siastically and unselfishly to the advance of the two sciences upon which a proper system of medicine can only be based; and he has very independently written for the purpose of educating the non-professional as well as the professional members of society, in a knowledge of the structures and functions of some of the most important organs in the human frame. For doing this he has been greatly scandalized by one or more of our medical periodicals. But what person who is desirous to enlighten society generally, either as to the fallacies of the medical art as now practised, or in a knowledge of the sciences immediately relating to animal life, can expect to escape from having base motives or selfish aims assigned to him?

"The advantages to health of a judicious and sound system of diet, clothing, exercise, and ablution, cannot be better illustrated than by reference to what has been termed the water-cure.' The water practice has effected important results in the treatment of disease, and will, I trust, be instrumental in restoring to medicine one of her most valuable and important auxiliaries. Medical men may be jealous that these benefits have been conjured from the vasty deep' by other hands than those of the high priests of Therapeia, but they have no just reason of complaint; the treatment of disease by water had been improperly neglected. Now, however, its merits may be tested, and the test aided by public encouragement; moreover, the remedy will revert to those who are alone qualified to employ it, and we may fairly hope that a correct system for its use will be established by their labours. Priessnitz, the peasant of Silesia, has done much, but he would have done infinitely more had he received a medical education; he would then have avoided many errors, and have entitled himself to the rank of a discoverer. At present, though armed with the experience of twenty years, he is little more than an experimentalist, and, in some instances, a rash and incautious one. A warm supporter* and eulogist of Priessnitz remarks:- The knowledge acquired by anatomy, physiology, and pathology, is indispensable to the full understanding of the 'water cure,' and to its practice without frequent error. It is true, it has been discovered and brought to extraordinary perfection without this knowledge, but Priessnitz did not bring it to

* Dr. James Wilson."

its present state without twenty long and patient years of practical study of the powers of water, of the vital phenomena, and of those of disease, however imperfect his knowledge may be. But Priessnitz is a genius; an extraordinary case; one of those isolated instances which occur so seldom in the history of man; let not, therefore, other uneducated persons attempt to practise the water cure,' because Priessnitz has practised it! the power of genius is no rule for ordinary mortals.'

"This, I believe, to be a plain statement of the amount of merit due to Priessnitz, and such as I think we cannot refuse to accord him. To weigh truly the advantages of the system, we must, as the same author advises, allay the force of habit and the passion of prepossession. One of Priessnitz's great peculiarities,' he observes, is his tact; this is a valuable attribute, and indispens able to a great practitioner, though, when unaided by a knowledge of every mechanical and rational means of ascertaining the precise state of all the organs, it must frequently be followed by error.' His patients, strange to say, look at this blundering upon the right at the risk of hitting the wrong, as a special clairvoyance, as a mode of peeping into the internal recesses of the bosom, and into all the windings of the abdominal cavity.' The truth is, that being incomprehensible to themselves, they regard it as supernatural and wonderful, while the same persons would consider the cautious process of induction and mature judgment, founded on carefully observed data and the collective experience of ages, of the medical man, as nothing at all out of the common. This is the natural consequence of training a people to believe that drugs are their cure; they at last value the filthy stuff alone, and despise the judgment that directs it. Truly indeed do we deserve Napoleon's contemptuous sneer, that England is a nation of shopkeepers', so long as we tolerate the mental attributes of the medical man only for the sake of enjoying his drugs, and pay gladly for the drugs, while we repudiate any reward as the harvest of a scientific education.'"

66

Now, I think I may answer for my readers as well as for myself, that we are quite willing to give a fair share of honour to well-directed ablution; and that, although we could wish to see an equally well-directed diet added, we are disposed to be satisfied, in this case, with abstinence from alcoholic and other stimulants. But we cannot agree with him that air and exercise were omitted in the case referred to. The patient was unable to

walk out; but she breathed the fresh air of Grafenberg-to her a change of air-in her apartment; and exercise does not imply walking many miles, but simply action of the muscles, to an extent commensurate with the powers of the individual. Such motion was enjoyed by the patient in question-firstly, through the friction used by the attendants; and, subsequently, movement in obedience to her own will. The patient was a lady, nearly seventy years old; she was completely crippled with rheumatic gout, and had not been out of her bed for nearly twenty years. For sixteen years she was unable to lie horizontally; and for seventeen years had not used a pen. Priessnitz at first refused to receive her; but yielding to solicitation, she was treated as follows:-'Every morning, the upper part of her person was gently rubbed all over for a few minutes with a towel moistened in cold water. She was then well dried, and her dress replaced. The legs and feet were then well rubbed in the same way; and the same thing was repeated in the evening. bandage, well wrung out of cold water, was placed round the waist, covered with a thick dry one; and the same dressing, occasionally, to the legs. A few tumblers of water were drunk during the day, more or less, as she felt inclined.' Under this treatment got well. But this is no case in disproof of the value of air and exercise. A walk across the room to a feeble invalid, is equal to a mile of brisk walking to a person in health.

