, therefore, and to the 
internal skin, (as represented by all the lining mem- 
branes of the lungs and digestive organs,) this stimu- 
lation should be applied, those parts containing the 
largest portion of the nervous system spread through 
them. 

XXII. Pure air appUed to the lungs, proper diet, 



134 PROPOSITIONS OF THE WATER CURE. 

and water applied to the digestive organs, and water 
applied to the external skin, folfil this intention of 
stimulation and strengthening most efFectually. 

XXIII. Further, as that portion of the nervous 
system, (the hrain and spinal cord,) in which the will 
resides, requires the developement of its powers, 
exercise of the limhs is requisite, the stimulation of 
the air, diet, and water aiding thereto. 

XXIY. Pure water, pure air, proper diet, 

AND REGULATED EXERCISE, ARE THE GREAT 
AGENTS IN EFFECTING THE CTJRE OF DISEASE BY 
AIDING THE NATURAL EFFORTS OF THE BODY, 
THROUGH THE INSTRUMENTALITY OF THE NER- 
VOUS SYSTEM. 

XXV. In the due apportionment of these 

AGENTS, ACCORDING TO THE POWERS OF THE CON- 
STITUTION AND THE PHASES OF DISEASE, AS AS- 
CERTAINED BY MINUTE MEDICAL EXAMINATION, 
CONSISTS THE SCIENTIFIC AND THE SAFE PRAC- 
TICE OF THE "Water Cure. 

XXYI. As strengthening of the system by the 
regulated stimulation of the nervous system is the 
means, so the throwing ofP disease by more important 
on less important organs by that acquired strength, 
is the end of that practice. 

XXYII. During the efforts of the system thus 
aroused for so beneficial an end, if agents are employed 



PROPOSITIONS OF THE WATER CURE. 135 

which divert those efforts and tend to centre stimulus 
on the more important organs^ augmented mischief 
is the certain result. Such agents are to he found 
in alcohoHc and medicinal stimulants^ applied to the 
internal skin and nerves : in hot and impure air applied 
to the external skin and nerves ; and in exciting and 
factitious pleasures and anxious cares applied to the 
great centre of the nerves^ the hrain. 

XXYIII. These and the mal-apportionment of the 
stimulation included in water^ air^ diet^ and exercise, 
give rise to the only " Dangers of the Water Cure.'* 

XXIX. The proper apportionment of the stimula- 
tion in question originates and maintains a steady 
effort of the system to save its vital parts at the 
expense of parts which implicate life less immediately. 

XXX. The result of this effort is shown in one of 
the following ways : 1, the re-estahllshment of ob- 
structed and suppressed secretions ; 2, in the elimi- 
nation of diseased matters through the bowels, kid« 
neys, or skin ; 3, in the formation of a critical action 
of some sort on the skin.* 

XXXI. Such result constitutes the Crisis of 
THE Water Cure. 

XXXII. The Crisis being the result of the extrinsic 
efforts of the vital organs, is to be viewed as the 

* For the various kinds of critical action, see what has been 
above stated on the subject of the crises of the Water Cure. 



136 PROPOSITIONS OP THE WATER CURE. 

«t$piia/ of iheir relief, not as the instrument of their 
relief. 

XXXIII. Still as, durmg the crisis, the tendency 
from the internal to the external organs is most strong, 
it is more than ever necessary to avoid the causes 
which act in diverting this tendency and in recon* 
centrating the mischief on the internal parts. 

XXXIY . At the same time, the tendency in point 
heing then strongly estahhshed, it is not necessaiy 
to stimulate the system further in that direction, and 
all treatment except that which allays irritation ae* 
cordingly ceases. 

XXXV. A crisis hemg the evidence of cure of the 
internal disease, no recurrence of the latter is to he 
apprehended, unless the morbid causes are re- 
applied^ 



CASES TREATED AT MALVEEN 



BY THB 



WATER CURE. 



In illustration of the theory, and the facts relating 
to OUT mode of treating disease, given in the fore- 
going pages, the following cases are presented to the 
reader. We hare to remark of them, in a prelimi- 
nary way, that if the treatment from day to day is 
not given, it is because most of the cases extend 
over weeks, and some over months, and because, 
were we to speak of the occasional changes in some 
details of treatment, which from time to time are 
necessary, we should also consider ourselves bound 
to offer our reasons for them, — a proceeding which 
would itself occupy a volume. Neither was it pos- 
sible to draw out the detail of every minute symptom 



138 CASES TREATED AT MALYERN. 

which sprung up in the course of treatment, and for a 
similar reason. In short, our ohject in the publica- 
tion of these cases is to demonstrate in practice the 
utter fallacy of those opinions which we have shown 
to be unsound in theory : to clinch our previous 
arguments by facts — hard telling facts — passed 
under our own eyes, testified by patients and the 
friends of patients, and any one of which is worth 
more than entire quartos filled with assertions made 
by those who know nothing of the principles and 
details of the Water Cure, who have never seen — 
nay, who in many instances refuse to «ee— a single 
case treated by the Water Cure, and who, whilst in- 
dulgiug in tirades against the Water Cure, seem to 
be quite unconscious of the confessions made by me- 
dical men regarding the danger and uncertainty of 
the treatment of disease by drugs. Be it fiirther 
remarked, that every patient whose case we give,*— 
as well as those we have not given in the present 
volume, — ^had essayed the whole range of medicinal 
means to no purpose, save to gain some temporary 
relief, to be followed by augmented mischief. Why 
this was the case, and why, when medicine was 
abandoned, and our treatment tried, the patients 
improved in health, we leave the reader to determine. 
A common cant just now is, that the air, exercise, 
and diet are the only health-begetting agents : nor 



CASES TREATED AT MALVERN. 139 

do TFe gainsay these. But if so^ how comes it that 
thej- were of no avail during the time that drugs 
were added to them as remedial agents ? and that 
they were of avail when drugs were abandoned, and 
the processes of the Water Cure substituted ? Truly 
the answer cannot be very flattering to pharmaceu- 
tical practice, even if water be extruded from all 
share in the results : for, in that event, it shows that 
the disease had been previously maintained and ex- 
asperated by the medication. But it is idle to dwell 
ftirther on this, one of the many futile drags which 
are employed in the vain attempt to stop the pro- 
gress of the "Water Cure. Turn we, therefore, to 
the cases we have selected, from a great number 
which we purpose to give in a more extensive form 
when time and opportunity offers. 



140 



CASES. 



Nervous indigestion trith suicidal propensity. 

The subject of this distressing malady was a gentleman of 
46 years of age, who, after eighteen years of active and inces- 
sant attention to commercial affairs, retired with a moderate 
fortune from them in consequence of the growing distress both 
in the stomach and brain, which unfitted him for further action, 
and, as he said, ^ rendered the sight of the ledger intolerable;" 
It avails not to repeat all the means he had tried previous to 
his trial of the Water Cure ; suffice it that they comprised all 
the circle of drug medication and, what is for the most part as 
bad, drug dietetics, by which is meant the system of keeping 
up a certain amount of stimulation from food and wine on the 
condition of maintaining a proportionate amount of stimulation 
from medicines. He came here complaining that he only got 
one hour or one hour and a half sleep in twenty-four hours, 
that he had the most horrible mental sensations, the predomi- 
nating one being that he was doomed to be his own destroyer: 
indeed for the last two years he had never been left without 
some one to watch him. His bowels always costive and his belljr 



CASES. 141 

protuberant, no pain was present when they were pressed ; but 
eating always brought on a more intense degree of the mental 
pain. His yolition was quite gone, and his moral courage 
extinguished. The contents of the chest were perfectly sound. 

We commenced the treatment of this case with hot fomen- 
tations to the stomach and bowels at bedtime, the wet sheet 
bath in the morning and evening, a sitz bath in the middle ofthe 
day, and he also commenced lying in the wet sheet ; the result 
of which was that on the fourth night he had five hours* sleep. 
From the bowels too he had on the morning following this a 
good natural evacuation. The mind, however, still held by its 
painfiil sensations. He now began to lay every morning from 
one hour to one hour and a half in the wet sheet, followed by 
a bath ; the sitz bath at noon and the wet sheet bath being con- 
tinued. During this time he went eveiy morning to St. Annls 
Well, and, walking on the hill, drank from three to six tumblers 
of water as he felt inclined. In the course of the day he drank 
ftom eight to twelve tumblers, taking exercise, which varied 
from five to ten miles a day. At the end of eleven weeks he 
left Malvern perfectly recovered, having, during the latter half 
of that period, used the douche daily, and broken upon the wet 
sheet by occasional sweatings in the blankets. His capability 
of taking water increased with his progress towards health, and 
he sometimes took fifteen or twenty tumblers a day. The 
changes in the expression of his fiace indicative of that in his 
feelings, waa striking to all the patients in the establishment, 
and from being the most lugubrious he became the most laugh- 
ter-loving of them alL He slept invariably from the time he 
went to bed— ten o'clock — ^until the servant awoke him in the 
morning ; and his sleep was dreamless. 

The only evident crisis in this case was an increased action 



142 CASES. 

of the bowelB for a fortnight, carried to the d^^ree of diarrhoea 
for two or three days, but without anj pain, griping, or debility. 
The wet sheet, however, in which he Uid, for a long time ren- 
dered the water in which it was daily washed dark and turbid, 
with a copious flocculent sediment. 

Bbmarks.— Here is a case in which during two years the 
patient had been gradually getting worse, notwithstanding that 
he had obeyed, as he said, to the letter every system of treat- 
ment he had followed, backed by perfect rest of mind and body. 
It is plain that in such fearful states of irritation of the nerves 
of digestion and of the brain, all internal medicinal means should 
rather exasperate than alleviate, and such was the iact in the 
present instance. Yet by the soothing operation of the local 
fomentations and the general application of the wet sheet, an 
almost immediate effect was produced upon that irritation, as 
the sleep and rapidly increasing quietude of mind testified. 
The same remedies, by thus reducing irritation, and conjoined 
with the derivative effect of the sitz baths, succeeded at an early 
stage in setting up a regular movement of the bowels. Having 
thus secured the quiescence of the nervous system and restored 
the regularity and quality of the secretions and excretions, it 
only remained to renovate the tone of the system, which was 
effected most completely by the douche, and the appropriate 
union.of the previously-named remedies. It will be remarked that 
the diarrhcsa here served as an intemeU mm, of which mention 
has been made in the previous pages. But although this did 
not continue for more than four days, there were for as many 
weeks from two to three copious natural evacuations every day ; 
and it was a curious feature, as observed by the patient himself, 
that the less he ate the more copious was the evactMtiony a fact of 
which he convinced himself by repeated experiment. Thephysical 



CASES. 143 

strength of this patient hecame so great, that in company with 
another patient, the Reverend Mr. Majendie, he thought 
nothing of walking to Worcester and back, a distance of nearly 
seventeen miles. 



Indigestion toith threatening inftammcUion of the brain. 

This case was a very interesting one, and was sent here at an 
hour*s notice bj Mr, Goulson, a distinguished surgeon in Lon- 
don, under whose care he had previously been. The patient, 
a gentleman of 40 years of age, had undergone excessive mental 
excitement, accompanied with constant and distressing sinking 
about the stomach and bowels, tendency to fainting and cold 
sweats, all which he had endeavoured to fight against by fre- 
quent taking of stimulants. With all this he had been imable 
to procure even a small amount of sleep. In our first inter- 
view with him at Malvern his speech was almost incoherent, 
his gestures violent, and his whole appearance that of a person 
on the vei^e of insanity or inflammation of the brain. His 
tongue was fiery red, his bowels constipated, and his skin dry 
and harsh, except when the cold sweat suddenly appeared on 
it, together with the symptoms of fainting. All this plainly 
indicated the use of the wet sheet, in which he was made 
to lay for an hour twice a day, with sitz baths in the in- 
tervals. In twenty-four hours this patient became calm, and 
slept ahnost all the time he was in the wet sheets, of which 
he spoke as the most soothing and delightful remedy he 
had ever experienced. On the first night after commencement 
of the treatment he slept five or six hours consecutively. His 
bowels also opened and his tongue became paler ; of course no 
stimuhints whatever were allowed, although up to the moment 



144 CASES. 

of his treatment he had taken them largely, and he ezpresBed 
soipxifle at not fueling the want of them. At the end of a wedc 
he pronounced his feelings to he hotter in all respects than they 
had been for more than a jear. Nevertheless we thought ft 
advisable he should continue the general treatment for a fort- 
night longer, which he accordingly did ; and at the end of 
three weeks returned to London, speaking of himself as "a 
miracle,** and extolling the Water Cure in enthusiastic terms. 
Bbmarks. — Nothing could be more striking than the im- 
mediately sedative effects of the wet sheet upon the highly ex- 
dted nervous system of this patient. It is impossible to con- 
ceive of any medicinal opiate acting so quickly and so effi- 
ciently ; neither had the sleep any of the disagreeable charac- 
ters of that obtained by opiate, for he awoke soothed, refreshed, 
and with a moist tongue. This effect too continued throughout 
the case *, the patient never retrograded for a single day. Al- 
though when he came his limbs would scarcely carry him half 
a mile, within a week he was able to mount to the top of the 
highest of these hills. The harassing condition of mind dis- 
appeared, and he frequently expressed his surprise at the totally 
altered view he took of the circumstances which had previously 
so painfully excited him. We confess our ignorance of any 
medicinal treatment which could remove the symptoms enume- 
rated, and restore the general health so rapidly and completely 
as the much-abused means employed in this case. 



Hypoehottdriasis wiih iMllvcination, 

A gentleman aged 28 consulted us, presenting the following 
symptoms : — Face shrunk and pinched, with an expression of 
anxiety and anguish ; complexion dingy yellow ; tongue sil- 

8 



TREATED AT MALYERN. 145 

veij and split ; bowels not «cting except by medicine ; general 
emaciation. To these physical ailments was added a state of 
mind which he characterized as most humiliating. At one 
time he conceived the most unconquerable disgust at his wife's 
nose, because it was not perfectly straight. At another he was 
haunted by a small mole on her neck and the complexion of 
her throat. These and other phantasies tormented him night 
and day, and he never was free from some crotchet or other. 
Daily at about six in the evening a fit of profound melancholy 
invaded him, and all appeared cheerless to him for two or three 
hours, though on the score of wife and fortune and station few 
men had more right to be contented. The causes of this com^ 
plication of bodily and mental ailments were to be found in 
early excesses, acting on an originally weakly frame and not 
a strong mind. It should be mentioned that he attributed 
the major part of his ills to medicine, of which he had taken 
laigely. 

