Confessions and observations of a water-patient, in a letter to the Editor of the "New Monthly Magazine."
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- Date:
- 1845
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Confessions and observations of a water-patient, in a letter to the Editor of the "New Monthly Magazine.". Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![The different resources of water as a medicament, are to be found in many works easily to be obtained, and well worth the study. In this letter I suppose myself to be addressing those as thoroughly unacquainted with the system as I myself was at the first, and I deal therefore only in generals. The first point which impressed and struck me was the extreme and utter innocence of the water-cure in skilful hands—in any hands indeed not thoroughly new to the system. Certainly when I went, I believed it to be a kill or cure system. I fancied it must be a very violent re- medy—that it doubtless might effect great and magical cures—but that if it failed it might be fatal. Now, I speak not alone of my own case, but of the Immense number of cases I have seen—patients of all ages —all species and genera of disease—all kinds and conditions of consti- tution, when I declare, upon my honour, that I never witnessed one danger- ous symptom produced by the water-cure, whether at Doctor Wilson’s or the other Hydropathic Institutions which I afterwards visited. And though xmquestionably fatal consequences might occur from gross mismanage- ment, and as unquestionably have so occurred at various establishments, I am yet convinced that water in itself is so friendly to the human body, that it requires a very extraordinary degree of bungling, of ignorance, and presumption, to produce results really dangerous ; that a regular prac- titioner does more frequent mischief from the misapplication of even the simplest drugs, than a water doctor of very moderate experience does, or can do, by the misapplication of his baths and friction. And here I must observe, that those portions of the treatment which appear to the uninitiated as the most perilous, are really the safest,* and can be applied with the most impunity to the weakest constitutions ; whereas those which appear, from our greater familiarity with them, the least startling and most innocuous,-]- are those which require the greatest knowledge of ge- neral pathology and the indmdual constitution. I shall revert to this part of my subject before I conclude. The next thing that struck me was the extraordinary ease with which, under this system, good habits are acquired and bad habits relinquished. The difficulty with which, under orthodox medical treatment, stimulants are abandoned is here not witnessed. Patients accustomed for half a century to live hard and high, wine drinkers, spirit-bibbers, whom the regular physician has sought in vain to reduce to a daily pint of sherry, here voluntarily resign all strong potations, after a day or two cease to feel the want of them, and reconcile themselves to water as if they had drank nothing else all their lives. Others, who have had recourse for years and years to medicine,—their potion in the morning, their cordial at noon, their pill before dinner, their narcotic at bed-time, cease to re- quire these aids to life, as if by a charm. Nor this alone. Men to whom mental labour has been a necessary—who have existed on the excitement of the passions and the stir of the intellect—who have felt, these with- drawn, the prostration of the Avhole system—the lock to the wheel of the entire machine—return at once to the careless spirits of the boy in his first holiday. _ _ . . . ,» Here lies a great secret; water thus slrilfully administered is in itself a wonderful excitement, it supplies the place of all others—it operates powerfully and rapidly upon the nerves, sometimes to calm them, some- * Such as the wet-sheet packing. ■]• The plunge-bath—the Douche.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24921622_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
