[Reviews of Letters from Graefenberg, 1847-1854.] / [John Gibbs].

  • Gibbs, John, of Camberwell.
Date:
1847-1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Reviews of Letters from Graefenberg, 1847-1854.] / [John Gibbs]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/80
    THE EXAMINER. MANCHESTER, SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1847. Letters from Gr^fenberg, in the years 1843, 1844, 1845, and 1846. With the Report and Extracts from tlie Correspondence of the Enniscorthy Hydropathic Society. By John Gibbs. London : Charles Gilpin. 1847. . Mr. Gibbs is a medical gentleman of ability and repute, at > present resident in Camberwell, who proceeded in the August ] of 1843, to Preissnitz’s celebrated establishment at Graefen- i berg, and remained there until the summer of 1846, invest!- | gating, with the amplest opportunities for such study, the i practice and theory of the water-cure. During the whole f course of his visit, he maintained a regular and copious cor- ' respoudeuce, detailing what he saw and inferred there, with Mr. Ridge, secretary of the Enniscorthy Hydropathic Society, by whom Mr. Gibbs’ letters, generally with some comment of his own, were forwarded to be ])ublished in the Wexford . papers, from which, with various additions, they are now , reprinted. Along with the letters of Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Ridge, are given a number of documents, emanating from • time to time, from patients in the Graefenberg establishment, ] individually or collectively, bearing most favourable testi- ] mouy to the beneficial nature of the water-cure. And a < number of notes are now a})pended, partly controversial, , partly bibliographical, from which the reader will gain a , tolerably accurate survey of the whole literature of hydropathy Mr. Gibbs went to Gnufenberg, without any particular , bias in favour of the water-cure, perhaps rather scepti- . cal than otherwise, and there is an evident sincerity j about his positive, sti-aightforward, determined, style of . writing, that indicates him to be a witness worthy of belief: j his talent and information ai‘e not for a moment mistakable. . Under the circumstances, therefore, his evidence is pe- culiarly valuable. It is not a treatise written witli fore- thought and premeditation, after removal from Griefenberg, but a weekly chronicle, sent oil’ as it befel, of what he saw with his own eyes, and now permits ns to see. At first it presents almost exclusively facts, and it is only latterly when these have so accumulated as to make his belief in the efficacy of the water-cure firm as rock, tliat he enters very ingeniously into the theory of the system, endeavouring to establish it a priori, and collects from old writers and from new, from far and near, testimonies incidentally borne to it by the natural curative instincts of man. To the general reader, tlie account of life at Grsefenberg, that vast asylum of upwards of a thousand patients of all countries, cannot fail to be interesting. Nor are the accounts of horrid diseases other than attrac- tive, here, as we see them, in Mr. Gibb’s pages, in instance after instance, receding before the all-healing influences of ^.'fitter. cordi.ally recommend the book as a straight- I foi’waid exposition of a subject in which all aie interested, . for who can boast himself now and forever exempt from
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