The treatment in this case consisted in the systematic em- 
ployment, morning and evening, of the wet sheet, sitz-baths, 
and shallow baths. By these means, conjoined with ten or 
twelve tumblers of water daily, regular exercise on foot and 
on horseback, simple but nutritious diet, and early hours, he 
was put into a state to bear the daily use of the douche. Some 
time, however, previous to the use of this last his bowels had 
got into perfect order, his skin had taken a healthier hue, and 
he allowed that his nervous sensations and mental phantasies 
had undergone material amelioration. And be it remarked 
that when a hypochondriac allows that 'he is better at all it 
may always be concluded that he is considerably so ; for croak- 
ing is his principal attribute. But although the patient was 
convinced that a little more time would have certainly effected 
his cure, circumstances intervened to prevent his further stay 

L 



146 CASES 

at Malvern ; jet he left behind him' a host of phjocal and 
moral troublev* 

Remarks.— Very fev of our non-profesnonal readers are 
aware of the extreme difficulty in producinganjimpreaBionwhat- 
ever on the miserable condition of the nerroas system of a con- 
firmed hypochondriac such as this wlis. That condition is essen- 
tially one of deeply-rooted irritation of the whole of the nerves, 
which regulate the functions of the stomach, bowels, and liver; 
an irritation which, by sympathy, is propagated to the brain, 
thereby producing low spirits, harassing and horrible fimcies, 
and sometimes an almost total loss of the voluntary power. 
In such shades of mind, the patient becomes one of the most 
disagreeable that can be met with ; he torments himself and 
all around him ; and but few medical men are otherwise ihanglad 
to get rid of such a patient. The effects, therefore, of the 
Water Cure in similar cases are the more to be admired, as 
they are produced in persons who are most unwilling to acknow- 
ledge that they are benefited by any treatment whatever ; and as 
it is universally acknowledged by medical men that they are, in 
&ct, seldom or never benefited by any medicinal treatment in 
ordinary usage. This case bears some analogy with the first 
one mentioned, inasmuch as at times the suicidal propensity 
was present ; and like the case in point, would have prospered 
to a perfect cure had time been given. We know, how- 
ever, that the treatment, as far as it can be managed, will be 
persevered in, and the patient, as well as ourselves, is assured 
of the ultimate result. 



Intense Hypochondriasis and Mercurial Disease* 
A gentleman, of laige fortune, was the subject of this intoler- 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 147 

able disease, of which he had all the prominent symptoms in 
their worst degree. It owned both physical and moral causes. 
The former consisted in the frightful and long- continued ap- 
plication of mercury which had been given when the disease 
was yet slight; and the latter in a severe and permanent do- 
mestic disappointment. All the secretions both of the skin and 
of the internal membranes of the body were depraved* He 
remained at Malvern several weeks, but only slight ameliora- 
tion of the symptoms was obtained. All parties concerned 
became impatient ; and he gave up the Water Cure, having 
previously tried all manner of treatment. 

Rbmarks. — We mention this case only as an instance of 
those who leave the Water Cure disappointed, and in ill 
humour with themselves and the treatment. How far 
the treatment was to blame for the want of success, may 
be gathered from the fact that we discovered in the course 
of it, that the patient persisted secretly in an old habit 
of drinking brandy, when, with any chance that the can- 
dour and perseverance of the patient could have given us, it 
would have taken at least ten or twelve months of steady treat- 
ment to bring about his recovery. As it is, the case is a for- 
lorn one, both as regards the causes and any future treatment 
that may be adopted. 



Liver and Stomach Complaini with Emaciation, 

Hr. — , a Liverpool merchant, in consequence of long- 
continued exertion in the climates of South America, irregular 
living, and considerable labour of brain, had at length fallen 
into a state of disease indicated by the following symptoms. 

L 2 



148 CASES 

Complexion pale yellow, without a sign of drculating blood ; 
&oe thin and haggard ; body generally emadated ; pain in the 
right side of many years standing, bowels confined, i^petite 
gone ; great lassitude and indi^Kwition to exertion. For these 
ailments he had gone through yarious courses of medicines, 
mercurials, purgatives, tonics, &c. ; he had also tried difieient 
mineral waters, and had finished the list with acourseof Moiison^ 
Pills: all to no purpose, for he came to us with enlarged liver, and 
all the symptoms of confirmed stomach disease. It should not 
be omitted that he suffered from frequent tic and cramps in 
the leg. His age was forty-six years. 

Alternate wet sheets and sweatings, with frequent sitz-baths, 
compress constantly kept to the abdomen, and latterly the 
douche, produced, in the course of a few weeks, a most de- 
cided change in his appearance. His appetite became enor- 
mous, his digestion undisturbed, and the evacuations from the 
bowels, twice a day, very copious : he slept well, and his spirits 
were of the highest order. At the end of a month a crisis 
of boils commenced, principally over the region of the liver 
and right side of the body, which, however, were rather a 
subject of jest than of alarm to him, since, notwithstanding 
there were as many as twenty or thirty at one time upon him, 
he was never once absent from the breakfast, dinner, and sup- 
per table, and took his walks as he had always done. The 
only difference in treatment required for these boils was an 
extra wet sheet in the middle of the day, which, with the 
refreshing of the linen compresses, he found removed all in- 
convenience and disagreeable sensation, which might have 
arisen from the existence of the boils. Under the action of 
these boils, the enlaigement of the liver rapidly gave way, and 
the diminution of its disease was palpably exhibited inhisfhoe, 
which became round and red from being pide and thin* 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 149 

Rem ARKSd — In everj way this case is satis&ctory, and the 
result was obtained in much shorter time than we expected, 
being a little above six weeks. It is farther satis&ctory, as it 
gives the opportunity of demonstrating what has been asserted 
in the former pages of this work relative to the perfect safety 
of the crisis of boils when these are produced with discretion , 
and treated with judgment. Being withdrawn Jrom btuineaa^ 
and/reefirom <Ul artificial stimulants^ both mental and bodily, 
we perceive how small an afiair this crisis is. But had this 
patient left us a fortnight before he did, with the boils upon 
him, and entered upon the cares of his business at Liverpool, or 
had he put himself under a course of drug medication at that 
time, we venture to say that the result would have been very 
different. As it is, we hear at this time (now five months 
since his leaving Malvern) that he is on the point of embarking 
for Canada, and says, *' that he has got a new lease of life from 
the Water Cure." 



IndigesHony Liver Disease, and Epileptic Fits, 

The subject of this complication was an officer of the highest 
rank, nearly sixty years of age. Unhealthy climate and high 
living had combined to produce the worst symptoms of indiges- 
tion and liver disease, and being a highly nervous man, these 
had reacted on the brain, and caused the epileptic fits of fre- 
quent occurrence. He was sent here by a friend in London, 
but with small expectation that he would venture on the 
treatment. However, after a few days intercourse with other 
patients, his imaginary terror of the '* dangers of the Water 
Cure** vanished^ and he commenced the treatment The state 



150 CASES 

of debility and sensitivenefls he exhibited did not admit of the 
immediate application of cold water, and accordingly he was 
rubbed twice or thrice a day with a sheet wrung out of tepid 
water. Gradually the recovered tone of the skin enabled him 
to bear them cold, and he soon was fit to lay in the wet sheet 
followed by a cold bath. To this were added sitz-baths, com- 
press over the bowels, &c., &c. His progress was very marked 
and rapid ; and the best evidence of his conviction of the effi- 
cacy of the treatment is the &ict of his since having sent seve- 
ral interesting patients to us. 



Jndiffestion and liver disease, with asthmatic breathing and 
internal accumulation qffat, 

A lady, about fifty years old, of strong constitution, had 
been for many years in the habit of indulging a pretty large 
appetite to its full extent, and entering into all unhealthy ways 
of fashionable life. The consequences were, in time, shown 
in constant pain of the right side over the liver, and in the 
back, which was soon followed by asthmatic breathing, labo- 
rious action of the heart, and, therefore, the greatest difficulty 
in ascending stairs. At the same time she became incon- 
veniently fat on the surface, and gave likewise every indica- 
tion of a similar accumulation within, and more particularly of 
that which is so apt to take place about the heart, the kidneys, 
and coverings of the bowels. The other common symptoms of 
a deranged state of the digestive apparatus, especially coetive- 
ness, were all present. With these ailments she came to Mal- 
vern. 

It is tedious to recapitulate frequently the treatment of 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 151 

indigestion and its accompaniments ; suffice it to say, that in 
ten days this lady was able to walk up the hills with but little 
difficulty of breathing, an undertaking she would not pie- 
▼ioualy have dared to attempt ; the pain in the side, for which 
she had been frequently cupped by other practitioners, was gone ; 
the functions of the stomach and bowels were regularly per- 
formed ; and her spirits rose to the highest state of exuberance. 
She continued the treatment for six weeks, at the end of which 
time, a crisis appeared in one of the legs in the shape of boils ; 
which, howcTer, did not confine her to the house. It i^ now 
about eight months since she left this place, and a week or two 
back we had the gratification to hear, through the medium of 
a lady resident at MalTem, that she continues in perfect health 
and speaks of herself as '^better than she ever remembers her- 
self to have been.'' 

RxMARKS. — In the ordinary mode of treatment by drugs, 
&c., this lady would have occasionally had temporary relief 
by doses of mercurials, salines, and purgatives ; she would have 
been (as indeed she frequently had been) cupped over the 
side, and sometimes at the back of the neck ; and many would 
probably have bled her from the arm also. A sound patholo- 
gist, looking to the case as it was presented here, would have 
no difficulty in predicting to what such treatment would even- 
tually lead. Most unquestionably dropsy of the chest or belly 
would have been the result, if, in the meantime, some acute in 
flammation had not intervened to carry her off. On the other 
hand, the water treatment, by setting up and maintaining a 
vivid action of the skin, by inducing a healthy degree of waste 
through it, and a healthy state of all the secretions, by the 
transfbr of irritation firom the internal parts to the point at 
which the crisis appeared ; and by enabUng the patient to take 
a great amount of active exercise, brought about a state which 



1 52 ~ CASES 

annihilftted the local coogertion of the ftomach and lirer, and 
put a stop to the enormous accnmulation of fiit about the 
heart, which they vho are in the habit of leeiDg these kind of 
cases readily debect. 



Black or Brown Leprosy, 

A young gentleman, fourteen yean of age, became a patient 
here in December last. Oyer the greater part of both legs 
there existed a scaly eruption, the individual scales being daik 
in colour, easily detached, about the size of a human nail, and 
when detadied, leaving the sur&ce underneath raw and tendei, 
the latter discharging a bloody serous fluid, until the scales 
became again formed. This had been going on fi>r a loog 
time, gradually increasing in extent, without the least amelio- 
ration. He remained in the establishment nearly thirteefi 
weeks, and left it to return to his father at Cheltenham, with 
his skin clean and healthy, and all the external appearance 
and internal signs of a robust state of health. He sweated 
every other day, and lay in the wet sheet every day, and 
on alternate days, twice. On coming out of the blankets or 
wet sheet, his attendant, as well as ourselves, witnessed a vefj 
strong and peculiar odour emanating from them, and continued 
for several weeks of the treatment. The regular employneol 
of sitz-baths and of the douche also formed a part of the 
treatment. Compresses were kept constantly upon the dis- 
eased parts, and he took from twelve to fifteen glasses of iroter 
daily. 

Rbuarks.— Here is a case in whidi the simple operatioiu 
of the Water Cure not only eradicated a local disease which 
all medical men know and acknowledge to be one of the most 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 153 

difficult, but also brought the patient into robust and general 
health. Compare with this the following list of medicines 
nsoallj giren in this disease/ and which medical writers tell 
us axe all more or less uncertain ;— muriatic acid, coirosiYe 
sublimate, preparations of arsenic, caustic potash, white helle- 
bore, &c., all of which, if uncertain to cure the skin» are prettj 
certain to injure the general health, by establishing disease in 
the internal oigans. 



Acne and Sycosisy with Crisis, 



A military officer, twentj-four years old, (who was sent here 
by a general officer alluded to in a previous case,) commenced 
treatment here» in December last, for the above very common 
and disfiguring disease. His face was covered with red pimples, 
many of them with white heads, one crop of them succeeding 
another. He had been for several years troubled with severe 
headaches and a confirmed stomach complaint, showing itself 
in flushings after dinner, depression of spirits, and obstinately 
constipated bowels. His appetite was entirely gone, and he 
had consequently fallen into the habit of taking a strong dose 
of spirits and bitters immediately before dinner, without which 
he was unable to eat any. He had had his gums " touched ** 
more than once with mercury, and had no relief of bowels 
except from purgatives, firom which period he dated the com- 
mencement of his complaints, both local and general. 

As there was much internal irritation to subdue, the treat- 
ment was commenced by laying twice a day in the wet sheet, 
fbllowed by a general bath ; a hip bath being taken at mid-day, 
and six or eight tumblers of water taken daily, the major por- 
tion before breakfast while using exercise on the hilLk The fe- 



154 CASES 

verish Bymptoms reduced, and the bowels relieyed naturally, 
which took place in the second week, he commenced sweating, the 
douche and the hip bath, with an occasional application of the 
wet sheet In consequence of this treatment, a crisis of boils 
appeared in the third week, showing itself on the abdomen and 
extremities. In the meanwhile, as early as the second week, 
the appetite had become good — indeed, almost too good, and 
continued undiminished during the whole treatment. What 
frequently occurs in skin disease took place in this case, 
namely, an increase of the original eruptions at the outset of 
the treatment. But as the critical boils appeared on other 
parts of the body, those on the facb disappeared, and ceased to 
be renewed. Indeed a striking change took place in the whole 
of the skin, which, from being harsh and inactiTe, became 
pliant and healthy in appearance. The total cure was effected 
in five weeks. 

Rbmarks. — It is only necessaiy to obserre in this case that 
the eruption depended on the diseased condition of the sto- 
mach, liver, and bowels, and that this appeared to have been 
much aggravated by the medicines he had taken, the first 
course of mercury being, most probably, the starting point. 
Add to this the hurtful habit he had acquired of taking bitter 
stimulants before dinner to force a fictitious appetite, and 
stimulants after dinner to mask the pains of indigestion. This 
patient declared that for years he had not been in such spirits 
as he was during the time the crisis of boils was present, all 
of which time he never walked less than fh>m six to ten miles 
daily. 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 155 

Congetium <\f the Head with threatening Apoplexy* 

A gentleman, aged forty-five yean, well known in the county 
of Worcester, had for years been suiFering under the triple 
excitements of complicated af&irs, field sports of all kinds, 
and high living, and, in the vain endeavour to stave off the 
evil results by constant and violent puigation, had increased 
them. The last three or four years he had been on his estate, 
free from business, but still exposed to the other causes of his 
disease. When he came to us he presented the following 
symptoms. Face remarkably full and livid ; tongue moist 
and foul ; bowels constipate ; urine not reaching a pint a 
day. He had been for a time affected with giddiness of head 
with tendency to fall on one side or other ; dimness of sight ; 
at intervals he was seized with extreme depression of spirits, 
excessive irritability, and strong inclination to be violent to 
those around him ; his thoughts were frequently so conflised 
as to deprive him of all moral courage and of the power of 
attending to anything. His nights were frightful, moaning, 
groaning, and tossing about. With such symptoms (which 
had existed for several years) it will scarcely be credited that 
he had been advised to take at least a pint of wine daily» and, 
as his spirits notwithstJEmding became worse, to augment the 
quantity to a bottle ! Equally incredible is it that, whilst this 
treatment was going on, he had been repeatedly bled, both 
from the arm and the nape of the neck. It is to be remarked 
that this gentleman, hearing of the Water Cure, and feeling 
that he was getting rapidly worse, and threatened daily with 
apoplexy, took the resolution to abandon all advice, medicine, 
and wine, and to take to water drinking. This last relieved 
him so much, that he fiirther resolved to put himself under our 
care. 