she

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"In admitting that disease has been cured, and that much benefit to health has resulted from the treatment adopted at Grafenberg, there are one or two considerations which must be taken into the argument. One of these relates to the arbitrary medical rule which reigns there-a rule of absolute necessity in the 'water cure,' and the very basis of success in all medical treatment. The place recognises but one king; and derilection is immediately followed by banishment. This, therefore, is a condition of importance, if we wish to transfer the benefits of the 'water cure' from Silesia to Britain. We must have Grafenbergs in the form of institutions under strict laws and rigid discipline. The advantages of institutions of this nature are thus referred to by Dr. Wilson: Among the foremost are the removal of the patient from all business, care, and temptation that can interfere with the cure and his return to a healthy state. The patient goes to bed early, and gets up early, and goes through the different parts of the cure with more ease and pleasure, from the

stimulus of association and example; he has the advantage of seeing similar cases to his own cured, of comparing notes, and receiving consolation.' At Grafenberg, therefore, existence and mind are dedicated to health; the pursuit of health is the sole occupation of the day. The votaries of water WILL follow out the rules of their director; they wILL be cured, and they ARE cured. Now, it is only in an institution that we could hope to combine these advantages in Britain; and I trust that the day is not far distant when we shall see such institutions-hygienic sanatoriums, in fact, in the neighbourhood of all our large cities, and at our watering places. My readers will perceive an additional necessity for institutions in the following glance at the instructions to a patient, who inquires how far he may venture to practise the 'water cure' alone:- You can apply cold water every morning, either by the wet sheet, wet sheet bath, cold bath, or shower bath, or simple ablution. Take a quiet walk, and drink three, four, or five tumblers of water, before breakfast. Take a foot bath at eleven or twelve o'clock, a tumbler or two of water, and a good long walk. The fomentation may be applied during the day to the stomach, as described. For a cold, you can lie in the wet sheet, and be afterwards well rubbed in the shallow, chilled bath for five minutes; or, when heavy and indisposed, a good sweating and a bath; but not much more would I recommend to ordinary people to try themselves.' I think few persons would be so bold as to venture upon these instructions, however simple, they may appear to the suggestor, without the supervision of a medical director. It has been said of a person who conducts his own case in a court of law, that he has a fool for his client; politeness forbids me to say what kind of patient a man has who physics himself.

"There is one process, however, that calls for special remark, and that is, the sudden immersion of the body in cold water while bathed with perspiration. This is easily explained; the skin is stimulated to excess, and were not some means taken to check the action, it would be prolonged indefinitely, and would be a cause of chill to the surface of the body, and give rise to cold and fever. The cold water, applied in the manner described, is a stimulant; it produces a momentary shock to the nervous system, causes the arrest of the perspiration, and is followed by a general re-action.*

"It is but fair to mention, that at all hydropathic establishments the temperature of the water is regulated by the state and power of the invalid."

"In describing the manner in which cold was produced by draughts of cold air, I had occasion to remark, that the checked perspiration was the effect, and not the cause, of the injury done to the system, and that the real cause of mischief was the chilling of the cutaneous nerves and the consequent depression of the nervous powers. Cold never injures the body when acting as a stimulant; it is only when it acts long upon the surface, and robs the latter of its heat. The youth of Rome, to avoid cold, were wont, after their contests on the plain of Mars, to leap into the Tiber. By this practice, they checked and removed the perspiration from the skin, prevented its slow evaporation and the cold engendered by that process, and caused a healthful re-action. If we hear of disease following this practice, it is in cases where the object is unknown or overlooked. The individual is labouring under nervous exhaustion from fatigue, or his nervous powers are lowered by the long continuance of the ablution, or he is passive in the bath; there is always some such depressing cause. stimulant, I repeat, immersion cannot be injurious. If the patient were to get up from the bed and dress, the probability is, that he would take cold; he would then necessarily chill; but the old action is stopped, and a new one induced, by the cold affusion.

As a

“Many refer, also, to the practice of Russia as an illustration of the harmlessness of exposure to a stimulant cold, while the skin is perspiring.. The Russian quits his hot vapour bath to be rubbed with snow; he then returns to the bath, and again to the snow; repeating the process several times, but always finishing with snow. The cold in his case has another effect; it subdues the excitement of the circulation caused by his clumsy bath. But in the Priessnitzian mode there is no such excitement. A method of treatment introduced some years ago, but rarely adopted at the present day, consisted in pouring several pailfuls of cold water upon the patient, This method then drying him well, and returning him to bed.

never gave cold.

"The cold bath of Priessnitz differs in nothing from the ordinary bath, excepting in its application, being rarely taken but as The shallow an appendage to the sweating process, or wet sheet. bath is a large tub, containing from six to twelve inches of water. The patient remains in it from three to ten minutes, rubbing his skin, and dashing water over the surface. It is also coupled with the affusion, once or twice, of a basinful over the whole body; this bath is a derivative in its action, and is employed by Priessnitz in