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SIR  E. LYTTOI  BULWER'S
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OF A WATER-PATIENT.
IN A UTTER TO THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
TO WHICH IS APPENDED
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ORANGE MOUNTAIN WATER.CURE. 
 
EXTRACTS
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SIR  E. LYTTON  BULWER'S
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OF A WATER.PATIENT,
IN A LETTER TO THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE
TO WHICH IS APPENDED
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ORANGE  MOUNTAIN WATER-CURE.
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EXTRACTS
                          FROM

SIR  E.  LYTTON  BULWER'S  CONFESSIONS AND
      OBSERVATIONS  OF  A WATER  PATIENT,
  IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
     Dear Mr. Editor,
   I am truly glad to  see so worthily filled the  presidency in
one of the many chairs which our republic permits to criti-
cism and letters—a dignity in which I had the  honor to pre-
cede you, sub consule Planco, in the  good days  of William
IV.   I feel as if there were something ghostlike in my mo-
mentary return to my ancient haunts, no longer in the edito-
rial robe and purple, but addressing a new chief, and in great
part a new assembly.   For the reading public  is a creature
of rapid growth; every five years a  fresh generation pours
forth from our  institutes, our colleges, our schools, demand-
ing and filled with fresh ideas, fresh  principles, and hopes ;
and the seas wash the  place where Canute parleyed with  the
waves.  All that interested the world, when to me (then Mr.
Editor, now  your  humble servant), contributors addressed
their articles, hot and seasoned for the month, and like all
good articles to a periodical, **' warranted not to keep," have 
4
It E M I N 1 S C E N C K S
passed away into the lumber-room, where those old maids,
History and Criticism, hoard their  scraps  and relics, and
where, amid dust and silence, things  old-fashioned ripen into
things antique.   The roar of the Reform Bill is still, Fanny
Kemble acts no more, the  " Hunchback" awaits upon our
shelves  the resuscitation of a new Julia, poets of promise
have become mute, Rubini sings no more, Macready is in the
provinces, " Punch"  frisks it on the jocund throne of Sydney
Smith, and over  a domain once parceled among many, reigns
" Boz."   Scattered  and voiceless the  old  contributors—a
new  hum  betrays the  changing Babel of a new  multitude.
Gliding thus, I  say,  ghostlike, amid  the  present race,  busy
and  sanguine as the  past,  I feel that it best suits with a
ghost's dignity to appear but for an admonitory purpose; not
with the light and careless  step of an  ordinary visitor, but
with meaning stride,  and finger upon  lip.   Ghosts, we know,
have appeared to predict death—more gentle I, my apparition
would only promise healing, and beckon  not to  graves and
charnels, but to  the Hygeian spring.
  And now that I am fairly on  the ground, let us call to
mind, Mr. Editor, the illustrious names which still overshad-
ow it at  once with  melancholy and  fame.   Your post has
been filled with men whose fate precludes the envy which their
genius might excite.   By Campbell, the high-souled and sil-
ver-toned, and by Hook, from whom jest, and whim, and hu-
mor flowed in so free and so riotous  a wave, that books con-
fined and narrowed  away the stream ;  to read Hook  is  to
wrong him.  Nor can we think of your predecessors without 
INTEGRAL  EDUCATION.
5
thinking of your rival,  Hood, who, as  the  tree puts forth its
most exuberant blossoms the year before  its decay, showed
the bloom and promise  of his genius most when the worm was
at the trunk.  To us behind the scenes—to us who knew the
men, how melancholy  the  contrast between  the fresh  and
youthful  intellect  and  the worn-out and broken  frame; for,
despite what I have seen written, Campbell,  when taken  at
the right moment,  was  Campbell ever.  Not capable, indeed,
toward the last of the  same exertion,  if manifested by those
poor evidences of  what is in us, that  books parade, but still
as powerful in his great  and noble thoughts, in  the oral po-
etry revealed by flashes and winged words, though unrounded
into form.   And Hook jested on the bed of death as none but
he  could jest.   And Hood! who  remembers not the tender
pathos, the  exquisite humanity, which spoke  forth from his
darkened  room 1   Alas !  what prolonged pangs,  what heavy
lassitude, what death in life, did these men endure !
   Here we are,  Mr. Editor, in these days of cant  and  jar-
gon, preaching up  the education  of  the  mind,  forcing  our
children under melon-frames, and babbling to  the laborer and
mechanic, " Read, and read, and read," as  if God had not
given us muscles, and nerves, and bodies, subjected to ex-
quisite pains  as pleasures—as  if the body were  not to  be
cared for and cultivated, as well as the mind;  as if health
were no blessing, instead  of that capital good, without which,
all  other blessings—save the hope of health eternal—grow
flat and joyless;  as if  the  enjoyment of the  world in which
we are was not far more closely linked with our physical  than 
I)                PROCRASTINATION.
our mental selves ; as  if we were  better than  maimed and
imperfect men so long as our nerves are jaded and prostrate,
our senses dim and heavy, our relationship with nature abridg-
ed and thwarted by the jaundiced eye, and  failing limb, and
trembling hand—the apothecary's  shop between us  and  the
sun !   For the mind, we  admit that to render it  strong and
clear, habit and discipline are  required ; how deal we (espe-
cially we, Mr. Editor, of  the London world—we of  the lite-
rary craft—we  of  the  restless, striving brotherhood)—how
deal we with the body 1  We carry it on with us, as a post-
horse, from stage to stage—does it  flag 1 no rest! give  it  ale
or the  spur.   We begin to  feel the frame  break under us;
we  administer a drug, gain a temporary relief, shift  the dis-
order from one part to  another—forget our ailments in our
excitements, and when we pause at last, thoroughly shattered,
with complaints  grown chronic, diseases  fastening to the  or-
gans, send for the  doctors in good earnest, and die as your
predecessors and your rival died, under combinations of long-
neglected maladies, which could never have been  known had
we done for the body what we do for the mind—made it strong
by discipline, and maintained it firm by habit.