156 CASES 

It is impoaible in our space to detail all the management 
that was required in this very perilous case. Suffice it to 
mention that the greatest care was taken in graduating the 
different procenes of the Water Cure, so as to induce a better 
distribution of the blood, and the diminution of its quantity in 
the head. All stimulants whatever were withdrawn at once, 
and since last September he has not required any liquid bat 
water and milk, and has not taken a grain of medicine of any 
kind for now more than six months. The first effect of the 
treatment was the restoration of the secretions of the bowels and 
the kidneys, pugatives and diuretics having previously utterly 
fiuled. The next effect was the restoration to comparatively 
quiet sleep, and to quietude of mind when awake ; for strange 
to say, the water has given him good ^irits, which the wine 
had rather depressed than otherwise. The third effect was the 
disappearance of an immense quantity of superfluous fat, the 
chief accumulation of which was about the bowels, giving him 
an enormous paunch ; for which, however, a quantity of hard, 
muscular flesh has been substituted on the limbs. His figure 
is now what it was when he was a young man. It need scarcely 
be added that all fear and every symptom of apoplexy has 
vanished. 

RxifAiiKS. — If we had never met or heard of another case than 
this similarly treated, we should have been compelled from it 
alone to acknowledge the vast field for reformation in the medi- 
cal treatment which at present prevails. Here was a gentleman 
on the very brink of apoplexy, with all the causes which pro- 
duce it in operation, yet in the &ce of his alarming head symp- 
toms and daily diminishing health, he is instructed to drink 
first a pint, and then a bottle of wine each day, with medicinal 
means to corre^ond ! We confess ourselves utterly unable to 
comprehend the meaning of such treatment of such a disease. 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 157 

But for the accuracy of the stat^nent we have made, concerning 
his previous symptoms and treatment, and of the results of our 
treatment, we can, if necessary, refer to the patient himself, 
who, like ourselves and his friends, is convinced that had he 
persisted a very little longer in the plan he was following, a 
fatal termination must have infiUlibly ensued. Without one 
grain of medicine, with no appliances but those of the Water 
Cure, we were enabled to rid him of a state of perilous dis- 
order, against which he had been in vain combating with the 
usual means for a dozen years. 



Threatening Apoplexy with extensive disease qf the liver and 

other digestive organs. 

Our patient in this case was a gentleman fifty-three years of 
age, of large landed property and great political eminence, who 
after many yean of an active and useful parliamentary career, 
retired into the country. Whether ftom. the cessation of his 
previous exertion, or from the excess of that exertion, his health 
soon began to give way *, symptoms of indigestion, with low 
spirits and strong tendency of blood to the head, began to show 
themselves. These becoming more alarming, after undergoing 
sundry plans of medication under several country practitioners 
of eminence, he went to London, and took the advice of the 
most fashionable physician of the day, who put him through a 
long course of mercurial and purgative medication ; but after 
some months' trial, he found himself somewhat worse than 
better. Returning on another occasion to the physician in 
question, he was candidly told that nothing further could be 
done for him, and that he must expect to suffer more or less 



158 CASES 

for the rest of his life, an enoounigement which brought him, 
as it has many others, to the Water Cure. The appearances 
left no doubt of the true condition of this patient. His ejes 
were yellow and suffused ; his complexion and lips were waxy ; 
his tongue enlarged, spongy, and thickly coated ; the breath 
acid; the bowels strictly constipated; the urine depositing 
copiously of lithic acid and scanty in quantity ; accumulation 
of fkt in the belly. There was frequent depression of spirits 
and irritability of temper ; giddiness of head, and coniVision of 
thought, sometimes amounting to actual suspension of the men- 
tal faculties ; sleep heavy but much disturbed. All the other 
symptoms were equally strongly indicative of the mischief 
going on in the digestive organs and the head. 

The almost immediate effect of the Water Cure was to 
bring on a bilious crisis in the shape of copious evacuations of 
thin acrid bile by the bowels, by which a powerful derivation 
was made from the brain, and that important oigan thus res- 
cued from danger. This past, he was placed under the dif- 
ferent processes of the Water Cure as the symptoms required : 
into the lengthened details of which the space which we have 
in this work will not allow us to enter. Suffice it to say, that 
after four months of assiduous treatment, this gentleman has 
been enabled to re-enter upon the activities of life, and very 
recently presided most ably at a public dinner in London, 
and is now amusing himself by travelling on the continent ; 
and we heard a few days ago from his sister, that his greatly 
altered appearance was the subject of constant congratulation 
fVom all his old London friends. It may be mentioned that in 
the course of the treatment, a tendency to gout was developed, 
which no doubt existed previously in the internal organs, and 
had been fixed there ; but this was relieved by the same means 
which were improving his entire system. 



TREATED AT MALVERN* ]59 

Remarks. — A more dangerous and complicated case than 
this is seldom met with, and we have every reason to congra- 
tulate ourselves on the treatment by which it was recovered. 
When a patient gives all the signs of long and intense disease 
of the duodenum, liver, bowels, and head ; when the unnatural 
complexion, the waxy lip, the obstinately torpid bowels, the 
bad digestion generating bad blood which circulates principally 
in the vital organs (for the skin in this case was almost lifeless) 
are considered ; when to these are added, the confusion of 
mind and other symptoms denoting disordered circulation in 
the brain and approaching apoplexy; and when the evident 
aggravation of all the symptoms which followed upon the me- 
dicinal treatment, is brought into the account ; we think that 
the merits of the remedial means by which this gentleman was 
enabled to appear again in a public and exciting position, need* 
no comment. Neither is any comment necessary on the fact 
that this gentleman, with all the appliances which the best 
metropolitan and provincial medical advice could afford, with 
all tne physical and moral advantages which the possession of 
thousands per ann,um could give, did, nevertheless, get worse, 
and was e^eBrgiven up after twelve months of drug treatment, 
whUft^aftersix months of the Water Cure, applied off and on, 
he became a sound and healthy man in appearance, and in his 
own feelings, as well as according to the judgment of his friends 
who had previously known him. 



Slight Paralysis after Apoplejnf, treated at seventy-Jive years 

of age. 

The lady who is the subject of this case came here eight 
months after a slight attack of apoplexy, which left her with 



160 CASES 

the following symptoms. Partial loss of voluntary motion in 
the lower extremities, occasioning an uncertain and shu£9ing 
step, gradually increasing up to the time she came here. Con- 
siderable thinning of the legs, and almost total disappearance 
of the calf. Permanently cold feet. Speech altered and diffi- 
cult. Tongue red and dry. Bowels obstinately bound, yet 
purged violently with three or four grains of compound rhu- 
barb pill. Sleep disturbed. Occasional giddiness. Pulse 
large, hard, and bounding, and varying from eighty-five to 
ninety beats in the minute. 

The treatment was commenced by warm fomentations to the 
stomach and bowels, from three quarters of an hour to an hour 
night and morning. After the morning fomentation, she had a 
general ablution with a wet sheet, taken out of water at about S5*. 
She slept well the whole of the second night, and the bowels 
were slightly relieved naturally. In the meantime she had 
had two foot-baths of cold water daily. At the end of a week 
she was in a state to be wrapped in the wet sheet, wrung out 
wann ; but this was only done once, as, on the second day, it 
was applied cold, and she laid in it an hour each morning : a 
cold wet sheet-bath followed. From the commencement she 
drank about three tumblers of water a day. The result of this 
was that the bowels became regular and natural every morning 
after break&st, the feet permanently warm, the tongue moist, 
the pulse soft and sixty-five. But what struck most forcibly 
a lady, who had lived with her for thirty years, was that in a 
few days after the first fortnight, the calves of the legs had 
increased remarkably in size, and that flesh had accumulated 
to some extent over the whole body. This lady is still under 
treatment ; and lays every alternate day in the wet sheet, fol- 
lowed by a shallow bath at 65% which she takes every morn- 
ing. The foot-baths are also continued, as well as the com- 

6 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 161 

presB oyer the bowels, which has been worn night and day from 
the commencement. 

Rkharks. — ^After all the nonsense that has been uttered 
about the ** Dangers of the Water Cure/' what will the reader 
think of them when he finds it applied to a case like this, in 
which every circumstance would seem combined to render it 
especially perilous? The previous apoplectic seizure, the 
tendency to its recurrence, the emaciated state of the body 
and of the lower limbs particularly, the advanced age of the 
patient, are all conditions which would illustrate the " Dan- 
gers of the Water Cure** admirably, were there any danger n 
it when properly applied. With such application, howeyer, 
m an extraordinarily short time, all the secretions are restored 
to a healthy state, nutrition is re-established, and the symp- 
toms indicating fulness of the head reduced. It is one of the 
many instances which might be given of the united safety and 
potency of this mode of treatment ; one such is sufficient 
answer to volumes of unfounded assertions. 



Chronic RheumoHam and Goutj with tendency to maliffnant 

disease qf the Stomach, 

A talented physician, enjoying considerable practice in one 
of the suburbs of London, was the subject of this case. He is 
forty-five years old, during fifteen of which he has been afflicted 
with rheuiratism and gout ; besides which he has an hereditary 
tendency to black cancer of the stomach, his mother having 
died of that frightful malady. He had been constantly under 
treatment of one kind or the other, until his case was nearly 
hopeless, and his health so broken up as to oblige him to think 

M 



162 CASES 

seriously of abandoning Ins practioe. An old fiiend of Mb, a 
physician * at the time under treatment of the Water Cue 
at Malvern, wrote to him, advising him strenuously to 
try it, which he determined to do ; but previously made a 
point of calling on two of the most eminent practitio&en in 
London, who, as might be expected, ridiculed the idea, rec<Nn- 
mending at the same time a course of mercury and iodine. 
The patient having previously tried this with some disastrous 
results, and convinced, as he scud, ^ that that was all that was 
wanting to finish him off,"*^ at once started for Malvern, where 
he arrived in the following condition. The body much ema- 
ciated ; the trunk almost bent double ; &ce pale, sallow, and 
anxious ; cheeks sunken ; tongue swollen to twice its natnial 
size, fUrred and red at the edges ; appetite morbid and ca- 
pricious, leaning to indigestible articles of food ; bowels torpid, 
with bad secretions ; knees swollen and painfiil,— one of them 
lame for several years past ; lumbago ; incapability of walking 
more than two or three hundred yards without great pain and 
exhaustion ; considerable fulness and excitement about the 
head ; little or no sleep, and what there was of an unrefireshing 
kind. 

We shall not enter into the details of the treatment of this 
case, but will merely mention that by careful management be 
was soon brought into a state that allowed of the application 
of all the processes of the Water Cure, even to the douche ; 
and that, although there were many other drawbacks in the 
shape of mental excitements on family affairs, he left Malvern 
at the end of eleven weeks, standing erect, walking ten and 
twelve miles a day on the hills without fetigue, the lameness 

* Dr. Adair Crawford, the learned author of the Article 
**^ Inflammation'^ in the Cyclopsedia of Practical Medicine. 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 163 

having disappeared together with the chronic gwelling of the 
knees ; his appetite so grtaat as to require restraint, his sleep 
restored, and the howels in perfect order. He left this about 
a monih ago, highly satisfied with the results, and only re- 
gretting that his professiomJ ayocations obliged him to return 
to town, otherwise he would haye preferred to continuo the 
treatment throughout the summer. We venture to say that 
the change in his complexion and expression of countenance 
wfll be no smaU matter of astonishment to his metropolitan 
friends, both professional and laicaL 

BsHARKS. — It will be seen that even a medical man may 
go through the *' Dangers of the Water Cure," and come out 
of them, not only unscathed, but restored. Yet it should be 
stated that this enlightened gentleman would have been de- 
terred from trying this only really safe treatment, but for 
the pressing representations of Da. Crawford, who, from in- 
vestigation and experience in his own person h^re, was well 
able to allay any iqifHrehensions on the subject. We look for- 
ward with confidence to the day when many medical men will 
make a similar tiia^ with a similar event. 



Intense Nervous Indigestion with Constipation, ^c. 

The subject of this inveterate case very kindly ofibred to 
give her own account of her own multiplied ailments, and of 
the meaos by which she has been released from them. It 
should be mentioned that she had previously undertaken, 
during the course of her long disorder, numberless modes of 
treatment with very little, and in most instances no, relief 
whatever. The lady is a member of one of the best families 

M 2 



164 CASKS 

in Scotland, and there are not a Uw in that eonntry who wfll 
recognise her in this case. 

^ A lady, past sixty, came to MalTem to be under the cave 
of Dn. Wilson and Gullj. She had safieied for more than 
thirty years from indigestion, had severe illnesses, rfaenmatic 
fever, hile, add, tic, violent headadies, palpitation of the heart, 
debility of limbs, nerves much shattered, thin and pallid, very 
little appetite, a gnawing pain in the stomach after eating, 
weary pain in the back, and at the back of the neck; for 
twenty years her bowels were hardly ever moved bat by medi- 
cines. For a month after her arrival in Malvern, she lived 
upon plain boiled rice, which gave her less pain to digest than 
any other food. The dripping sheet was first applied three 
times a day for five days, then the damp sheet an hoar every 
morning, with the shallow bath after ; sits-bath at twelve, and 
shallow bath at night ; her bowek were assisted by an enema 
every other day, first of tepid water, and then qoite cold ; she 
every day walked an hour before breakfiist, and drank six torn- 
biers full of water, and several more through the day. At 
the end of a fortnight the pain after eating subsided, her 
strength was much increased, and appetite improved. The 
sudorific blanket was next applied, followed by a cold shallow 
bath every morning, sitz-bath at twelve, and cold shallow 
bath at night. In six weeks she felt perfectly teeU, free from 
every pain and ache, ready for every meal ; her food then was 
bread and butter, with at times an egg for breakfiuA, and a 
small cup of new milk. She dined at two, on roast meat and 
plain rice or potato, and every second day on eggleas rice 
pudding. In two months she could walk ten or eleven miles 
a day, which she had not been able to do for forty yeaiBi and 
her bowels became perfectly regular.*' 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 165 

Nervous IndigetHan toith Skin Disease, 

We give this case in the words of the patient, who appends 
his name to it, and is well known in this parish. 

