Hydropathic aphorisms : the simple treatment of disease contrasted with medicinal abuses, or, The why and wherefore of the water cure / by John Balbirnie.

John Balbirnie

Date:: [1856]

Credit: Hydropathic aphorisms : the simple treatment of disease contrasted with medicinal abuses, or, The why and wherefore of the water cure / by John Balbirnie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$sauie plivsical injury would foll(jw. Fasliion, u fiilse mode of edueatiou, and faulty objects of acconiplisluuent. imi)ose upon the feebler sex restraints no long-cr e()ni])ntible with the free g-anibols to whicli the stronger owes its robustness of health. It is from the time that a perverted taste makes it indecorous for girls to indulge in the exercises of boy;^, that the deterioration of the female constitution commences. Their body, moreover, lias to be drilled, drawn, and tortured into conventional shapes and attitudes, equally ojiposed to the forms of nature and the functions of henltli. The slow- ness of the process of impairment, and the insidiousness of its ravages, usually mask the evil till detection comes too late, and remedy is unavailing. CXTII. The mental education is as fnu'ly as the physical. The faculties of the mind are equnlly repressed and enfeebled with the deterioration of the body. Frivolous pursuits, having little reference to the great ilestiiiies of w omnn. and acquired too often only to be forgotten or abnndoned, nbsorb the best years of life, shut out the place of solid acquisition, and heap up materials of enduring ill-lienlth. Tlie better to perpetuate the loss it entails, this costly sacrifice at the shrine of fashion is made before the body has received its proper mould, or the organs their due consolidation. Its palliation is a legitimate but blind maternal r.eal for the objects of the sex ! its excuse—ignorance of the conse- quences ! CXVIII. Sound views of the animal economy, as well as of the mental constitution, are necessary to correct the errors of public seminaries, and of private families CXIX. The physical and mental ])o\vors are intimately connected, and essentially depend on each other. If the Itody is unduly wasted by labour, nervous energy is with- drawn from the intellect—the mind hinguishes: if the nervous cnerg-y is unduly ex))ended by prolonged mental e.xertion, it is withdrawn from the body— the body languishes: ill either case, the equilibrium of health is destroyed - disease results. Defective exercise, or disorder of the functions of a part, influces inactivity, waste, and feebleness of ils structure. TTie brain is subject to this law: hence the necessity for a sinuiltaneoim and .systematic exen'ise of all its powers that are worthy of culture, and the uniform quiescence of those that ought to be represf<ed. The common rourses of edu-$