Life of Vincent Priessnitz : founder of hydropathy / by Richard Metcalfe.

  • Metcalfe, Richard
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life of Vincent Priessnitz : founder of hydropathy / by Richard Metcalfe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Here and there, in the medical history of Europe, there occurs the name of a doctor who recom- mends water-drinking, washing, bathing, or swim- ming, to preserve health and cure disease. But there is nothing of special importance until the beginning of the eighteenth century (1702), when our countrymen, Sir John Floyer and Dr. Baynard, published their “ ¥TXPOAOTSIA: or the History of Cold Bathing, both Ancient and Modern,” the first part of which contains interesting letters by Floyer, written between the years 1696 and 1702. In Italian, at Naples (1723), appeared Lanzani’s ‘‘ Right Method of Using Cold Water in Fever and Other Maladies, Internal and External.” Niccolo Lanzani mostly confines his advocacy of water to its employment internally in fevers of all kinds, for which he holds water-drinking to be the best remedy. About the same time appeared another inter- esting book by a distinguished clergyman, John Hancocke, D.D., Rector of St. Margaret’s, Loth- bury, London, Prebendary of Canterbury, entitled, ‘“ Febrifugum Magnum, or Common Water the Best Cure for Fevers and probably for the Plague” (1722), in which he gives many instances of the curative effects of water, used in cases of fever, violent colds, etc., unassisted by any kind of medicine. These publications, with the actual practice of the authors, again drew attention to
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