" I am now fifty years of age and have had a bad stomach 
for nearly the last thirty years. All that time I have been 
tormented by uneasiness after eating, and the food returning an 
hour or two after taking it. It always came back to my mouth 
just as I had eaten it. My bowels were always obstinate ; indeed 
I never was without uneasiness from them and from the stomach. 
Now and then, about once in a fortnight or three weeks, I had 
tremendous headache which lasted generally twenty-four or 
thirty-six hours, and went off with a large discharge of clear 
urine. So much for my stomach disease. About thirty years 
ago a small patch of eruption came on the upper part of the 
leg, and itched dreadfully at night. Every night, as soon as I 
was warm in bed, it awoke me and obliged me to scratch it 
until some moisture came from it ; it then became easier and 
I got to sleep again, but awoke again in the course of half an 
hour or an hour with the itching. This was the case for full 
thirty years, and I can safely say that during all that time my 
rest was constantly interrupted. I tried all kinds of prescriptions, 
and consulted medical gentlemen without number. Between 
the disorder of the stomach and the skin disease and want of 
sleep, my health became so bad as to oblige me to give up a 
good business I had in Worcester, and come to Malvern to try 
what living there would do. I have now been eight years here, 
but was no better until about six months ago. As everything 
else had failed, I took to the Water Cure under the care of Dr. 
Wilson and Dr. Gully. I have had the wet sheet, have sweated 
in the blankets, and used hip-baths since last December. I 
have worn a compress over the bowels and one over the skin 



166 CASKS 

complunt constantly. By penevering in theee I got to keep 
my food down much better. My bowels are now open regularly 
once a digr. I have gained flesh, and the colour of n»j fiace is 
quite changed. The best of all is»that the skin disease is so much 
better that I get as much as five and six hours sleep erery ni^t, 
and often without waking at all. Circumstances have prevented 
me from pursuing the water treatment the last four or five 
weeks, but I shall begin again in a few days and continue all 
the summer. I folly hope to be quite cured by the end of 
the summer, and look forward, as may be supposed, with great 
pleasure to being quite ffd of my complaints, for which I had 
for so many years swallowed such quantities of physic and 
paid so much money, without getting the smallest reli^. 

« D. Maycr." 
«< Mahem^ May 31, 1843.'' 



Hip-joirU Disease. 

In December of the last year we were placed in communica- 
tion by letter with the parents of a young gentleman who 
resided near to Edinburgh, on the subject of a diseaae whidi' 
from the descrqytion given, appeared to be rather referriUe to 
the i^ine than the hip. Some directions as to constitutional 
treatment proved beneficial; but acting on a rule we have 
establiflhed, we declined further responsibility in the case at 
that distance. The youth (sixteen years of age) was then 
placed under the care of a surgeon in Edinbuigh, who placed 
splints around the left hip and bound them tightly down. Pain 
then b^gan to be severely felt ; and as the advice of the first 
suigical authority in Edinbuigh only tended to the adoption 
of bleedings and blisterings over the hip-joint, the parents pre' 
ferred to make a journey to Malvern and see what could be 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 167 

done hy the Water Cuie. The boy arriTed here on the 16th 
of March. His habit of body was highly scrofulom, the eft 
buttock was greatly enlarged, the left leg shorter than the right 
by three or four inches ; there was severe pain on moving the leg, 
and also when the joint was pressed upon either directly or by 
pushing up from the sole of the foot ; there was no flexion of 
the thigh on the trunk, and there was much sympathetic pain 
in the knee. Everything showed that the ball of the thigh 
bone was considerably protruded from the socket of the hip, 
constituting the formidable malady known as " hip-joint 
disease." 

We commenced the treatment at once with wet sheets^ in 
which he lay for an hour night and morning, and, as it was 
difficult to move him, his body was rubbed as he lay with wet 
towels when he came out of the sheets. A large compress 
was kept constantly over the hip and down to the knee. Fric- 
tions with the wet hand were also used. After a month of 
this, the sheets were suspended for a week or ten days, and 
warm fomentations of the belly employed. The sheets were 
subsequently and more vigorously used, with the cold shallow 
bath, into which the boy was lifted without bending a joint of 
either leg. He drank from six to ten tumblers of water daily ; 
and he ate and slept uniformly well. Persevering in the 
treatment, with slight variations according to uprising circum- 
stances, the boy was enabled by the 20th of May to walk on 
crutches for half an hour, two or three times daily ; a power 
that has been increasing ever since until now, (6th June ;) he 
can go up a hill with his crutches, and walk for an hour and 
a half at one time. The size of the buttock has become natu- 
ral ; the left leg is now only half an inch shorter than the 
sound one ; indeed, by a trifling effort he can put the left foot 
flat upon the ground. He can also sit in an ordinary chair. 



168 CASES 

and raise himself out of it without assistance. Meanwhile there 
are signs of an approaching crisis in the feet ; and we make no 
doubt that this fine and interesting boy will leave this not only 
cured of the local disease, but with a constitution altered for 
the better, so as to prevent the possibility of its recurrence. 

Remarks. — When the above case had been under treat- 
ment about one month, we took an eminent physician, him- 
self under treatment of the Water Cure, to see it. After 
minute inspection, he shook his head incredulously, and ob- 
served to the mother of the youth, ^ If the water treatment 
wiUeure this Joint, it ufiU cure anything,** And he afterwards 
expressed to ourselves his total disbelief in the possibility of 
such an event. It has, however, come td pass,— come to pan 
too in one of the worst constitutions that could have been 
selected. But herein is one of the chief beauties of our treatr 
ment, that during two entire months, in which the patient was 
stretched on a so& without air or exercise, the processes of the 
Water Cure were not only remedying the joint disease, but 
improving his general health. Had he been kept in the house, 
as he must have been, his joint leeched, blistered, and 
burnt all the time, his inside worried with mercurials, iodine, 
tonics, and other supposed anti-scrofiilous medicines, where 
would his general health have been ? Gone, irrecoverably 
gone, we have no hesitation in saying. As it is, we have no 
question that he will grow into a strong and active man. 



BilUms Fever, 

A lady, thirty-nine years old, came to Malvern in the early 
part of April, to be treated for a complication of ailments, 



1 
I 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 169 

induced by mercurj, which had been largely and repeatedly 
given for a bilious disorder. As if to show the undoubted tjffi' 
eaey of that drug in eradicating such disorders, this patient was 
seized with bilious fever two days after her arrival here, and 
she had all the intense headache, nausea, foul tongue, thirst, 
constipated bowels, hot skin, &c, which characterise that kind 
of fever. As the fever was brief, so was the treatment, which 
consisted in cold hip-baths of half an hour, lying in wet sheets, 
followed by tepid shallow baths, and abundant drinking of cold 
water. The headache disappeared with the first hip-bath, and 
the other symptoms after four or five wet sheets, copious 
biliouB evacuations terminating the malady in thirty-six hours 
from its commencement. The patient then had a long sleep, 
in the course of whidi profuse perspiration broke out, and she 
awoke cool and without the smallest thirst. She is now under 
treatment for the restoration of the organic strength of which 
she had previously been deprived. 

Rkmarks. — We mention this case only to show what a 
simple, yet rapid, matter the treatment of acute disease by the 
Water Cure is ; and to offer those nullifidians who sneer at 
its application to that character of disease a fact in return for 
the ofinion they so confidently put forth without the smallest 
ground of practical experience. We only wish that the nature 
of the practice here brought us more into contact with dis- 
ease in its acute shape. Why do not the physicians of Hos- 
pitals open their wards to the trial of this treatment, as readily 
as they do to the trial of every active poison which emanates 
from the chemical laboratory ? The only reasons that appear 
are that water is not physio, and the fear that it might prove 
more efficacious. 



170 CASES 



CASES BXTRACTSD FROM DR. WILSON'S WORK ON ** STOMACH 
COMPLAINTS AND DRUG DISEASES, WITH APPBNDBD LBTTERS 
TO DR. HASTINGS ON THB RESULTS OF THB WATEB^URBAT 



MALVBRN." 



G<mt, 

Malvemy Sepi. ISih 1 842. 
My DBAR Sm, 

I cannot take leaye of MalTem without again expressing to 
you my thanks for the encouragement you gave me to try the 
effect of the Water Cure, as you practise it«-and for your 
kind attention to me during the time I have undergone the 
treatment. 

I have now gone through the perspiring process followed by 
the bath fifty times, with the other parts of the treatment ; I 
found them anything but disagreeable, indeed I may say quite 
the reverse, and they have been most beneficial to me. 
During nine months before I came here I was nerer able to 
move without my crutches, and a great part of that nine 
months I passed in my bed or on the sofii. My nights were 
restless, my pulse high, and my tongue charged. I am now 
turned sixty-three yean of age, and have been subject to the 
gout more than forty years. I paid little attention to it the 
first twenty years, and as soon as the fit was over, I never 
missed taking my wine daily. My knees, hands, and other 
parts were so crippled, that I had made up my mind to pass 
the rest of my days in mj arm-chair or bed, or to hobble 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 171 

about with my crutches. The effect of the treatment has so 
ameliorated my situation, I can now go up and down stairs 
with ease and comfort, without a stick, and the other day 
walked half a mile on the high road. I frequently ride on 
horseback four hours a day, and my general health, I thank 
God, is as well as ever it was in my life ; I sleep welli my ap- 
petite is good, I can use my arms freely, and tie my neck- 
cloth, a thing I had not been able to do for years ; in fact, I 
feel myself comfortable and independent. Had I come here 
a year ago, and imdergone the same process, I have no doubt 
but I should haye saved my left knee from being contracted ; 
as it is, I am contented to walk a little lame, and shall be too 
happy to remain in the same state I am in at present for the 
rest of my days. Pray excuse this long scrawl, as I know you 
have not a minute to spare, and believe me. 

My dear Sir, 
Yours most truly, 

T. C. Marsh. 
Park HaU^ Eppmg, Essejp. 

16, Rue MoHgjion, Paris. 

To Dr. Wilson, 

This gentleman was known for many years in Paris as a 
giver of •* good dinners." After the receipt of his letter, I 
asked if I might show it any one ; the reply was, ** Do what 
you please with it ; there is nothing to be ashamed of in getting 
well and leaving off killing oneself and friends, as you say, 
with guzzling and gormandizing.** 

Admiral Beauman brought me a letter from Mr, Marsh eight 
months after this was written. He has been enjoying himself 
all the winter, and writes in the highest spirits about himself. 



1 72 CASES 



Gintt, 



This letter was given by Mr. Case, (a gentleman well 
and esteemedlj known in the county of Lancashire) to 
Dr. Cameron, in consequence of inquiries which the latter 
was making for some noble patient in London. Dr. Cameron 
sent me the letter to add to my stock,, and the writer of it has 
kindly assented to my publication of it for your special ediii- 
cation. 

Belle Vue Hotels Great Malvern^ 
October 25M, 1842. 
Dear Sir, 
It is with much pleasure I sit down to comply with your 
request to communicate shortly respecting my own sufferings 
from gout, and the effects produced on me during my short 
visit to this place, using the cold water remedy under the ad- 
vice of Dr. Wilson. I have been a martyr to gout from very 
early age, and have already reached my sixty-fifth year. 
From the year 1816, 1 have generally been attacked periodi- 
cally spring and autumn, the violence and suffering of the fit 
increasing yearly. The joints of my hands, feet, ancles, knees, 
and elbows, much enlarged, and containing chalky matter, 
and the legs liable to be much swollen at night after exercise. 
I left my own house, Thingwall Hall, near Liverpool, on Fri- 
day morning, the 7th inst., and consulted the doctor on the 
same evening, commencing operations on the following morn- 
ing, viz., the blankets and cold bath. I had much difficulty 
in reaching the well, where I drank four glasses of water, and 
returned with a fine appetite to breakfast ; again took walking 
exercise, and another bath before dinner ; and this has been 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 173 

the daily course, wearing the wet compress and dry bandage 
over the stomach. When I left home, I had actiye gout in 
both elbows ; this very shortly disappeared. I have repeat- 
edly tried, I believe I may safely say, every reported remedy 
without much success, and felt much doubt and hesitation in 
submitting to the treatment with cold water. However, I 
have no reason to regret the trial, feeling better and stronger 
than I have done for years. My capability of taking walking 
exercise has daily increased, and I can now, without much 
pain or fatigue, walk seven or eight miles a day. From the 
repeated perspiration and ablutions, the skin is softened and 
rendered more elastic, the swelling of the legs has disappeared, 
and the lumps on the hands and fingers materially reduced. 
In fine, by a continuance of the system, I am sanguine in 
being enabled to eradicate the enemy, and, as far as I can 
judge, without any the slightest risk in bringing on oiher 
complainta I live moderately, and though allowed by the 
doctor a glass or two of sherry,* I have given even that up 

^ Lest any one should suppose from the above, that I in- 
dulge my patients with wine, it is necessary to remark that 
permission was given only for a day or two, the conviction 
on my mind from past experience being, that the patient would 
of his own accord relinquish the stimulant in that period— 
so rapidly and certainly does the stimulus of water supersede 
that of wine, and convince at the same time, firom the contrast 
in the feelings both monil and physical of the individual, that 
to take wine is a misfortune, and a stupid fkllacy. I may add, 
that Mr. Case has forgotten to mention the operation of the 
douche, and sitz baths, &c., which he took in the course of the 
treatment, and which assisted in the beneficial result 



174 CA8B8 

from chdce, and really feel not the slightest desiie for any 
gudi stimulant ;— although at home I have been in the habit 
of taking aperient medicine almost daily, I have required none 
whatever here* I shall be happy to communicate any furthei 
information, and remain. 

Dear Sir, 
Yours very truly, 

Thomas Casb. 
Dr. Cameron, 



Neuratgio Rheumatiam. 



The patient, in this interesting case, is a lady of the good old 
city of Worcester. She complained to me ^ that for years she 
had been affected with severe pain that occupied the whole right 
side of the covering of the head, and sometimes extended down 
the neck to the collar-bone of that side. It was generally worse 
at night, during which no sleep was obtained until morning." 
Her nervous system was completely undermined by it, so that 
when ordinarily addressed in common conversation, she would 
bunt into a fit of hysterical crying. Her appetite was quite 
gone, and she had all the symptoms of long-c<mtuiued indiges- 
tion. 

After three weeks^ treatment, she returned to her husband 

« 

nearly entirely relieved of all her morbid symptoms. Sie 
continued the treatment at home as well as she could : and a 
fortnight after drove ovec to see me. She was in high spirits, 
boasting of an exceUent appetite, and good rest at night. 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 175 



Supposed Conmmptionf ^c. 

The Reverend M— •, about thirty-six years of age, supposed 
himself consumptive, and it was with the greatest diificultj I 
ooold convince him that he had not a decided chest complaint, 
as he had tried all kinds of remedies in vain. His first con- 
sultation with me waa more particularly to know what warm 
climate I would recommend to him lor the winter, as he found 
himself unable to continue his duties. 

I found him in the following state. He had a short hacking 
ceogfa : he was sensitive to a degree of changes to temperature, 
which induced him to clothe as thickly as possible with flan- 
nel Headache and indigestion were constant symptoms: 
stomach and bowels always out of order, and he was highly 
nervous. He could scarcely be induced by his friends and my- 
self to try the Water Cure, entertaining an excessive fear of the 
contact of cold water. I put him through a gentle course of 
treatment, and he progressed rapidly. 

After a few weeks he returned home, and pursued such part 
of the treatment as was practicable and compatible with his 
arduous duties. These duties he now performs with ease and 
cbeerftilness. My friend Mr. W. Whitmore informed me a 
lew days ago, that this patient is gaining strength eveiy day, 
that he looks forward to the dreaded winter with pleasure, 
and that he is the wonder of the neighbourhood * 

Cases of this kind are frequently met with on the continent, 
where the subjects of them go in search of health. At Rome 

* This gentleman has ever since, now above eight months, 
been able to perform two frill church services, and is in ex- 
cellent health. 