  Not alone calling to  recollection  our departed friends, but
looking over the vast field of suffering which those acquainted
with the  lives of men who think  and  labor cannot fail to be-
hold around them, I confess, though I have something of Can-
ning's  disdain of professed  philanthropists, and do  not love
every knife-grinder as much as  if he were my brother—I con-
fess, nevertheless, that I am filled with an earnest pity • and 
THE CASE.
7
an anxious desire seizes me to communicate to others that sim-
ple process of healing and well-being which has passed under
my own experience, and to which I gratefully owe days no lon-
ger weary of the sun, and nights which no  longer  yearn  for
and yet dread the morrow.
  And  now, Mr. Editor, I may be pardoned, I  trust, if 1
illustrate by my own case the system I commend to others.
  I have been a workman in my day.  I began to write and
to toil, and to win some kind of a name, which I had the am-
bition to improve, while yet little  more than a boy.   With
strong love for  study  in  books—with  yet  greater desire to
accomplish myself in the knowledge of men,  for sixteen years
I can conceive no life to have been more filled by occupation
than mine.  What time was not given  to action was given to
study;  what time not given to study, to  action—labor in
both !   To a constitution  naturally far  from strong, I allow-
ed no pause or respite.   The wear and tear went on without
intermission—the whirl of the  wheel never ceased.   Some-
times, indeed,  thoroughly overpowered  and exhausted, I
sought for escape.   The physicians said " Travel," and I
traveled : " Go into the country,"  and I  went.   But in such
attempts at repose all my ailments  gathered round me—made
themselves far more palpable and felt.   I  had no resource
but to fly from myself—to fly into the other world of books,
or thought, or  reverie—to live in some  state of being less
painful than my own.  As long as I was always  at work, it
seemed that I had no leisure to  be ill.  Quiet was my hell.
   At length the frame thus long neglected—patched up for a 
8           NEW FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE
while by drugs and doctors—put off and trifled with  as  an
intrusive dun—like a dun who is  in his rights—brought in
its arrears—crushing and terrible, accumulated through long
years.  Worn out and wasted, the constitution seemed wholly
inadequate to meet the  demand.   The exhaustion of toil and
study had been completed by great anxiety and grief.   I had
watched  with  alternate  hope and fear the  lingering and
mournful death-bed of my nearest relation and dearest friend
—of the person around  whom was  entwined  the  strongest
affection my life had known—and when all was over, I seemed
scarcely to live myself.
  At this time, about the January of 1844, I was thoroughly
shattered.   The least  attempt  at exercise  exhausted me.
The nerves  gave way  at the most  ordinary  excitement—a
chronic irritation of that vast surface  we call the mucous
membrane,  which  had  defied for years  all  medical  skill,
rendered me continually liable to acute  attacks, which from
their  repetition, and the increased  feebleness of my  frame,
might at any time  be fatal.  Though free from any organic
disease  of the  heart, its action was morbidly restless and
painful.  My sleep was without refreshment.   At morning I
rose more weary than I lay down to rest.
  Without fatiguing you and your readers further with the
longa cohors of my complaints, I pass on to record my strug-
gle  to resist them.   I have always had  a great belief in the
power of will.   What a man determines  to do—that in
ninety-nine cases out of  the hundred I hold that he succeeds
in doing.  I determined  to have some insight into a knowl- 
A  POPULAR  FALLACY.
&
 edge I had never attained  since manhood—the knowledge of
 health.
   I resolutely put  away  books  and study, sought  the  airs
 which the physicians esteemed the most healthful, and adopt-
 ed the strict regimen on which all the children of iEsculapius
 so  wisely insist.  In  short, I maintained  the same general
 habits as to hours, diet (with the exception of  wine, which in
 moderate quantities  seemed to me indispensable), and, so far
 as  my strength would allow, of  exercise,  as  I  found  after-
 ward instituted at  hydropathic establishments.  I dwell on
 this to forestall in some manner  the common remark of per-
 sons not well acquainted with the medical agencies of  water
 —that it is to the regular life which water  patients lead,
 and not to the element itself, that  they owe  their recovery.
 Nevertheless I found that  these changes, however salutary in
 theory, produced little, if  any, practical amelioration in my
 health.   All invalids  know,  perhaps, how difficult,  under
 ordinary circumstances, is the alteration  of habits from bad
 to  good.   The early  rising,  the  walk before  breakfast, so
 delicious in  the feelings of freshness and vigor Avhich they
 bestow upon  the strong,  often become punishments to the
 valetudinarian.   Headache,  languor, a sense of weariness
 over the  eyes, a sinking of the whole  system toward  noon,
 which  seemed  imperiously to demand the  dangerous aid of
 stimulants, was all  that I obtained  by the morning breeze
and the languid stroll  by the sea-shore.   The suspension
from study  only afflicted with intolerable  ennui, and added
to the profound dejection of the spirits.  The brain, so long 
10
P H A R M A C 0 P (E1 A EXHAUSTED
 accustomed to morbid  activity, was  but withdrawn from  its
 usual occupations to invent horrors and chimeras.   Over the
 pillow, vainly sought  two hours before midnight, hovered no
 golden  sleep.   The  absence  of excitement,  however  un-
 healthy, only aggravated the symptoms of ill health.
