A woman's work in water cure and sanitary education / by Mary S.G. Nichols.

  • Mary Nichols
Date:
[1874]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A woman's work in water cure and sanitary education / by Mary S.G. Nichols. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/176 page 1
    INTRODUCTION. The pages of this little book contain brief records of thirty years of studious, thoughtful, and active life. Having from infancy feeble health with a consumptive tendency, the study of the science of human life and the healing art seemed forced upon me. Twenty years before my birth a singular process of water cure prevailed in that portion of New England where I was born. There was much scrofula amongst the children owing to the want of sanitary knowledge and the excessive use of swine's flesh, pork or bacon as it is calied. The children had rachitis, or rickets, a disease in which the bones of the chest and often the spine grew out of shape. They had also king's evil, the glands of the throat suppurating, scald head, and kindred diseases. For this scrofulous affection the children were treated by dipping them in cold water at sunrise; a babe or child was taken to the horse- trough or to running water, stripped and dipped three times; it was then, all wet as it was, wrapped in a blanket, laid in a warm bed and kept there till perspira- tion was induced; then it was rubbed with a dry towel and dressed. This dipping was repeated three morn- ings in succession ; then it was allowed to rest for three days, then dipped again three mornings, and so on until it had been plunged on nine mornings. Many children were cured in this manner, of whom my mother was one. Cold bathing was therefore regarded with special favour in our family.
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