176 CASES 

I nw many sach, and amongst them a number of cleigymen 
going on from bad to worse, the appetite decreasing, the 
strength hipsing, the tone of the skin becoming less and less. 
These cases often commencing in mental work and iiiitation, 
lead on to derangement of the stomach and bowels, are ac- 
companied with stomach cough and extreme readiness to take 
cold, and not unfreqnently terminate in substantifd disease of 
the lungs :<— aconclusion which is noTer preTcnted by the system 
of drug remedying they too often go through, which, on the con- 
trary, leads to hotter rooms, warmer clothing, more stimulating 
drinks, and additional chilliness and debility. It is really 
quite melancholy to see many of them in Italy — far from their 
friends and their occupation — shivering at the bare thought of 
the bracing and healthy winter of their native i/sle, and feeling 
actually more cold than their countrymen on the banks of the 
Thames. 



Stomach ComplaifU with Diseated Liver. 

Captain R^— , past his fiftieth year, who had seen con- 
siderable service as a military man, and who became after^ 
wards a merchant in London, consulted me there for the 
following train of symptoms. 

His fikce was a strange mixture of chalky white and yellow, 
with a care-worn look, and the skin hung upon, rather than 
adhered to, the muscles underneath : in fiict, it was the true 
wrinkling of a purgative-pill taker. He was alternately de- 
sponding and irritable, and found his business becoming ex- 
cesmvely irksome* He complained of pain in the right side, 

7 



TREATED AT MALTERN. 177 

of capricious appetite, and the impossibility of doing without 
purgatives. He was detennined to try the Water Cure and 
continue his business at the same time ; an attempt the futility 
of which I pointed out to him. He essayed it, however ; and 
by the time he had done so, for some weeks, I had established 
myself at Malvern. He wrote to me, stating that he was 
going on very badly ; in consequence of which I told him to 
desist or come down here ; and he did so shortly afterwards. 

In five weeks he left this place a changed man ; for his 
complexion had become natural, his flesh firm, his stomach and 
bowels in admirable order, and his mind clear and cheerful. 
And I hear that he still continues well, and ^ that his faith in 
the Water Cure is unbounded." 

There was an interesting feature in the progress of his 
treatment. For the first twelve or fourteen days, he threw up 
the water he drank while on the hill, before breakfast. J, 
therefore, directed him, as he vomited without effort, to go on 
drinking until he retained four or five tumblers. On an ave- 
rage he rejected the first twenty tumblers, perfectly saturated 
with blackish bile. Afler the third morning his appetite for 
breakfiEist became that of a healthy man ; he digested this 
meal, as also the others in the day, easily and completely. He 
slept well all night, and next morning he began again, to use 
his own words, " to throw up the bilge- water, wondering where 
it could all come from." His power of exertion returned ra- 
pidly under the general treatment to which he was subjected, 
and after the fourteenth day, he could drink any quantity 
without the least inclination to reject it. 

Now I ask whether, if this patient had been sickened with 
ipecacuanha, or his stomach cleared with warm water^ he 

N 



] 78 CASES 

could sit down, half an hour afterwards, with a merry fiice, and 
the appetite of a ploughman, to eat a hearty break&st ? 



Stomach and Liver Complaint, with depressed mind and 

lethargy, 

Mr. , after great parliamentary fiitigue, came here 

complaining of all the symptoms of indigestion that accompany 
disorder of the stomach, liver, and bowels : in addition to 
which, there was extreme depression of mind, and a general 
lethargic condition and indisposition to use mental or bodily 
exertion. He regretted his inability to join in and enjoy field 
sports, to which he was much attached. 

After three weeks' treatment, I gave him permission to join 
a shooting party, on condition that he wore the wet compress 
and dry bandage on the stomach, and pursued some of the 
processes upon which he had already entered. A short time 
ago I heard that he was in robust health, and his complexion 
changed, that he still in some measure followed up my injunc- 
tions, and " could walk down the best man in the field." AU 
this was done without a grain of physic, and before this it might 
be said that " Physic was his food." 



'Rheumatism,, 



Colonel V — came into this neighbourhood for his Septem- 
ber shooting, but, in a few days, was so severely attacked with 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 179 

rheumatism in the lower part of the hack, the groins, and legs, 
as to oblige him to give up all his sporting engagements, and 
lay himself up. The same thing had occurred to him in 
several previous years, and had confined him more or less 
during the winter. When I saw him he complained of great 
and incessant pain; and when he attempted to walk he was 
nearly bent double. 

During the first fortnight that I treated him, the pain, 
though severe when present, became intermittent^ and there 
were intervals when he could walk straight. Still there was 
eveiy appearance of its being one of those obstinate cases, 
which usually baffle all treatment. He was a good patient, 
however, and stuck to the plan of treatment I laid down for 
him, with perseverance. Before five weeks from the com- 
mencement were over, all pain was gone, both in the trunk 
and limbs ; and he was able to walk as well as ever. A few 
days ago I met him at a battue chasse^ at Lord Beauchamp's, 
at Maddersfield, where he took his share with us in killing a 
great many pheasants ; and although the day turned out very 
wet, he stood it put, laughing at the idea of a return of rheu- 
matism. His general health and appearance also undenwent 
a very marked change for the better ; indeed, his health may 
be said to be perfect. 



Tic Douloureux, 



Soon after settling in Malvern, I was sent for, at seven in 

the morning* to see the Rev. R. J , who had arrived on 

the previous night firam London to put himself under my care. 



180 CASES 

He told me that, for mora than six yean, he had suffered in- 
ceasantly from violent tic, which had completely undermined 
his health. The tic affected more particularly the right leg 
and thigh, and on sundry occasions he had been laid up several 
weeks with intense accompanying erysipelas of the whole leg, 
reaching above the knee. 

I found him in one of these attacks of tic and erysipelas, 
caused by the journey from London hither. He was in ex- 
cruciating pain, and every minute grained the leg with vio- 
lence. His face was shrank and sallow, and gave the expres- 
sion of intense anguish. His tongue was as bad as it couM be, 
and indicated internal disease of long standing. Altogether, 
his condition was one of great disorder: such as might well 
deter a medical man from promising any considerable amend- 
ment. 

By the steady and vigorous application of the Water Cure, 
he was relieved from pain in twenty>fbur hours, and in a few 
days was out walking. The last attack he had had similar to 
this had laid him up for several weeks. In f)ict, he had been 
in that state for several years in London, that when he ven- 
tured out to an evening party, he was obliged to sit with a 
shawl thrown over his legs, as the least draft of air brought on 
the tic, both in the leg and different parts of the body. 

For six weeks he had no return of tic, and he got into that 
condition that he could walk six miles before break&st, and 
face all weathers. At the end of that time he talked of return- 
ing to London, but I told him he had full six or twelve months* 
work before him in following up the treatment, to ensure a 
perfect restoration of health, and a complete cure of the tic 
Before returning home, he went to Worcester, not feeling very 
well at the time, and there he played some additional tricks 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 181 

with himself, and among these, eating a quantity of oysters, 
without any other food, making them serve fbr his dinner. 
The very thing to bring on erysipelas. The next day the eryr 
alpelas appeared again on his legs, almost as bad as before ; 
but it was subdued with greater facility than the first time, 
and in a few days he went to London. I have heard since that 
he is daily gaining ground, and now, after having been incapa- 
citated for his calling for more than six years, is looking out 
for the means '* of returning to his labours in the vineyard.** 

A few weeks ago, i.e. five months after the above was 
written, this patient sent a long and highly satisfiictory letter, 
in which he speaks of himself as having permanently reco- 
vered. 



SUmMchf Livery and Shin Disease, voith Tic.* 

After living from six to seven years in hospitals and anato- 
mical rooms, and not attending very particularly to eating and 
drinking^ I established the first stage of a stomach complaint. 
This was confirmed by about the same period, spent in an ex- 
tenrnve private practice in London, with the same want of 
attention to diet, &c. When I left London, my stomach 
woidd scarcely digest anything. I had tic douloureux, and a 
skin disease on both legs, which, by way of consolation, in 
the last consultation I had in London, a physician told me I 
might expect to see spread all over the body, for there was a 
slight appearance of it already in the skin under the whiskers. 

* The case of one of the authors, Dr. Wilson. 



182 CASES 

I spent about four jeazs on the continent, passing the winters 
in Italy, and the summen in Germany — every year becoming 
worse. During the winter I wore two pairs of flannel drawen 
—ditto waistcoats — and a great coat — and was always on the 
look out for drafts and cold. For eighteen months before 
I went to Graefenbeig, I had on an average rejected mj 
dinner four times a week ; but without sickness, and merely 
fh>m its weiffhi, and the malaise it caused. I tried the most 
approved systems of medicinal treatment— dieting, leeching, 
small blisters, lotions, and ointments of every description to the 
skin disease. I visited all the capital cities of Europe, and 
consulted the leading men in them, but without any benefit, 
I was altogether fifteen months under treatment by the 
Water Cure, before the skin disease was completely removed 
— nine of these months very actively, at Graefenberg. When 
I left off the Water Cure, I was robust instead of a skeleton 
-—my tic and skin disease were gone, and I had the appetite 
and digestion of a ploughman. Whilst in a crisis, the town of 
Friwaldau was on fire. I was out all night, wet, &c. : this 
brought on a violent fever. I treated myself with wet sheets, 
&c, and in a few days I was welL T had afterwards intense jaun- 
dice from the passage of gall stones, and I again felt the benign 
influence of the Water Cure. I have felt it since in being able 
to undergo labour that I was never before capable of, and I 
shall feel it to my last day asone of the greatest blessings that 
modem times has given to ailing man. 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 183 

Stomach and Liver Disease^ vnth Tic Douloureua — Chtre ar- 
rested by falling in love, S[c. 

A gentleman, about thirty-seven years of age, was advised 
to try the Water Cure by a learned physician at Cheltenham. 
He had been many years in India, where the climate, joined 
with the usual mode of living there, had produced the dis- 
eased states above mentioned. He had a completely withered 
look, the skin being deeply wrinkled, sallow, and without any 
appearance of blood; the liver was enlarged, with all the 
ordinary symptoms of long-standing indigestion : add^d to 
these, he suffered from severe tic. After going through a 
carefully graduated system of treatment for a few weeks, he 
was able to bear water at the coldest temperature. In six 
weeks his face was much fuller, with the tinge of health ap- 
pearing upon it, as well as on the whole surface of the body. 
All the functions of the digestive organs were regularly per- 
formed, and his tic was gone. At this time he unfortunately 
fell in love ; but, like all true love, its course did not run 
smooth. The lady was insensible, and would not listen to the 
last serious question. His nights now became restless, his 
^petite vanished, and the tic returned with violence. We 
advised him to leave Malvern, which he did mtteh dissatisfied 
that water could not wash out a settled trouble from the brain 
and, in secret, a little vexed with himself. 

Remarks. — ^This is a very interesting and instructive case. 
There could not be a better illustration of what has been so 
much insisted upon, viz., that any absorbing or long-continued 
mental irritation is not compatible with a regular applica- 
tion of the Water Cure for a chronic disease. This includes 
the cares and anxieties of business, the pleasures and mode 
of living in towns, and the effects of spirituous or medi- 



184 CASES 

dnal matten; in fiict, to continue it under such ciicum- 
stances it is not without danger. In this case the same 
processes which ten days before produced an agreeable 
effect, were now insupportable. Similar cases will often 
occur : when they do, the ill-success is invariably laid on the 
treatment and the doctor, rather than on the patient*s own 
folly. A number of illustrations more striking eyen than the 
preceding one might be given. 



RheumaHsm treated tU the age qf seventy, 

A gentleman, residing at Leamington, put himself under my 
care last summer. He had suffered a great many years with 
rheumatism, and had been treated by all the most noted pmo- 
titioners with little or no benefit. During the last twenty 
years he had been forbidden to touch cold water. I found 
him in the following state: the hands, knees, and feet dis- 
torted and enlarged ; the patella of each knee firmly fixed 
and immoveable ; all the locomotion he was capable of, was a 
few yards on crutches. For the seven preceding winters 
he had not ventured out of his house, and he was carried up 
and down stairs. A few weeks after he had commenced the 
treatment by water, he was able to walk a considerable dis- 
tance with one crutch, and shortly afterwards a stick was 
found a sufficient support, and he went out in all weathers 
without any disagreeable result. He left Malvern in the 
autumn, and has returned here to spend part of the summer. 
He has told me that during the winter he had taken a cold 
bath nearly every morning, and walked out every day. Many 
medical men were veiy angry with him, and a report was 
raised that he had fiedlen down in a fit coming out of church. 



TREATED AT MALVERN. 185 

^ the necessary and inevitable result of his morning ablttiions /*' 
His door was crowded with cairiages to inquire his firte ; so 

that he was obliged to go and walk about the town to quiet 

* 

the tumult. In the midst of all this, a little liberality is so 
very refreshing, that I cannot resist recording, that Dr. Jeph- 
Bon, meeting this gentleman walking about the streets of Lea- 
mington, said to him, " Well, I do not care how you got so 
well, or who made you so, I congratulate you on your great 
improvement.^* He has not taken a grain or a drop of medicine 
for the last ten months. 

Kemabk& ^Here is another case where a patient at the 
advanced age of seventy years is put into a state of compara- 
tive ease and comfort, after having been crippled and suffering 
for years with one of the most intractable complaints. One 
would think <* 7%e Dangers of the Water Cure^ ought to 
have shown themselves in their most striking colours in such a 
case as this. 



THS BND. 



A PROSPECTUS, 



&C. 



Ju9t published^ price la. Two Hundred Ptiges. 

THE DANGERS OF THE WATER CURE 

AND ITS EFFICACY examined and compared with 
those of the Drug Treatment of Diseases, and an Explana- 
tion OF ITS Principles and Practicb ; with an account of 
Cases treated at Malvern. By James Wilson, M. D., Phy- 
sician to his Serene Highness Prince Nassau, Member of the 
Royal College of Surgeons, London, late Fellow of the 
Medico-Chiruigicai Society, London, &c. &c., alid James M. 
Gully, M. D., Fellow of the Royal Physical Society, Edin- 
burgh, of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society, London, 

&C&C. 

Preparing for the Press, 

A TREATISE on the CURE of SYPHILIS, 
MERCURIAL DISEASE, and SECONDARY SYMP- 
TOMS. By Jambs Wilson, M.D. ; and Jambs M. Gully. 
M.D. 



ADMIRAL BEAUMAN'S CASE. 



1 



In the preface to the Prospectus^ allusion is made 
to the case to which the following letter refers. As 
this letter is a voluntary offering of the gallant Ad- 
iniral> we hesitate not to puhUsh it, desirous as we 
naturally are to substantiate in every possible way 
the statements we make : the rather as^ in the pre- 
sent instance, in doing so we are carrying out the 
anxious wish of the writer to have the results of his 
treatment pubUcly known. 