   It was at this time that I met  by chance, in the library at
 St. Leonard's, with Captain Claridge's work on the " Water-
 Cure," as practiced  by Priessnitz at Graefenberg.   Making
 allowance for certain exaggerations therein, which appeared
 evident to my common sense, enough  still remained not only
 to captivate the  imagination  and flatter the  hopes of an in-
 valid, but to appeal with favor to his  sober judgment.   Till
 then, perfectly ignorant of the subject and the system, except
 by some such vague stories and good jests as had reached my
 ears in  Germany, I  resolved,  at least, to  read what  more
 could be said in favor  of  the  cignfrov  vSuo, and  examine dis-
 passionately into its  merits  as a medicament.   I was then
 under the advice of one of  the first physicians of our  age.  I
 had  consulted half the faculty.   I had every reason to be
 grateful for the attention, and to be confident in the skill, of
 those whose prescriptions had, from  time  to time,  flattered
 my hopes and enriched the  chemist.   But the truth must be
 spoken—far from being better, I was sinking fast.   Little
remained to  me  to  try in the great volume of  the  herbal.
 Seek what I would  next,  even if a   quackery, it certainly
might expedite my grave, but it could scarcely render life—
at least  the  external life—more  unjoyous.   Accordingly I
examined, with such grave thought as a sick man brings to 
MALVERN.
11
bear upon his case, all the grounds  upon which to justify to
myself—an  excursion to the snows  of Silesia.   But  I  own
that in proportion as I found my faith in the system strength-
en, I shrunk from the terrors of this long journey  to  the
rugged region in which the probable lodging would be a la-
borer's cottage,* and in which the Babel of a hundred lan-
guages (so agreeable to the healthful delight in novelty—so
appalling to the sickly  despondency of  a hypochondriac)—
would murmur and growl over a public table spread with no
tempting  condiments.  Could I hope  to find healing  in my
own land, and not  too far from my own doctors  in case of
failure, I might  indeed solicit the  watery gods—but  the
journey 1   I who scarcely lived through a day without leech
or potion—the long—gelid journey to Graefenberg—I  should
be  sure to fall ill by the way—to be clutched and misman-
aged by some German doctor—to  deposit my bones in some
dismal churchyard on the banks of the Father Rhine.
   While thus perplexed, I fell  in with one  of the pamphlets
written by  Dr.  Wilson,  of Malvern, and  my  doubts were
solved.    Here  was  an English  doctor, who had himself
known more than my own sufferings, who, like myself, had
found the pharmacopoeia in vain—who had spent ten months
at Graefenberg, and left all his complaints behind him—who,

  * Let me not disparage the fountain-head of the Water-Cure, the parent
institution of the great Priessnitz.   I believe many  of the earlier hard-
ships complained of at Graefenberg have been removed or amended; and
such as remain are no doubt well compensated by the vast experience and
extraordinary tact of a man who  will rank hereafter among the most
illustrious discoverers who have ever benefited the human race 
12
WATER A  SAFE REMEDY.
 fraught with the experience he  had acquired, not only in his
 own person, but from scientific examination of cases  under
 his eye, had transported the system to our native shores, and
 who proffered the proverbial salubrity of  Malvern air and its
 holy springs, to those who, like me, had ranged  in vain, from
 simple to mineral, and who had become bold  by  despair—
 bold enough to try if health, like truth, lay at the bottom of
 a well.
   Still my friends were anxious and  fearful; to please them
 I continued to inquire.   I sought out some of those who had
 gone through tho proeess.   I sifted some of the  cases of cure
 cited by Dr. Wilson.  I found the account of the patients so
 encouraging, the cases quoted  so authentic, that I grew im-
 patient  of delay.   I threw  physic to the dogs,  and went to
 Malvern.
   It is  not my intention, Mr. Editor, to detail  the course I
 underwent.   The  different  resources of water as a medica-
 ment are  to be  found in many works easily to  be obtained,
 and well worth  the  study.  In  this letter I suppose myself
 to be addressing those as thoroughly unacquainted with the
 system as myself was  at the first,  and  I  deal therefore only
 in generals.
  The first point  which' impressed and struck  me was the
 extreme and utter  innocence  of the Water-Cure in skillful
hands—in any hands, indeed, not thoroughly new to the sys-
tem.  Certainly when I went, I believed it to  be  a kill or
pure system.  I fancied it  must  be  a very  violent remedy—
that it doubtless might effect great and magical cures—but 
           ERRORS OF THE  UNINITIATED.         13

that if it failed it might be fatal.   Now, I speak not alone
of my own case, but of the immense number of cases I have
seen—patients of  all ages—all species and genera of disease
—all kinds and conditions  of constitution, when I declare,
upon my honor, that I never witnessed one  dangerous symp-
tom produced by  the Water-Cure, whether at Dr. Wilson's
or the  other Hydropathic Institutions which I  afterward vis-
ited.  And though unquestionably fatal consequences might
occur from gross mismanagement, and as unquestionably have
so  occurred  at  various  establishments, I  am  yet  convinced
that water in itself is so friendly to  the human body, that it
requires a very extraordinary degree of bungling, of ignor-
ance, and presumption, to produce results  really dangerous;
that a regular practitioner does more frequent mischief from
the misapplication of even  the simplest drugs, than a water
doctor of very moderate experience  does, or can do, by the
misapplication of  his  baths  and friction.   And here I must
observe, that those portions of the treatment which  appear
to  the uninitiated as  the most perilous, are really the safest,
such as  the wet-sheet packing, and can be applied with the
most impunity  to the weakest constitutions;  whereas those
which appear, from  our greater  familiarity with  them, the
least startling  and  most innocuous—the  plunge-bath,  the
douche—are  those which require the greatest knowledge of
general  pathology and the  individual constitution.    I shall
revert to this part of my subject before I conclude.
