The water-cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs ... and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully.

  • Gully, James Manby, 1808-1883.
Date:
[1847?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water-cure in chronic disease : an exposition of the causes, progress and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs ... and of their treatment by water, and other hygienic means / by James Manby Gully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the back, that she was far gone in pulmonary consumption, and announced it so. How did he treat that ? She was confined to a heated room, wore a respirator, had leeches and cuppings between the shoulder-blades, and constant blistering ! Strange enough treatment for consumption ! but how much stranger for indigestion ! which it was • for on taking courage and getting away to the Isle of Man once more, all the chest symptoms disappeared, but the dys]oei)tic were there as before. From this period she travelled about and stayed at home alternately, always suffering from intense dyspepsia, always taking purgatives, soda, tonics, &c., but never one bit better. At one date she was induced to try what homoeo- pathy could do for her, and the result, as far as the headache and some other nervous symptoms went, was very satisfac- tory. It does not appear, however, that circumstances allowed of her giving it a long trial, nor of her being near the medical prescribes Still homoeopathy was the first treat- ment that had done her any good—that had not, indeed, done her positive harm. But to crown the history of this most unfortunate case, a series of feverish symptoms broke out a short time before she came to Malvern, which were mis- taken for rheumatic fever, for which she was bled in the arm, frightfully dosed with calomel and opium, &c. After six days of this mistake, an eruption of measles took place, of which all these feverish signs had been the forerunner; and there is little doubt that had the body not been inter- fered with, and its powers depressed and misdirected by the treatment just mentioned, the eruption would have taken place much earlier, and the constitution have been spared the prolonged struggle to throw out the measles, the debili- tating effects of the bleeding, and the irritating effects of the calomel. However, her elastic nature got her round ; and it was on her recovery that she came to Malvern ; not with a view of remedying her now complicated ailments— for she had given up all hope of that—but with the desire that her husband should try the water treatment against a formidable amount of nervousness with which he was troubled. Here, then, is the instructive history of a disease which commenced in a simple attack of indigestion in a growing girl of excellent constitution. Had comparative, or, if necessary, total abstinence from food, been practised for twenty-four hours, and only dilution with very thin gruel