** Malvdm, July latfa, 1843. 

** Gbntlkmen, — ^As I am firmly continced tlmt 
I owe my present state of heolUi^ and even my ex- 
istence^ to yomr instmmeiitality, it becomes a pleas- 
ing duty to me to record by letter, as my Aieod Mr. 
Marsh has done, the benefit I have experienced from 
the system of treatment yon adopted in my late 



illness. This duty is further pressed upon me by 
the knowledge I have, that many are deterred from 
trying the Water treatment in consequence of fears 
regarding its dangers^ — fears which my case amply 
shows to be totally without foundation, when it is 
seientificaUy applied. Freyious to coming to Mal- 
vern, I was considered by some of the most eminent 
of the faculty to be in a hopeless state. I mention 
this in eyidence that it was not my fears for myself 
which exaggerated the gravity of my sufferings ; 
what these were I need not detail. Suffice it to say, 
that when I came under your care I was nearly re- 
duced to a skeleton, — ^that the spasms of the stomach, 
and the spasms about the heart, seemed to threaten 
me with sudden death, and that only a few nights 
after I reached Malvern, and before I commenced 
the Water Cure, I was for several hours in a state of 
insensibility. In short, I did not consider my life 
safe from hour to hour. At this time, after nearly 
three months of treatment, my body is well covered 
with hardy solid flesh, my appetite and sleep are 
good; and my other functions in excellent order. 
The kinduess and confidence with which you under- 
took a case so forlorn as mine, backed by the atten-* 
tion displayed in the * treatment of it, deserve and 
have my grateful remembrance. But independentiy 
of what I have experienced in my own person, of the 



benefits to be derived from your mode of treating 
disease, when other modes were confessedly of no 
avail, I have seen enough in a number of the cases 
of others under the Water Cure at Malvern, to con- 
vince me of its perfect safety and superior efficacy ; 
and I trust that this short letter, which you are at 
liberty to use as you please, may induce many suf- 
ferers like myself to profit by a trial of it. I shall 
be too happy to make this statement wherever I go. 

" I remain, gentlemen, 
" Your truly obliged, 

" Francis Beauman, 
*' Rear-Admiral. 

** P. S. As to the physical annoyance in the Water 
Cure, that I heard so much about, I can only say 
that I found, even in my weakly state, every part of 
the treatment I underwent anything but disagreeable, 
particularly lying in the wet sheet : indeed I found 
it so exceedingly pleasant, that I regret much that 
you discontinued it the last five days before my de- 
parture from Malvern. I may also observe that I 
have not taken medicine of any description since I 
first consulted you, — Fs, Bn. 

«* To Doctors WUson and Gully." 



A 



PROSPECTUS 



OF THK 



WATER CURE ESTABLISHMENT 



AT 



MALVERN, 



UNDBR THE 



PROFESSIONAL MANAGEMENT 



OF 



JAMES WILSON, M.D., 

AND 

JAMES M. GULLY, M.D. 



LONDON : 

CUNNINGHAM AND MORTIMER, 

ADELAIDE STREET, STRAND. 
1843. 



LONDON : 

PRINTRD BY G. J. PALMER, gAVOV STRBET, STRAND. 



PREFACE. 



When the following brief recital of facts has been 
compared with the rumours industriously circulated 
about myself and the practice of the Water Cure at 
Malvem, I do not think that any candid person will 
say that it was altogether uncalled for. Twelve 
months have elapsed since I commenced the practice 
of the Water Cure at Malvern. During that period 
nearly six hundred patients have been under treat- 
ment i among whom many have been radically cured 
of complaints which, after being submitted to pro- 
fessional men in all parts of the kingdom, had been 
deemed beyond the reach of art. And although, as 
is well known, the majority of those who have come 
here for relief, presented cases of long standing and 
severe diseftse, not one death has taken place, 

NOR A SINGLE DISAGREEABLE RESULT THAT 

B 



2 PREFACE 

COULD IN ANY WAY BE ATTRIBUTED TO THE 
SYSTEM OF TREATMENT BY WATER.* 

When in tlie character of the first English medical 
practitioner who had risited Graefenherg, I pub- 
lished mj popular treatise on the cure of diseases 
by water, I stood alone as its professional advocate 
in this country. All my medical friends, with one 
exception, ridiculed the attempt at its introduction 
which I was about to make, and laughed at the 
system as replete with folly and absurdity. I con- 
fess that all the firmness growing out of a strong 

* To give the reader a fair idea of the state in which manj pa- 
tients arrive at Malvern, I will mention the following as an ex- 
ample : — Admiral ' was induced to travel fifteen hundred 
miles to get here, bj the urgent advice of General J*EBtrttnge 
and Mr. Marsh. During the joumey^^e was more than once 
laid up, and considered in a dying state. Pa&sing through 
London, he consulted Dr. Holland, who candidly told him he 
could give him no hopes from any system or plan of treat- 
ment. He pushed on, however, and he was so reduced, and- 
his symptoms so urgent when be reached IVIalvem, that the 
first thing he did was to give me letters to his relations, and 
directions for his funeral. He now walks about the hills, eats, 
sleeps, &c,, as well as any one in the house, and has not a bad 
symptom. 

Suppose this gentleman had died here even before he had 
commenced the cure. 1 will venture to say the hue and cry 
throughout the country would have been of no trifling 
nature. 



preface; 3 

conTictioii was necessary to enable me to brave tbe 
contumely and derision of the mass of my profes- 
sional brethren. That conviction^ however, I had in 
aU its fulness : strengthened as it had been, not only 
by the length of time I had given to the study of 
the Water Cure, but by the long experience of its 
power in my own person in a tedious and compli- 
cated disorder, which gave way before it. Its cura- 
tive results I had studied in above two thousand 
patients: and in myself I had ample opportunity 
for observing the details of the most notable and 
striking effects to be produced by it. After such 
experience it will be allowed that I had good grounds 
for the confidence with which I presented it to the 
British public. 

Within a very fbw months after I had commenced 
an establishment for the Water Cure, Malvern was 
fintnA to he crowded with my patients. This fact, 
and my having induced other medical men to take it 
up, caused a change in the nature of the attack upon 
the practice, which was now no longer '* a laughing 
matter ;'' ridicule was laid aside for a time, and 
vimlent abuse and misrepresentation took its place. 
These assumed a tangible shape in certain papers 
addressed by Dr. Hastings,* (a physician living 

* About this time I heard that an attempt was made to get 
up a society ** to suppress the Water Cure, and drive the 

B 2 



4 PREFACS. 

at Worcester, eight miles ^oa this place, and who 
looked upon Malvern as his o^ peculiar domain,) 
to the Froyindal Medical and Sm^cal Jonmal. The 
motive which dictated these papers was not to he 
mistaken ; they weret altogether iinpiovoked hy me : 
they were characterised by a style of vnlgar abuse, 
written in ntter ignorance' of the subjects in questioo, 
and plentifidly studded with flagrant , errors in the 
statement of facts. Much of this I had forese^i, 
and had predetermined to treat with the silent in- 
difference which the sense of a strong caxise begets. 
But as many of my friends and patients strongly 
urged on me the necessity of a reply to such un- 
provoked aspersions and misrepresentations, with 
much reluctance I consented to publish one— but 
one that should be effectual: trusting that Dr. 
Hastings might profit by examining himself in the 
mirror I held up to him.'*' Since then I have 
been spared the pain of any similar personal ren- 
contres. 

• . '. 

water doctor out of Malvern ;*' but in comBequence of some 
jealousies and division in the camp, added to some slight sus- 
picion that it was more particularly for Dr. Hastings's benefit, 
the plan was frustrated. Will the candid reader now say that 
my letters were " too sever6 and uncalled for ?" 

* See '* Stomach Complaints and Drug Diseases ; with 
Letters to Dr. Hastings appended.'' By J. Wilson, M. D. 



.PREFACB. 5 

As legards the attacks on the Water Cure itself^ 
I believe I have good ground to compliHn of the un^ 
fair^ unprofessionali and unscrapulous mode in which 
the majority of my. medical brethren have treated its 
introduction into this country. And if my exposure 
of the errors and dajagers of the drug treatment in 
the work just referred to, shall have caused soreness 
on their part, they have Dr. Hastings, and many 
other illibend members of the profession, to thank 
for it.* I have the greater right to complain as, 

* Out of the six hundred pailents who have been under the 
Water Cure at Malyem, there was certainly not half a dozen 
who were not told by some medical practitioner or other, that 
to attempt it would be fatal to them. The following will 
«erTe as an illustration. A gentleman under our care, and 
labouring under a severe nervous complaint, called a few weeks 
sgo on one^ of the leading doctors at Worcester, (not Dr. H. ;) 
he told the long history of his sufferings, and that ^ drugs 
having done him no good^" he thought of consulting the water 
doctors at Malvern. " If you do,^" said the doctor, " they mil 
be sure to kill you ; the first chill of cold water will be certain 
death. Every drop of water wilL be a nail in your coffin" 
JDoring the three weeks preceding this 'Convenntion, the 
jMitient had been lying every momisig in a %eet sheets and 
taking a variety of cold and tepid baths ! He is still going 
•on with the Water Cure, uid rapidly gaining health and 
strength. 

What would you have me say to individual who will cono 
descend to such means as these, and who thus disclose their 



O PRSFACS. 

from the first> it has been my anxioBS wish and en- 
deavour to conduct the practice of the Water Core 
with especial reference to the proprieties and ap- 
proved usages of the prolession. The Water Cure 
practice at this phice has always been fireely open to 
the observation of medical w.ea, and their attention 
to it even courted : I ccmsider myself fortunate in 
having had two surgeons and three physicians who 
have gone through the Water Cuxe under my care, 
men of known talent and long standing m the pro- 
fession. They were personally unknown to me 
when they came here, and at liberty when they left 
to publish what they pleased for or against myself 
or the system. The following note^ which came into 
my hands a few days ago, will show more plainly thaa 
anything I can say, that my medical brethren who 
have honoured me by coming here, were not badly 
treated. 

^ Middlesex, June 3rd, 1843. 

« X)r, presents his compliments to Mrs. 

Middleton, and, at the request of Mr« Middleton, 
begs to state that he was in Dr. Wilson's establish- 

ignoranoe, if not their want of integrity ? I wish it to be ob- 
served, once for all, that it is to such and such alone any 
bitter truths in my stomaeh comphiiats and drug diseases are 
addressed. 



PREFACE^ 7 

ment, • at Great Malvem^ eleven weeks ait the same 
time with his Mead Dr. Adair Crawford, (a physi*- 
cian of eonsiderable talent, reputation, and expe- 
rience,) who strongly urged Dr- ■ to make 
trial of the Water treatment, after having carefully 
examined into its safety and good results in various 
eases at Malvttm, and experienced its good effects 
in h» own case. What Dr. ' ■ ■ » himself saw, 
folly confirmed his friend's favourable opinion, and 
he is bound in justice to say that in his own com* 
plaint, which was a tetj formidable one of rheumatic 
gout and deranged general health, the . results were 
most satis^ENctory. While there he had an opportu<» 
nity of observing its successful use in a very serious 
and protracted case of hip-joint disease in a youHg 
gentleman of stnimous habit, which had resisted 
the usual treatment under the best surgeons in 
Edinburgh, and in which he certainly expected tittle 
could be done.* This ease was very decidedly im* 
proved, and promiaii^ a good result when Dr. D- ■ 
left Malvern, and he has eveiy reason to believe is 
now fast recovering. 

** Dr. Wilson and his colleague Dr. Gully are pro- 
fessional gentlemen of education, talent, and expe- 
rience, and he considers them both cautious and 

* The yoang gentleman is now walking about with crutches, 
and puts both feet equally and regularly to the ground.--^. ~W* 



8 PRBFiiCE. 

jodieiotts in the appMcatipn of this, treatment to 
disease. Indeed, he did not obsorrevanj case in 
which its perfect nv^ety amid be questioiied. 
«< To the Hon. Mrs. Middleton.** 



If anything more were wanting to diow the deter* 
mination there existed txi oppose, by any meane, fair 
or foul, the introduo()ion and progress of the Water 
Cure, it may be 6een in the way I have been as- 
sailed- personally, as its first and most strenuous me- 
dical advocate in this country. It was industrioudy 
circulated in all* quartos that I was a German ad- 
venturer — a quack'>^ah impostor, and^io^A regultffi^ 
eduecsted practitwker. This was* '^ a weakinveKHon <^ 
the enemy, ^' for it so happens that in the matter of 
qualification by education, I can take higher ground 
than ninetyniine out. of every hundred medical' men 
in. this country. I may say, that I .have had the 
good ^fortune. to. enjoy a sound medieal and. surgical 
education, of lakindxuinsually good and extensive. 
It will appear in the following bdef detail, and let 
any of my opponaits say -where the balance lies. 
I matriculated at Trinity College, and for more than 
three yei^s attended the hospital psactice of Drs. 
Graves, Stokes, and the svu:geoni-general, a^4 all the 
necessary lectures. I was above twelve months at 



CREFACE* If 

the li^perpool Infitmary and Bardioloniew's Hos- 
pital; I spent three academical years in Paris, under 
Baron Dupujiren, at the Hotel Dieu, and Baron 
liouis^ at the hospital of La Piti6. Up to this time 
I had dissected six winters^ and had taken notes of 
ahove three thousand .post-mortem eauiminations at 
which I had assisted. Since that period I have 
spent seven years in a large and instructive private 
practice in London. My health.failing> I went on the 
contiiient as physician to the lat^ Bight Hon* Lord 
Famkam'; anda^rwards, during four years, spent 
some, time at the .German universities, and studied 
the practice of the most eminent surgeons and phy- 
sicians in most of thQ capital cities of Europe. / 
have a medical decree, a eurgewCs dijj^oma, and for 
my- knowledge of drugey a license /rem the werehipjul 
company. All this, however, might still be a falla- 
cious criterion- of my abihty to treat the sick with 
benefit. I am, ther^ore, content to rest my claims 
on. the known success of my practice here, and on 
my opinions as they appear in a:printed foim. 

I have another certificate, that might be called 
the firet Water Cure diploma^ which perhaps will 
be foimd as profitable to my patients and inyself as 
those firom more fadiionable colleges. It is the 
^flowing. When I had been a considerable time at 
Graefenberg, Freissnitz was asked by Prince Lich- 



10 PKinraiCE* 

tenstein, and some other gentlemen^ ** What he 
thought of the English doetor?" . He ^ied, ** i 
have seen great numbers of these gentl^nen here, 
but this is the one who undersptands mf cure> and 
the only one I have seen who has given the practice 
of it fair attention and study." Captain Claridge, 
who came to Grraefenberg some time after I had 
been there, and who has since done so>muoh in 
direetmg publie attention to the s^stan, heard this 
frequently repeated. It has been a general lemoric 
amongst the uninitiated^ that I was too enthufliastie 
in my praise of the Water Cure. I might retort 
that this arises from their own vague and limited 
knowledge of the physiolo^, diseased states^ and 
restorative capabilities of the human body when 
judiciously acted upon by water and the other 
necessary adjuncts of the cure* Nor can individuals 
of this capacity yet percave. the *' ooming events 
casting their shadows before them/' and the vast 
amelioration the Water Cure is destined to produce 
in the moral and physical sufiPering of, so called, 
civilized society. 