    The next thing that struck me was the extraordinary ease
with which, under this system, good  habits are acquired and
                             2 
14
A SECRET.
bad habits  relinquished.   The difficulty with which,  under
orthodox  medical treatment, stimulants are abandoned,  is
here not witnessed.   Patients  accustomed for half a century
to live  hard and high,  wine-drinkers, spirit-bibbers,  whom
the regular  physician has sought in vain to reduce to a daily
pint of sherry, here  voluntarily resign all  strong potations,
after a day  or two cease to feel the want of them, and recon-
cile  themselves to water  as  if they had drunk nothing  else
all their lives.   Others who have had recourse for years  and
years to medicine—their potion in the morning, their cordial
at noon, their pill before dinner, their  narcotic at bed-time,
cease to require  these aids to life, as  if by a charm.    Nor
this alone.  Men to whom mental labor has been a necessary
—who have existed on the  excitement of the  passions  and
the stir of the intellect—who have felt, these withdrawn, the
prostration  of  the whole  system—the  lock  to the wheel of
the entire machine—return  at  once to the careless spirits of
the boy in his first holiday.
  Here lies  a great secret;  water thus skillfully administer-
ed is in itself a wonderful excitement • it supplies the place
of all others—it operates powerfully and rapidly upon  the
nerves,  sometimes to calm  them, sometimes to irritate,  but
always  to occupy.   Hence  follows  a consequence which all
patients have remarked—the complete repose of the passions
during the  early stages of the cure;  they seem laid asleep
as if by enchantment.  The intellect shares the  same rest;
after a short time, mental exertion becomes impossible ; even
the memory grows  far less tenacious of its painful  impres- 
A  SERIES  OF  REACTIONS.             15
sions ; cares and griefs are forgotten ; the sense of the pres-
ent absorbs the past  and future; there is a certain freshness
and youth which pervade the spirits, and live upon the enjoy-
ment  of the actual  hour.   Thus  the great agent3  of  our
mortal wear and tear—the passions  and the mind—calmed
into strange rest—Nature seems  to leave the body to its in-
stinctive tendency, which is  always  toward recovery.   All
that interests and amuses is  of a healthful character ; exer-
cise,  instead of being an  unwilling  drudgery,  becomes  the
inevitable  impulse of  the frame braced and invigorated  by
the element.   A series of reactions is always going on—the
willing exercise produces refreshing rest, and refreshing rest
willing exercise.   The extraordinary effect which water taken
early in the morning produces on the  appetite is well known
among those who  have tried it, even  before  the Water-Cure'
w*as thought  of;  an appetite  it should  be the care of the
skillful doctor to check into moderate gratification;  the
powers of nutrition become singularly strengthened, the blood
grows rich  and pure—the constitution is not only amended—
it undergoes a change.*
   The safety of the  system, then, struck  me first; its power
of replacing by healthful stimulants the morbid ones it with-
drew, whether physical  or moral,  surprised  me next;  that
which thirdly  impressed me  was no  less contrary to all my

  * Dr. Wilson observed to me once, very truly I think, that many reg-
ular physicians are beginning to own the effect of water as  a stimulant,
who yet do not perceive its far more complicated and beneficial effects as
an alterative. 
16         AGREEABLE  DISAPPOINTMENT.

preconceived notions.   I had fancied  that, whether good  or
bad, the system  must be  one of great  hardship,  extremely
repugnant  and disagreeable.   I wondered at myself to find
how soon it became so associated with  pleasurable and grate-
ful feelings as to dwell upon  the mind  among the happiest
passages of existence.  For my own part, despite all my ail-
ments, or whatever  may have been my cares, I have  ever
found exquisite pleasure in that  sense of being which is,  as
it were, the conscience, the  mirror  of the  soul.   I  have
known hours of as much and as vivid happiness as perhaps
can fall to  the lot of man ; but among all my most brilliant
recollections  I  can recall  no periods  of enjoyment at once
more hilarious and serene than the hours spent on the lonely
hills of Malvern—none  in which  nature was so thoroughly
possessed and appreciated.   The  rise  from a sleep sound  as
childhood's—the  impatient rush into  the open air, while the
Bun was fresh, and the birds first  sang—the sense of an un-
wonted strength in every limb and  nerve, which made so light
of the steep ascent to the  holy spring—the delicious sparkle
of that morning  draught—the green terrace on  the  brow
of the mountain,  with the rich landscape wide and far below
—the breeze that once would  have  been so keen and biting,
now  but exhilarating the blood, and lifting the spirits  into
religious joy; and this keen  sentiment  of  present  pleasant
rounded  by a hope  sanctioned by all I felt in myself, and
nearly all that I witnessed in others—that  that very pres-
ent was but  the step,  the  threshhold, into  an  unknown
and  delightful  region of health  and  vigor—a disease  and 
BE PATIENT.
17
a care  dropping from the  frame and the heart  at  every
stride.
  But here I must pause to own, that if on the one  hand the
danger  and discomforts of the cure  are greatly exaggerated
(exaggerated  is too weak a word)—so, on the other hand, aa
far as my own experience, which is perhaps not inconsider-
able, extends, the enthusiastic advocates of the system have
greatly  misrepresented the duration of the curative process.
