My will : a legacy to the healthy and the sick / by Sebastian Kneipp.

  • Sebastian Kneipp
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: My will : a legacy to the healthy and the sick / by Sebastian Kneipp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    not to know whether cold water for bathing were good or not, I yielded to the general feeling that cold water was bad for gouty people and ordered warm baths both for them and those subject to rheumatism. But I was by no means content on the whole. Only in one parti- cular was I satisfied which was the dissolving and dis- persing quality they possessed. Still I could not but regard them with ]3rejudice seeing that they were warm and weakening. I now made an attempt to combine warm baths with cold and after allowing the patient ten minutes in a warm one, put him into a cold one for half a minute, then again into one warmer than the first and so on for three changes. This plan succeeded well with the cor- pulent, the gouty, and the rheumatic subjects. The disadvantage of the warm baths which fostered weakness and effeminacy w^as in a measure overcome by the action of the cold baths and for many years I had very good results from the combination. I do not use warm baths alone, because I cannot get rid of my prejudice against them and because although at first they seem to work well they never fail to leave weakness behind. During the last five years I have made many expe- riments with cold water and I am convinced that in al- most every case the cold water is the reliable remedy. If on occasion it should be necessary to use a w^arm application in order to reinstate the normal warmth I think it can be done better by means of compresses than by warm baths. There have been many thousands of patients here this year and yet I have not ordered a single warm bath. He, who possesses a full knowledge of the power and influence of water, wdll never be at a loss in any emergency which may arise either in helping himself or in helping others by means of cold w^ater. What cannot be effected with cold water cannot be effected with warm. The latter is useful as a side help in combination with cold baths, but warm baths alone never heal or cure a disease.