The principles and practice of hydrotherapy : a guide to the application of water in disease, for students and practitioners of medicine / by Simon Baruch.
- Simon Baruch
- Date:
- 1903
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The principles and practice of hydrotherapy : a guide to the application of water in disease, for students and practitioners of medicine / by Simon Baruch. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
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![drugs finds but a slight basis in either theory or experience. Diure- tics may do harm, and so far as they merely increase the water excreted can do no material good if the organ remains engorged and its excre- tory cells paralyzed in their function. A safe remedy and one that has thus far proved promptly effectual in all cases thus complicated occurring at the hospital, lies in the use of cold wet packs applied locally over loins and abdomen; in general cold packs, and cold tub baths—the temperature commonly employed being 70 F. The local packs are applied continuously, with renewals three or four times daily, until the urine approaches the normal amount and quality. Evidence of improvement is usually perceived within twenty- four hours, or at most forty-eight hours; and it may be necessary to continue pack from two to five or six days. When the local pack is discontinued a general cold pack (70°, one and one-half hours' duration) is given daily for some weeks. When there is elevation of temperature a cold tub bath is given, as may be indicated, for its stimulating and temperature-reducing effects. I confess on my own part a critical turn of mind toward such published accounts as the foregoing with such uniform results in treat- ing a grave form of disease. I shall not, therefore, take it as cause for surprise if some should fail to regard it seriously. I would sug- gest, however, that the test is readily made, and the means are always at hand; there is no other reliable means of relief, and the prognosis of the condition, untreated, is undeniably grave. Renal engorgement of active or passive type does not contraindi- cate the use of tub baths at 70° if they are not unduly prolonged; but, on the contrary, the bath is salutary. This has been demonstrated in the nephritis of typhoid. So far, however, as the nephritis alone is concerned, the local pack should have the preference as more effectual and convenient. The tub bath will control excitement and relieve the nervous symptoms, if the bodily temperature is above normal, and may therefore be used in connection with the packs. I would here make the general statement that no diuretic, within the limit of my experience, is at once so effectual, safe, and generally applicable as the local packs. The chief lesson which the author desires to impress by the some- what extensive quotations from the reports of the American asylums, and especially by the reproduction of detailed histories, is the impor- tance of a:i exact technique. The neglect of the latter has brought this remedial agent into unmerited desuetude. Dr. Foster's remarks (page 44,5) ]nay well be heeded by those who regard water as so sim-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21509438_0473.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