I have  read  and heard of chronic diseases of long  standing
cured permanently in  a very few weeks.   I  candidly confess
that  I  have  seen none such.   I have, it is  true, witnessed
many chronic diseases perfectly cured—diseases which had
been pronounced incurable by  the first  physicians, but the
cure has been long and fluctuating.   Persons so afflicted, who
try  this system, must arm themselves with patience.   The
first effects of the system are indeed usually bracing, and in-
spire such feelings  of general well-being, that some think they
have only to return home, and carry out the cure partially, to
recover.  A great mistake—the  alterative effects begin long
after the bracing—a disturbance in the constitution  takes
place, prolonged, more or less, and not till that ceases does
the cure really begin.   Not that the peculiar " crisis" sought
for so vehemently by the German water-doctors, and usually
under their hands manifested by boils and eruptions, is  at all
a necessary part of the cure;  it is,  indeed, as far  as I have
seen, a rare  occurrence;  but a  critical action, not single, not
confined to one period, or one series of phenomena, is at  work,
often undetected by the patient himself, during a considera- 
18
THE  CRISIS.
ble (and that the later) portion  of the  cure  in most patients
where the malady has been grave, and where the recovery be-
comes  permanent.  During  this  time  the patient should be
under the eye of his water-doctor.
   To conclude my own oase : I stayed some nine or ten weeks
at Malvern, and  business, from  which I could not escape,
obliging me then to be in the neighborhood of town,  I contin-
ued the system seven weeks longer under Dr. Weiss, at Pe-
tersham ;  during this  latter period, the agreeable  phenomena
which  had characterized  the  former,  the  cheerfulness, the
bien  aise, the consciousness of returning health vanished, and
were succeeded by great irritation of the nerves, extreme fret-
fulness, and the usual characteristics of the constitutional dis-
turbance to which I have referred.  I had every reason, how-
ever, to be satisfied with the care and skill of Doctor Weiss,
who fully deserves the reputation  he has acquired,  and the at-
tachment  entertained for  him by his patients ; nor did my
judgment ever  despond or doubt of the ultimate  benefits of
the process.   I emerged at  last from these  operations in no
very portly  condition.   I was  blanched and emaciated—
washed out like a thrifty housewife's gown ; but  neither the
bleaching nor the loss of weight had in the least impaired my
strength;  on the contrary, all the muscles had grown as  hard
as iron, and  I was become capable of great exercise without
fatigue.  My cure was  not effected, but I was compelled to
go into Germany.  On my return homeward I  was seized
with a severe cold which rapidly passed into high fever.   For-
tunately I was within reach  of  Doctor  Schmidt's  magnificent 
PERIOD  OF PROGRESS.              19
hydropathic establishment at Boppart:  thither I caused my-
self to be conveyed;  and now I had occasion to experience
the wonderful effect of the Water-Cure in acute cases ; slow
in chronic disease, its beneficial operation in acute is imme-
diate.   In  twenty-four hours all fever had subsided, and  on
the third day I resumed my journey,  relieved from  every
symptom that had before prognosticated a tedious and per-
haps alarming illness.
   And now came gradually, yet perceptibly, the good effects
of the system I had undergone ; flesh and weight  returned ;
the sense of health became conscious and steady; I had every
reason to bless  the hour when  I first sought the springs  of
Malvern.  And here I must observe, that it often happens
that the patient makes but slight apparent improvement, when
under the cure, compared with that which occurs subsequent-
ly.  A water-doctor of repute at Brussels, indeed, said frankly
to a grumbling patient, " I do not expect you to be well while
here; it is only on leaving me  that you will know if I have
cured you."
   It is as the frame recovers from the agitation it undergoes,
that it gathers round it power utterly unknown  to it before ;
as the plant watered by the rains of one season, betrays in  the
next the effect  of the grateful dews.
   I had always suffered so severely in winter, that the severity
of our last one  gave me apprehensions, and I resolved to seek
shelter from my fears at my beloved Malvern.   I here passed
the most inclement period of the winter, not only perfectly
free from the colds, rheums, and catarrhs, which had hitherto 
1!0
W 1 N T E It T 11E A T M E N T.
visited me with the snows, but in the enjoyment of excellent
health; and I am persuaded that for those who are delicate,
and who suffer much  during  the  winter, there is  no place
where the cold is so little felt as at a Water-Cure establish-
ment.   I am persuaded, also—and in this I am borne out by
the experience of most water-doctors—that the cure is most
rapid  and  effectual  during the  cold season—from  autumn
through the winter.   I am thoroughly convinced that  con-
sumption in its earlier stages can be more easily cured,  and
the predisposition  more permanently eradicated by a winter
spent  at Malvern, under the care of Dr. Wilson, than by the
timorous flight to Pisa  or Madeira.   It is by hardening rather
than defending the tissues, that we  best secure  them from
disease.
   And now, to sum up, and to dismiss my egotistical revela-
tions, I desire in no way to overcolor my own  case.   I do not
say that when I first went to the Water-Cure I was affected
with any disease immediately menacing to life—I  say only
that I was  in that prolonged and chronic  state of ill health,
which made life, at the best, extremely precarious.   I do not
say that I had any malady which the faculty could pronounce
incurable—I say only that the most eminent men of  the fac-
ulty had failed to cure me.  I do not even now affect to boast
of a perfect  and complete deliverance from all my ailments.