I have alluded to one exception among my medical 
Mends who did not abuse me, or indulge in a sneer 
at this new mode of treatment— *that exception was 
Dr. Gully ; I had predicted this from my knowledge 
of his physiological acuteness during seven years 



PREFAGB. 11 

dose intimacy mtb bim in privftle practice in Lon- 
don. As soon 88 my practice here became too great 
for me to attend to» be was desirous •£ joining me, 
wbich, be it remarked, be did^ to tbe relinquisbment 
of an excellent practice in London. MoreoTer, bis 
works are a snffident proof tbat it was from a pbilo- 
sopbical conviction tbat be joined me in tbe practice 
of a more ratianal and efficient system* So late as 
tbe montb of October last, tbe Provincial Medical 
Journal, natnrally opposed to onr system, bears tes- 
timony to my opinion in tbe fbllowing words : — 

" Such are the principles of which Dr. Gullj boldlj presents 
himself as the advocate ;— >we saj boldly, because it required 
no common degree of courage to appeal to nature from calomel 
and the — — - ; to the simple mode of treatment from the 
bleeding, purging, blistering method, complacently denomi- 
nated *' active practice,' by modem medicine-mongers. His 
book contains a number of judicious remarks on the state of 
the body in health and disease, and is replete with sound doc- 
trines of practice which deserve greater attention, inasmuch as 
they are sadly overlooked by writers and teachers of the pre- 
sent day y^-Provinoiitl Medical and SurgicalJoumal^ October 
8th, 1842. 

Moreover, like myself, neitber bis education, bis 
tastes, or bis circumstances, would allow bim to 
adopt any plan of practice, wbicb be could not re- 
concile to bis convictions of its superior utility and 



12 .PBETACE. 

importlmoe. Acoordmglj* Dr. GuUy is my colleague 
in the practice of the Water Cure here« 

Need I say with how much ^atis&ction we look 
back on what we have already been able to accom- 
plish, and with what pleasing certainly we look for- 
ward to ihe period when the turmoil of novelty and 
innovation having subsided, the Water Cure, no 
longer shadowed over and mystified by the dense 
clouds of interest, prejudice, and misrepresentation, 
shall be cultivated and known in all its; perfection, 
and its benefits universally appreciated and practised 
by a liberal and enlightened profession. 

JAMES WILSON. 

Great Malvern, June, 1843. 



PROSPECTUS 



OF TUB 



WATER CURE ESTABLISHMENT AT 

MALVERN^ 



A MODS of treating disease, so different from that 
in common usage as is the Water Cure, begets a 
necessity for the publication of certain details re* 
ferring to the arrangements, economical and finan- 
cial, for its practice. . This is further urged upon us 
by the very numerous inquiries made by letter re- 
garding these arrangements, and the growing en- 
croachment on time which the replies we have to 
make involve. To such a publication we attach, as 
is usual, the name of ^^ Prospectus." 

The first feature in the practice of the Water Cure 



14 PROSPECTUS. 

is the formatioii of a piiyate Institution^ in which 
patients lodge, board, and are professionally treated. 
Looking to the prindple that the physician is the 
arbiter of the patient's physical and mental treat- 
ment in totOy and that in the treatment in question 
hygienic means alone are employed, the advantages 
denvable from this plan are sufficiently obvious. To 
the patient it a£Fbrds that sense of security at all 
hours, which residence under the same roof with his 
medical attendant cannot but engender ; whilst it 
obviates the possibility of those so-called trivial, but 
really important aberrations in diet, time of sleep, 
&c., which so often mar the progress towards health. 
Add to this, that the patient lives without a single 
intrusion of the thousand nameless troubles which 
beset housekeeping even when best managed : as re- 
gards everything, save health, he has no occasion to 
have one thought for to-day, still less for to-morrow. 
The philosophical student and practitioner of disease, 
as it occurs in the thinking animal, man, is weU 
aware of the vast advantage of placing the sufferer in 
a position of the most complete ifuoucianee that is 
attainable. 

•' Coq)Us onustum 
Animum quoque prsegravat una.*' 

In most states of disease even the call to choose 



PROSPECTUS. 15 

what shall form to-day's dinner is a source of initA* 
tion : and all the pettj duties are magnified into in^ 
tolerable nuisances. Withal there are the dulaes in- 
ddental to the treatment which, be they small or 
great, the impatient or the lethargie mind of the 
sick man strives to evade, but whidb he would 
scarcely think of doing under the very roof of his 
medical attendant. In this manner, having nothing 
to think of, and nothing to do but attend to his 
health, and being in a manner forced to do this, the 
best possible chance is given him of recovering it. 
And that he does this with greater rapidity we have 
verified in many instances, in which, firom the day 
the patient left his family aod his house, the strides 
towards health have been trebled in speed. Were 
there no scientific reasons-*~aad they are abundant — 
for the advantages of Institutions of this character, 
this fact, so soon discovered by those who are prac- 
tically acquainted with their working, would arm u& 
against the shallow and the envious sneers directed 
by some members of the medical profession against 
a plan which curtails the duration of disease. It 
might be supposed that it had never been acted upon 
by professional men. But when every one well knows 
that Sir Alexander Morrison, Dr. Monro, Dr. 
Mayo, Dr. Warburton, Dr. Sutherland, and 
others in London, not to mention many others scat- 

10 



16 PROSPECTUS. 

tered over the pravmoes, maintain and derive their 
income firom, private Institntfons for the insane, we 
may demur to the opinion which stamps them as 
unprofessional, when the insane of hod j are impli- 
cated. Again, scarcely a newspaper is puhlished 
that does not contain the advertisement of some 
physician or surgeon offering his house and skill to 
atiy invalid who may he indined to try them : is this 
unprofeissionalor hot? Is it unprofessional or not 
to advertise for, and t(tke in, the youths who^ in con- 
sideration of a premium, are to be blessed with the 
enormous amount- of instruction requisite for com- 
pounding some miserable pills and potions? Is it 
unprofessional or not for a member of the Royal 
College of Surgeons to keep a shop, wheie, besides 
his own drugs, salad-oil, Lucifer matches, blacking, 
brass liquid, and quack medieinesy are sold? If such 
things be strictly pn^essional, that is, coibpatible 
with the dignity of the medical profession, (and they 
are of every-day practice and notoriety,) it is tmly 
stretching a prejiJidice to call an arrangement unpro- 
fessional which has the effect of bringing the physi- 
cian in more close and constant contact with his 
patient, and which thereby gives him the opportu- 
nity of observing the action of his remedies more 
accurately, and modif3dQg them in accordance with 
the uprising circumstances of his malady. The vul- 



PBOSPBCTUS. 17 

garity of soul which can call this unprofessional, yet 
countenance the ways, and means we have just re- 
cited in our interrogatories, is at once ludicrous 
and lamentable. Away with similar absurdities and 
contradictions I 

But unprofessional or not, the plan benefits 
4)atients ; and, therefore, so far ^m abandoning it, 
we purpose ere long to extend it, by the erection of 
an Institutiion which shall be capable of holding 
from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pati^its, 
the site of which will be at Great or Little Malvern. 
But this establishment will in no way interfere with 
that which we already have, and which will be 
open to such as prefer to remain at Great Malvern 
itsdlf* 

As it is commonly asserted that the Water Cure is 
inapplicable to cases of acute disease, local inflam- 
mations, and fevers, it will be an object with us, at 
the earliest possible date, to set on foot the esta- 
blishment of a small hospital for the reception of 
such cases from among the poor of the neighbour- 
hood ; iu which we may be enai^ed to demonstrate 
practically the gratuitous character of this assertion, 
which for groundlessness may rank with the objec- 
tions we have demolished in our work entitled " The 
Dangers of the Water Cute, and its Efficacy Ex- 
amined." The reader of this work will find in its 

c 



16 PROftPEerus. 

p^8 abttndant teaaons for doabting a vast ^pimtity 
of the obsenratioiis he hears regarding the Water 
Cure. 

furtibimr to throw the light of Tmth upon this 
important subject, inyolving as it does the aboUtion 
of error and the mitigatioii of huBum suffering, we 
are making arrangements &r the periodical publica- 
tion, in the form of a journal, of the details of the 
majority of cases -which come under orar cognizance 
and care. The pages of this journal witi, of course, 
be open to the isontribntions of all whose object is 
the development of the pirinciples and practice of 
the Water Cure. 

In (Mir work above alluded to, w^ have offered the 
rationale of what is found to be true in practice, 
namely, that dxronic disease cannot he successfully 
4a'Qifted by water, in towns. Mudi of the mischief 
-that is likely to arise from ignorance of the pnnei- 
■ples of the Water Oure will, we venture to pro^ 
phesy, be attributable to ignorance on this pdmt 
•especially. They who attempt to put it lato pnu> 
iice amid the excitements and anxieties of to^^ns are 
its worst enemies, and for one cure they may e£ket 
th^ vnJl in&lHbly do injury in twenty instances to 
the constitutions of their patients. Firmly cmi^ 
vinced of this fact, we have avoided the peril by 
Ihe choice of Mahem, as die best adapted for the 



PROSPECTI76. 19 

saccessful employment of the water tareatment 
against chronic disease. The advwsaries of the 
Water Cure maintain that the fine air^ the quietude 
of the country^ and exercise in pleasant scenes^ are 
the true agents in the cure of disease of this kind. 
Nor do we deny their immense importance, though, 
as we have elsewhere i^own, they form only a part 
a£ the Water Cure, and are not efficient without the 
other parts. Be tUs as it may, Malvern stands pre* 
eminent in all England for water, air, scenery, sad 
rural quietude. Some details on these points may 
be useful. 

The villfl^e of Great Malvern is ntuated on the 
eastern side of the range of hills whidi take their 
name fVom it. The nature of the soil, which is ex* 
oeedingly porous, as well as its position on the slope of 
Uls reaching fourteen hundred feet in altitude, cause 
it to he especially remarkahle for dryness ; so mudi 
80, that after a long continuance of heavy rain, the 
ground becomes dry in the course of two or three 
hours. Another topographical peculiarity, which 
greaitly favours this, and effectually prevents damp- 
ness of atmosphere is, that the Malvern hills are a 
single range, with a plain on either side, and having 
no hills to back them. It is weU known, that when 
the contrary to this prevails— when a series of 
mountains arise in depth as well as length — ^that 

b2 



20 PROSPECTUS. 

dampness is a usual concomitaiit ; whereas a single 
range being well exposed to the winds, favours the 
rapid evaporation of moisture. With this provision 
against one of the worst characteristics of the 
atmosphere— dampness, — the air of Malvern becomes 
one of the most congenial for the jaded frames of 
invalids. And, although the village is situated at a 
considerable altitude, and has an eastern aspect, 
the variations of the thermometer show a climate 
equally warm with that of London. 

As regards the fitness of Malvern for an invahd, 
considered on the score of its position and scenery, 
one opinion only is expressed by those who have 
seen it. Dr. Hastings very emphatically and truly 
calls it, ''England's most beautiM village." And 
beautiful it is both to look towards and to look 
from it. The magnificent plain of Worcestershire 
stretches eastward, like a garden ; towards the nortb- 
east the view reaches to the hills of Shropshire, and 
to the south-east to the Cotswold range in Glouces- 
tershire : whilst within this range, the cities of Wor- 
cester and Gloucester, and the towns of Tewskbury 
and Cheltenham, are seen at the distance of twenty- 
five, twenty-two, sixteen, and eight miles respec- 
tively. The western side of the hOls looks over the 
undulating face of Herefordshire, where the varia- 
tion of character in the scenery, from that on the 



PROSPECTUS. 21 

Worcestershire side, affords the- stimulus of change 
for which the. invalid so commonlj yearns. Add -to 
these the internal scenic heauties of the village itself, 
with its flowers throughout the winter, and the pre- 
dominance of evei^een plants, and a combination of 
advantages of position * is presented that is rarely 
equalled, and nev^ excelled in England. 

But the celebrity of Malvern is mainly founded on 
the unequalled purity of its waters ; and this, indeed, 
is one of its principal recommendations as a spot for 
the treatmient of chronic disease by water. This 
celebrity is of very old date ; and as the beneficial 
consequences of its use, in a, variety of diseases, were 
never supposed to be possibly attributable to its 
purity, a mystic and holy character came, as is 
usual, to be attached to it : so unwilling is the mind 
of man to believe that great results can proceed from 
simple means. Thus the Malvern springs came to 
be called " holy,'' for the same reason that the Well 
of St. Winifred gave the name of Holywell to the 
place where it exists. In the addenda to Camden's 
Britannia, mention is made of the efficacy of 
Malvern water in the *^ healing of eyes and other 
parts of the head," as also ** for curing all scorbutic 
humours and external ulcers by bathing and drink- 
ing of the waters." In a work by Dr. Wall, enti- 
tled ^' Etgperiments and Observations an the Malvern 



22 PROSPBcrrva 

Waten/^ a number of oases are died wherein the 
curatire powers of the same water are exemplified. 
These cases include suppuration and caries of jomts, 
leprosj, scrofulous ophthalmia, and Tsrious other 
forms of scroAila, seorbntic eruptions, glandular oV 
stmetions, canoer, corroding ulcers of the throat and 
face, tumours and caries of the bones, disorders of 
the urinary passages, loss of appetite, and immode- 
rate evacuations of Women, cou^ and catanhs, 
&c. &c. Dr. Wai«l further states, that one of the 
common methods of using the water is hj *' cover* 
ing the parts wHh cloths dipped in the water, and 
moistened from time to time, as often as they grow 
drv/' And he adds ; '* Those who bathe for cuta- 
neous foulnesses, usually go into the water with thrir 
linen on, and dress upcoi it wet* This method^ ^di 
as it is, has neper yet^ thai I have heard ofy been 
attended with any ill &>nse^fuettces ; themghlha»e 
known it used by several tety tender persons." 
Showing that some of our ancestors of a hundred 
years back had not the horror of cold water and wet 
Imen which is now-a-days professed. 

It is worthy of remark, that all the so called Holy 
Wells throughout the kingdom, after having re- 
ceived divine qualities from the ignorant, and after 
undergoing repeated analysis by chemists, in the 
vain hope of torturing out some mineral solution in 



them to account for liheb mtoes^ nxe all vedoeibte. to 
the simple attribute of purity — ^purity from the very 
ingredients which form the attraction, and constitute 
the supposed virtues^ of modem mineral springs. In 
this particular, it must be conceded that the wisdom 
of our ancestors exceeded oars': for they never 
dreamed of bestowing '* divine pomen^^* and names 
on waters from which the ol/actoriesy the taste, and 
the ttomaek of man and beast revoit. Na mineral 
spring was ever yet thon^ki worthy to be dubbed 
" holy :" on the coatrary, other water seems to haiie 
been ^ holier'' in its effects the less mineral matter 
iteEmtaiaed. 

In this pure Malvern water then-^the purest in 
England*— the entiie of our pharmaeopoeia is oom^- 
prised; and its external and internal employment, 
i«ried aeoordiDg to the dreimistances of disease, is 
'flitted against the long and multifarious array of me* 
dieinal means. It is* found gushing in num^r^us 
places from the sides of the mountains ; and patients^ 
as thiey take their morning walk in any direction, can 
enjoy at once the nooantaia air,, tlie mountain water, 
and the sploidid scenery which lays bek)w them, 
whilst all around them glitters with the rays of 
the early sun. Tasso'*' knew something of the 

* Del Mondo Creato» Giorno iii, statiza 8. 



24 BR08VECTI78. 

healthful and yiyiiying infiaence of such a combina- 
tion when he wrote ; 

*' O liquid! cristalli, onde s'estingua 
L'ardente sete a miseri mortal! ! 
Ma piu salubre e, se tra vive pietre 
Rompendo l^igeatate et firedde oora 
Incontra il nuovo lol, che il puro aigento 
Co' raggi indora." 