I  cannot declare  that a  constitution  naturally delicate has
been  rendered Herculean, or that  the  wear and tear of  a
whole manhood have been thoroughly repaired.  What might
have been the case had I not  taken the cure at intervals, had 
PERMANENT  BENEFIT.              21
I remained at it steadily for six  or eight months without in-
terruption, I cannot do more than conjecture ;  but so strong
is my belief that the result would have been completely suc-
cessful, that I promise myself,  whenever  I can spare the
leisure, a long renewal of the  system.   These admissions
made, what have I gained, meanwhile, to  justify my eulogies
and my gratitude 1—an immense accumulation of the capital
of health.   Formerly it was my favorite and querulous ques-
tion to those who saw much of me, " Did you ever know me
twelve hours without pain or illness 1"  Now, instead of these
being my constant companions, they  are  but my occasional
visitors.   I compare my old state and my present to the pov-
erty of a man who has a shilling in his pocket, and whose pov-
erty is, therefore, a struggle for life, with the occasional dis-
tress of a man of .£5000  a year, who sees but  an appendage
endangered  or a luxury abridged.  All the  good that I  have
gained is wholly unlike what I ever derived either from med-
icine or the German mineral baths : in the first place, it does
not relieve a single malady alone, it pervades the whole frame ;
in the  second place, far from  subsiding, it seems to  increase
by time, so that I may reasonably hope that the latter part of
my life, instead of being more infirm than  the former, will be-
come—so far as freedom from suffering, and the calm enjoy-
ment  of external life are  concerned—my real, my  younger
youth.   And it is this profound conviction which has induced
me to volunteer these details, in the hope  (I trust a pure and
kindly one)  to induce those who, more or less  have  suffered
as I have done, to fly to  the same rich and bountiful resources. 
22                       DRUGS.

We ransack the ends of the earth for drugs  and minerals—
we extract our potions from the deadliest poisons—but around
us and about us, Nature, the great mother, proffers the Hy-
geian fount, unsealed and  accessible to all.  Wherever the
stream glides pure—wherever the spring sparkles fresh, there,
for the vast proportion of the maladies which Art produces,
Nature yields  the benignant healing.
   It remains for me to say, merely as an observer, and solely
with such authority as an  observer altogether disinterested,
but without the least pretense to  professional science,  may
fairly claim, what class of diseases I have seen least and most
tractable to the  operations  of the Water-Cure, and how far
enthusiasts appear to me  to have over-estimated, how far
skeptics have undervalued,  the effects of water as a medica-
ment.   There are those (most of the water-doctors, especial-
ly), who contend that  all medicine by drugs is unnecessary—
that water, internally and outwardly applied, suffices in skill-
ful management for all  complaints—that the time will come
w*hen the drug-doctor will cease to receive a fee, when the
apothecary will close his  shop, and the Water-Cure be adop-
ted in every hospital and by every family.   Dreams and ab-
surdities !   Even granting  that the Water-Cure were capa-
ble of all the wonders ascribed to it, its process is so slow in
most chronic  cases—it  requires such  complete abstraction
from care  and business—it takes the  active man  so thor-
oughly out of his course of life, that a vast proportion of
those engaged in worldly  pursuits cannot  hope to find the
requisite leisure.   There is also a large  number of com- 
WATER NOT  A  PANACEA.            23
plaints  (perhaps the  majority) which yield  so easily to  a
sparing use of drugs, under a moderately competent  practi-
tioner, that the convenient plan of sending to the next chem-
ist for your pill or potion can never be superseded; nor is  it
perhaps  desirable that it should be.  Moreover, as far as  I
have  seen, there are complaints curable by medicine which
the Water-Cure utterly fails to reach.
  The disorders wherein hydropathy appears to be least ef-
fectual are, first, neuralgic pains, especially the monster pain
of the tic douloureux.   Not one instance of cure in the latter
by hydropathy has come under my observation, and  I have
only heard of  one authentic case of recovery from it  by that
process.   Secondly, paralysis of a grave character in persons
of an advanced age.   Thirdly, in  tubercular  consumption.
As may be expected, in this stage of that melancholy disease,
the Water-Cure utterly fails to restore ; but I have known  it
even here prolong life, beyond all reasonable calculation, and
astonishingly relieve the more  oppressive symptoms.   In all
cases where the nervous  exhaustion is great and of long
standing, and is accompanied with obstinate hypochondria,
hydropathy, if successful at all, is very slow in its benefits,
and  the patience of the sufferer is too  often worn out before
the favorable turn takes place.  I have  also noticed that ob-
stinate and  deep-rooted maladies in persons otherwise  of very
athletic frames, seem to yield much more tardily to the Wa-
ter-Cure  than  similar  complaints in more  delicate constitu-
tions ; so that you will often see  of two persons afflicted by
the same  genera of complaints, the feeble and fragile  one re- 
24         DISEASES CURABLE BY WATER.

covers before the stout man with Atlantic shoulders evinces
one symptom of amelioration.
   Those cases, on the other hand, in which the  Water-Cure
seems an absolute panacea, and in Avhich  the  patient may
commence with the most sanguine hopes, are—first, rheuma-
tism, however prolonged, however  complicated.   In  this the
cure is  usually rapid—nearly always permanent.  Secondly,
gout.   Here its efficacy is little less startling to appearance
than in the former case.   It seems to take up the disease  by
the roots ; it extracts the peculiar acid, which often  appears
in discolorations upon the sheets used  in the  application, or
is ejected in other modes.   But here, judging  always  from
cases subjected to my personal knowledge, I have not seen
instances to justify the  assertion of some water-doctors, that
returns of the  disease  do  not occur.  The predisposition—
the tendency has appeared to me to remain.   The patient is
liable to relapses; but I  have invariably  found them far
less  frequent,  less lengthened, and  readily susceptible of
simple and  speedy cure, especially if the habits remain tem-
perate.
   Thirdly, that wide and  grisly family of affliction classed
under the common name  of dyspepsia.  All derangements
of the digestive organs, imperfect  powers of nutrition—the
malaise of an  injured  stomach, appear precisely the  com-
plaints on which the system takes  firmest hold,  and in which
it effects those cures that convert  existence from a burden
into  a blessing.  Hence it follows that many nameless and
countless  complaints  proceeding from derangement  of the 
           POWER OVER  ACUTE DISEASE.         25

stomach, cease as  that  great  machine  is restored to order.
I have seen  disorders  of the  heart which  have been  pro-
nounced organic by the  learned authorities of the profession,
disappear  in  an incredibly  short time—cases  of  incipient
consumption,  in which the  seat  is in the nutritious powers,
hemorrhages, and  various congestions, shortness of breath,
habitual fainting fits, many of what are called, improperly,
nervous complaints, but which, in reality,  are indications
from the main ganglionic spring; the disorders  produced by
the  abuse  of powerful medicines,  especially mercury  and
iodine, the loss of  appetite,  the dulled sense, and the shaking
hand of intemperance,  skin complaints, and the dire scourge
of scrofula—all  these seem to obtain from hydropathy relief
—nay, absolute and  unqualified cure, beyond not only the
 means of  the most skillful drug doctor, but  the hopes of the
 most sanguine patient.*
   The cure may be divided into  two branches—the process
 for  acute complaints and that  for  chronic ; I have just re-
 ferred to the last.   And great  as are there its benefits, they
 seem commonplace beside  the effect the system produces  in
 acute  complaints.  Fever,  including the scarlet and the ty-
 phus,  influenza, measles,  small-pox, the sudden and  rapid
 disorders of children,  are  cured with a simplicity  and pre-
 cision which must, I am persuaded, sooner or later, render
  * Among other complaints, I may add dropsy, which in its simple state,
and not as the crowning system of a worn-out constitution, I have known
most successfully treated; cases of slight paralysis; and I have witnessed
two instances of partial blindness, in which the sight was restored.
                            ■3 
2G
THE  WET  SHEET.
the resources of the hydropathist the ordinary treatment  for
such acute complaints  in  the hospitals.   The principal rem-
edy  here employed  by the  water doctor is, the wet-sheet
packing, which  excites such terror  among the uninitiated,
and  which, of  all the curatives adopted by hydropathy,  is
unquestionably  the safest—the one that can be applied with-
out danger to  the greatest variety of cases, and which, I do
not hesitate to  aver, can rarely, if ever, be misapplied in any
cases where the pulse is hard and high, and the skin dry and
burning.   I have found in conversation  so  much misappre-
hension of this very easy and very luxurious remedy,  that I
may be pardoned for re-explaining what has  been explained
so often.   It is not, as  people persist in supposing, that pa-
tients are put into wet sheets and there left to shiver.   The
sheets, after being saturated, are well rung out—the patient
quickly wrapped in them—several blankets tightly bandaged
round, and a feather-bed  placed  at  top;  thus,  especially
where there  is the least  fever, the  first momentary chill  is
promptly succeeded by a gradual and vivifying warmth, per-
fectly free from the irritation of dry heat—a delicious sense
of ease is  usually followed by a sleep more  agreeable than
anodynes ever produced.   It seems a  positive  cruelty to be
relieved from this  magic girdle, in which pain is lulled, and
fever cooled, and watchfulness lapped in slumber.  The bath
which succeeds refreshes and braces  the skin, which the op-
eration relaxed and  softened ; they only who have tried this,
after fatigue or in  fever, can form  the least notion  of its
pleasurable sensations, or  of its extraordinary efficacy; nor 
THE  TTUE  LIFE-PRESER VEU.
is there any thing  startling or novel in its  theory.   In hos-
pitals now water-dressings are found the best poultice  to an
inflamed member; this expansion  of the wet  dressing  is a
poultice to  the whole  inflamed surface of the body.   It does
not  differ  greatly, except in  its cleanliness and  simplicity,
from the old remedy of the ancients—the wrapping the body
in the  skins  of  animals newly slain, or placing it on dung-
hills, or immersing it, as  now in Germany, in  the  soft slough
of mud baths.*   Its  theory is that of warmth and moisture,
those friendliest  agents to inflammatory disorders.  In fact,
I think it the duty of every man, on whom the lives of others
depend, to make  himself acquainted with at least this part of
the Water-Cure—the wet sheet is the true life-preserver. In
the  large  majority of sudden inflammatory complaints, the
doctor at a  distance, prompt measures indispensable, it will at
least arrest the disease, check the fever, till, if you prefer the
drugs, the drugs can come—the remedy is at hand, wherever
you  can find  a bed  and a jug of  water; and whatever else
you  may apprehend  after a short  visit  to a hydropathic es-
tablishment, your  fear  of that  bugbear—the  wet sheet—is
the first you banish.   The only cases, I  believe, where it can
be positively  mischievous, is where the  pulse  scarcely beats
—where the vital sense is extremely low—where  the inani-
tion  of the  frame  forbids the necessary reaction in cholera,
  * A very eminent London physician, opposed  generally to the Water-
Cure, told me that he had effected a perfect cure in  a case of inveterate
leprosy, by swathing the patient in wet lint covered with oil skin. This is
the wet-sheet  packing, but there are patients who would take kindly to
wet lint, and shudder at the idea of a wet sheet! 
lib      WATER  NOT  A D E * P E K A T E  KEMKIM

and certain disorders of the chest and  bronchia; otherwise
at all ages, from  the infant  to the octogenarian, it is equally
applicable, and in most acute  cases, equally innocent.
   Hydropathy being thus  rapidly  beneficial  in acute dis
orders, it follows naturally that it will be quick as  a cure in
chronic complaints in proportion as acute symptoms are mix-
ed with them, and slowest  where such  complaints  are dull
and lethargic—it will be slowest  also where the nervous  ex-
haustion is the greatest.  With children, its  effects,  really
and genuinely, can  scarcely  be  exaggerated; in them,  the
nervous system, not weakened by toil, grief, anxiety, and  in-
temperance, lends itself to  the  gracious  element as a young
plant to the  rains.   When I now  see  some tender mother
coddling, and  physicing, and preserving from every breath of
air, and swaddling in  flannels, her pallid little  ones,  I long
to pounce upon the callow brood,  and bear them to the hills
of Malvern, and  the diamond fountain of St.  Anne's—with
what rosy faces  and robust limbs I  will promise they shall
return—alas ! I promise and preach in vain.