No wonder, that whilst the internal sources of a 
patient's torments are bang subdued by the yarious 
processes of the Water Cure, he finds in these ei- 
ternal circumstances an influence which aids in 
soothing the irritation or arousing from the languor 
which attend all forms of chronic disorder. No 
wonder that, from the conjoined action of all these, 
" good digestion waits on appetite, and health on 
both,'' and they eat who hare been unable to do so £>r 
years. No wonder that the spirits rise under sach 
a regime, and they learn to laugh, to- whom a smile 
has long been stranger. Nerer did wine produce 
such true mirth as we have seen eidbdbited by our 
water* drinking patients at Mahem. Let one of 
them — a gentleman of high literary and scientific 
attainments — speak for this in a song written by 
him under the inspiration of the water of St. Ann's 
Well, and published by him in the Hereford Journal, 
19th April, 1843. 



PROSPECTtrs. 25 



A NEW SONG 

FOR THE 

MERRY WATER-DRINKER AT ST. ANNE'S WELL. 

Up, on the hills ! ye water-loyen ! 

Up, on the hills ! 'mid the mountain air ! 
Up, on the hills, that the bright dew covers ! * 

Up, on the hills ! for health is there. 
Raise the crystal cup on high. 

Sparkling with the healthy wave ; 
Quaff, and drain the goblet dry. 

Taste the metVcine Nature gave. 

Let the bards of jnodem times. 

Wine-inspired, degenerate race, 
Bacchus call to aid their rhymes, 

Bacchus, with his purple &ce; 
Ancient poets, not so daft. 

Wandered o'er the sacred mountain,* 
Like the Muses, wisely qtiaffed. 

Inspiration from the fountain.f 

** Water's best !** we hail the word 

As inspired Pindaric t present ; 
'* Water's best !'* again we've heard 

From inspir'd Silesian peasant, 

4 

* PamasBos. 

t Hippocr^ne, or Fountain of the Horse, viz. P^gasos, so 
called from P^ge, a fountain. 
t 'Apttrrou fthf i9wp, — Pmd, 



26 PROSvzdtrs. 

'* Water's beat !** shout, shout je then. 

Water-drinkers ever fresh ! 
Health-crusaders ! once again 

Cleanse, by deluging, the flesh. 

" Physic to the dogs we'll throw," 

To the dogs with Port and Sherry ; 
Water makes our spirits glow, 
Ever brisk and ever nieEr j.. 
Wine oUuscates each idea^*^ 
* Physic makes our bodies shtinky— ^ 
Water 's Nature's paaaeea I 
Water be our only drink* 

Let the mad-will'd epicure 

Pile his food on groaning table. 
Fill his glass with spirit pure. 

Eat and drink as Imig as able. 
Far from us such sensual riot, 

JR\fe with slow yet sure self-slaughter ! 
Hert^s-^^ Air, Exbiussb* Ai«i> Duet!*' 

In a bumper of Cold Wa-vbr \ 

Great Malvern, April, 1843. 

Truly all this looks very much as if patients in 
the Water Cure were surrounded by the *' dangers" 
which physic-mongers eoojnre mp ! Or dse there is 
something marvellous in that treatment which ena- 
bles them to look danger in the face^ and even laugh 
at it ! But, dangerous or not^ this same Mahrem 
water, internally and externally applied^ sends 
patients away in much better spirits than they came, 



and we know of no ^ senna or purj;aidre drauglit" 
that will do as much. Not that there be no grum- 
blers in the camp, to whom sickness imparts the 
unenviable facoltj of seeing onlj one side of a qnes- 
lion, and that the dark side, and only one colour, 
and that a sickly yellow* There are certain reason- 
able persons, who, aftet emplopng themselves for 
ten, fifteen, or twenty years, in destroying their 
health with drinking, gormandising, and physic, 
thiaik it very hard if it be not perfectly restored in 
as many days, and, this miracle Ming to be effected 
even by the Water Cure, retire in weU-fonnded 
dudgeon, bestowing complimentary epithets on the 
treatment and the practitioners. Pbysieittis, no 
matter what their practice, must expect instances of 
this kind : and they are only alluded to in this place 
in order to signalize the perversity of sickness, and 
sometimes the want of truthfulness and honour, 
and to justify our treatment ftom its unreasonable 
assailants. We liave recorded an example of the 
kind in the Cases appended to our work oa the 
" Dangers of the Water Cure.'* 

One word on the season best adapted far the 
treatment of chronic disease by water. Unques* 
tionably, the winter taken altogether is the most de-' 
sirable : then it is that the processes are most effec- 
tual in rousing the aystem to those s^f-^restorstive 



28 PROSPECTU& 

efforts on which, as we have elsewhere shown, the 
practice of the Water Cure is based. The superiority 
of winter, in this particular, is most marked and un- 
deniable. Nor does the winter at Malvern render 
this so formidable as might be supposed firom its 
lofty situation on the brow of the mountains, at an 
elevation of five hundred feet. A comparison be- 
tween thie mean temperatures in Malvern and Lon- 
don, shows that of Malvern to be only T below that 
of London ; whilst in comparing the seasons, it is 
foond that the spring and autumn are 2^ wanner 
and the summer d^"" warmer in London ; but that 
the temperature of winter, including the months of 
December, January, and February, is as mild in 
Malvern as in London. So that with an equally 
mild winter, we have a cooler summer; circum- 
stances which are highly favourable for the purposes 
of the Wat(»r Cure ; for, the cold of winter being 
sufficiently great for its full action, and oh the whole 
preferable, the lower temperature of summer dimi- 
nishes the objection foimded on the want of reaction 
which attends extreme heat. It is, however, right 
to state that there are some cases for which, from 
the impossibility of taking active exercise, the sum- 
mer season is preferable : but these are in the mino- 
rity. For such the breeze that always blows on 
these hills, and the shade of evergreens that is to 



PROSPECTUS. 2& 

be found in eyery direction, afibrd relief from the 
oppression that would otherwise accompany exposure 
to the noonday snn : for the hills shelter the Tillage 
from that of the afternoon. 



It remains to give a statement of our professional 
charges. The qmddam honorarium is generally a 
delicate matter between doctor and patients ; yet it 
is one that must be considered^ especially when a 
change is made in the mode of remuneration, as 
well as the mode of treatment. This last renders it 
necessary to make the professional charge a weekly 
one ; and this varies according to the following cir- 
cumstances, and in the following proportions. To 
those who reside in the establishment the fee is from 
four to five guineas per week for each patient^ which 
includes board, lo(%ing, medical attendance, and 
baths. This» with a weekly payment of two shillings 
and sixpence to the bath-servant, includes all ex- 
penses whatever. When a patient prefers to be 
treated in lodgings, the weekly fee for medical at- 
tendance, and all the requisite baths, is from two to 
three guineas ; and the payment to the bath-servant 
four shillings — the office of this servant being to un- 
dertake all the prescribed processes. In either case, 
whether of residence in the establishment or in 



30 PROSPECTtTB. 

lodgings^ there is a fee of two guinea at the first con- 
sultation ; the ground for which is the great quan- 
tity of time expended in the invest^tion of the 
previous history of the disease, and in the expkna* 
tions necessarily attendant on a novel and misrepre- 
sented mode of treatment, and which, moreover, can 
borrow nothing of the mystery by which, in the old 
practice, all inquiries are answered, and all explana- 
tions stifled. 

Such is the general undertaking with r^ard to 
professional remuneration. But there are cases m 
which the extremely pressing nature of the malady^ 
and the anxious care necessary in watching it, autho- 
rize a deviation from it in the direction of increased 
charges. Of such cases, however, we are by no 
means ambitious, experience having taught us that 
nothing can compensite for the t«mble «id anxiety 
they bring, especially when it is considered that 
many eyes are on the qui vive to detect a single death 
among our patients, although patients under the old 
system unexpectedly fall around us unnoticed, and 
4U a matter of course.* It is perfectly reasonable 

* It will, perhaps, be hardly credited, when we state the 
fact that patients have been sent to us expressly to die at 
Malvern. There is one still going on with the treatment, 
who came here six months ago with a pofite recommendation 
fiom a physicino, who, we were authentically informed, had 

10 



PROSPECTUS. 31 

that remuneration should run parallel with re- 
sponsibility in the medical^ as in other ayocations. 

On the other hand^ when the treatment of a 
patient extends over a great length of time, and per- 
severance on his part^ as well as watchfulness on 
ours, is demanded for a long period, a deviation 
is made in the direction of decreased charges; the 
patient reaping the benefit for his perseverance, and 
ourselves being compensated for diminished remune- 
ration by the augmented chances of reputation 
afforded to us. This also is reasonable, and just to 
both parties -, for it is absurd to suppose that the 
fees of an obedient and persevering patient are the 
only reward the physician obtains from the case. 
As numerous inquiries are made of us regarding 
the appHcabihty of the Water Cure to individual 
cases, we may here state our wiUingness to answer 
all such, " without fee or reward," the inquirer only 
taking care to inclose an envelop having his address 
upon it. 

J. W. 

J. M. G. 



given it as his opinion that the patient could not last above 
ten days or a fortnight under any circumstances. 



WORKS BY DR. GULLY. 



A SYSTEMATIC TREATISE on COMPA- 
RATIVE PHYSIOLOGY, introductory to the PHYSIO- 
LOGY of MAN. Translated, with Notes, from the German 
of Frederic TivDBMANN. 8to. 12«. 1834. 

We have no hesitation in saying that it is oae of the most interesting 
volomes which we have ever perused. We recommend it to our readers 
in he most sincere and strenuous manner. — MedicO'Chirurgical Review^ 
October, 1836. 

LECTURES on GENERAL PATHOLOGY and 

THERAPEUTICS. Translated, with Notes, from the 
French of F. J. V. Broussais. Published in the London 
Medical and Suigical Journal, 1835-36. 

An EXPOSITION of the SYMPTOMS, ESSEN- 
TIAL NATURE, and TREATMENT of NEUROPA- 
THY or NERVOUSNESS. 8vo. 1837. Second Edition, 
1840. 

This volume is written in a lucid style, exhibits a just view of the 
disorder, and deserves the perusal of every medical practitioner who 
Irishes to make himself acquainted with this too common and trouble- 
some complaint.— £(iltnfrurj^ MeiUeal and Surgical Journal, July, 1839. 



Works by Dr, Gully. 

The SIMPLE TREATMENT of DISEASE, de- 
duced from the Methods of EXPECTANCY and REVUL- 
SION. 8vo. 1842. 



We recommend the perasal of this work to all those who have an inor- 
dinate fiidth in the efficacy of medicine.— JUediccU Tinw, Aug. 6, 1842. 

The present volume of the learned translator of Tiedemann is an ele- 
gantly written production, and highly important in its relation to tlie 
management of health,— Lancet, Sept. 3, 1842. 

His book contains a number of judicious remarks on the state of the 
body In health and disease, and is replete with sound doctrines of prac- 
ii9e.-^Provincial MedUcal Journai, Oct. 8, 1842. 

Dr. Gully's name is already familiar to the profession as the author of 
an exposition of the symptoms and treatment of nervousness, and the 
worit before us will, we toe convinced, tend to raise his character both ad 
« pathologist and practitioner.^^iiftWi Medioai Timet, Oct. 19, 1842. 

We strongly recommend Br. OuUy's little treatise to the attention of 
the faculty, as well as to tiiat of indlviduals.—irataf and MUUary 0(uetU, 
July 9, 1842. 

Dr. Gully has accomplished his object very ably. The book has the 
merit of being concise, comprehensive, and perspicuous. — Atlat, July 24, 
1842. 

In this work Dr. Gully shows himself a man of literary research as 
well as pnctiMliuAgmmt.'-OenertaAdwrtiter, July, 1842. 

We recommend this rational aad very excellent work to every one who 
would eschew mineral poisons and vegetable plagues in the shape of 
physic, and obtain restoration to health by the only natural and effective 
means. — Freemason's (iuarterlp Bevieio, June, 1842. 



WORKS BY DR. WILSON. 



In the press^ Sixth Edition^ much bnlarokd, price 3«. 6d. 

A HAND-BOOK of THE WATER CURE, 
being a PRACTICAL TREATISE on the PRESERVA- 
TION of HEALTH, and the CURE of DISEASES by 
WATER, AIR, EXERCISE, and DIET—wt/A numerous 
Cases — the result of observ€ition8 made on above two thousand 
patients treated at Oraefenberff and. other sstabHshmenie,. and 
on six hundred treated at Great Malvern, Bj JAMES 
WILSON, M.D., Physician to his Serene Highness Prince 
Nassau, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, London *, 
late Fellow of the Royal Medico-Chiruigical Society, London, 
&c. &c. &c. Author of " A Practical Treatise on the Curative 
Effects of Vapour applied Locally." 

By the same Author, Third Edition^ price Zs, 6<f. Two Hundred 

pages* 

. THE WATER CURE. 
STOMACH COMPLAINTS and DRUG DIS- 

EASES; their Causes, Consbqubncbs, and Curb, by 
Water, ficc., with Cases ; and an Engraving of Napoleon in 
the second year of Cancer of the Stomach. To which is ap- 

8 



Works by Dr. Wilson. 

pended Two Lbttbrs to Dr. Hastings on the Results of the 
Water Curb at Malvern, Slc, &c. 

We confess that we openod these books with a prejudice against the 
■advocates of the water system of therapeutics, and for that reason felt 
it due to candour to give Dr. Wilson's publications an attentive perusal. 
This we have done, and from the facts adduced, and circumstances we 
shall presently mention, we are constrained to acknowledge that our opi- 
nions on the subject have undergone a complete change.— ir«re/ord 
Joumai. 

It is a talented work written in a piquant style. — Temperance Becordert 
■editor. 

From the number of cases we have heard of, as well as those related 
in this book, the Water Cure in Dr. Wilson's hands seems to have been 
eminently successful. We reconmiend it to the attention of invalids, as- 
suring them that they will be interested and instructed in perusing it^— 
The Shield Irit, 

The reader will find letters written to Dr. Wilson from patients of the 
highest respectability and rank, with many interesting cases. From its 
clearness and originality it is worthy the perusal, both of those that are 
well and those that are 8uffering.~CA«tten*am Chnmick, 

The boldest production we have seen from the pen of a medical writer. 
It will be perused with much interest, and we think profit, by every class 
of readers. — Wcrcetter JoumaL 

In the present volume. Dr. W., after a minute, yet clear account of 
the mode in which " PhpsiCt/ood, and Jretting^" as he expresses it, pro> 
duce tiomach compUiitU, gives the public some interesting facts concern- 
ing the results of the Water Cure as practised by him at Great Malvern. 
— Bath Joumai. 

Those who have stomach oompiainte or drug dieeates would do well to 
read the book, and learn how these may be eradicated without drugs. 
The results are such as leave no doubt of its wondrous effects in restoring 
the frame, whether suffering from acute or chronic disease. Neither, from 
the record of numerous cases, does there appear to be the slightest 
ground for apprehension from its use, when properly applied, in any of 
the complaints, nor in any of the forms described by Dr. Wilson in his 
book. — Mancheetcr Chronide* 



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