  The Water-Cure as  yet has had this  evident  injustice—
the  patients resorting to it have mostly been desperate cases.
So strong a notion prevails that it  is a desperate remedy, that
they only  who have  found all else fail have dragged  them-
selves to the Bethesda Pools.  That all should not recover is
not  surprising ! The wonder is that the number of recoveries
should  be so  great ; that every now and then we should be
surprised  by  the man  whose untimely  grave  we predicted
when we last  saw him,  meeting  us in the streets ruddy and 
ORDER  OF  ACTION.                29
 stalwart, fresh from  the springs of Graefenberg, Boppart,
 Petersham, or Malvern.
   The remedy is not desperate ; it is  simpler, I do not say
 than any  dose, but than any course of medicine—it is in-
 finitely more agreeable—it admits  no remedies for the com-
 plaint which are inimical to the constitution.   It bequeathes
 none of the maladies  consequent on blue pill and mercury—
 on purgatives and drastics—on iodine and aconite—on leech-
 es  and  the  lancet.   If  it cures your  complaint it will as-
 suredly strengthen your whole frame ; if it fails to cure  your
 complaint, it  can scarcely fail  to improve  your general sys-
 tem.  As  it acts, or ought, scientifically treated, to act, first
 on the  system, lastly on the complaint, placing nature herself
 in the way to throw off the disease, so it constantly happens
 that the patients at a  hydropathic establishment will tell you
 that the disorder for which they came is  not removed, but
 that in all  other respects  their health is better than they  ever
 remember  it to have been.  Thus,  I would  not only recom-
 mend it to those who are sufferers  from some grave disease,
 but  to  those who require merely the fillip, the alterative, or
 the bracing which they now often seek in vain in country air
 or a watering-place.   For such, three weeks at Malvern will
 do more than three months  at Brighton or Boulogne;  for at
 the Water-Cure  the whole life  is  one  remedy; the hours,
 the habits, the discipline, not  incompatible with gayety  and
 cheerfulness (the spirits of hydropathists are astounding,  and
in high spirits all  things are  amusement), tend perforce to
train the body to the  highest  state  of health of  which it is 
30          A DISINTERESTED  OBSERVER

capable.  Compare  this life, O merchant, 0 trader, 0 man
of business, escaping to the sea-shore, with that which you
there lead—with your shrimps and your shell-fish, and your
wine  and your brown stout—with all which counteracts  in
the evening, the good of your morning dip and your noonday
stroll.   What,  I own,  I  should envy  most is the robust,
healthy man, only a little knocked down by his city cares or
his town pleasures,  after his second week at Dr. Wilson's
establishment—yea, how I should envy the exquisite pleasure
which he would  derive  from the robustness  made clear and
sensible to  him.   The pure  taste, the iron muscles, the ex-
uberant spirits,  the  overflowing  sense  of life !  If even  to
the weak and  languid the Water-Cure  gives hours of  phys-
ical  happiness which  the pleasures of  the grosser  senses
can  never  bestow, what would it  give  to  the strong man,
from  whose eye it has but to lift the light film—in whose
mechanism, attuned to joy, it but brushes away the grain  of
dust, or oils the  solid wheel!
   I must bring  my letter to a close.   I meant to  address it
through you, Mr. Editor, chiefly to our  brethren—the over-
jaded sons of toil and letters—behind whom I see the warning
shades of departed martyrs.   But it is applicable  to all who
ail—to all who would not only cure a complaint, but strength-
en a system and prolong a life.  To such, who will so far at-
tach value to my authority that they will acknowledge, at least,
I am no interested witness—for I  have no institution to estab-
lish—no profession to build up—I have no eye to fees, my
calling is but that of an observer—as an observer only do I 
TRY.
31
 speak, it  may be with enthusiasm—but  enthusiasm built on
 experience and prompted by sympathy.   Go for a few days—
 the cost is not much—into some such institution yourself, look
 round, talk to the patients, examine with your own eyes,  hear
 with  your own ears, before you adventure the experiment.
 Become a witness  before you are a patient   if the evidence
 does not satisfy you, turn and flee.  But if you venture,  ven-
 ture with a good heart and a stout faith.   Hope, but not  with
 presumption.  Do not fancy that the disorder which has af-
 flicted you  for  ten years  ought to  be  cured in ten days.
 Beware, above all, lest, alarmed by  some phenomena which
 the searching element produces, you have recourse immediate-
 ly to  drugs to disperse them.  The water-boils, for instance,
 which are sometimes, as I have before said, but  by no  means
 frequently, a critical symptom of the  cure, are, in  all cases I
 have  seen, cured easily by water, but may become extremely
 dangerous in the hands of your apothecary.   Most of the few
 solitary instances that have terminated fatally, to the  preju-
 dice of the Water-Cure,  have been those in which the patient
 has gone from water to drugs.  It is the  axiom of the system
 that water only cures what water produces.  Do not leave a
 hydropathic establishment in the time of any " crisis," how-
 ever much you may be panic-stricken.   Hold the doctor re-
 sponsible for getting you out of what he gets you into; and if
your doctor be discreetly chosen, take my word, he will do it.
  Do not begin to carry on the system  at home, and  under
any eye but  that of an experienced hydropathist.   After  you
know  the system, and the doctor knows you, the curative pro- 
32
THE  DOUCHE.
cess may probably be continued at your own house with case
—but the commencement  must be watched, and if a critical
action ensues when  you are at home, return to the only care
that can conduct it safely to a happy issue.   When at the in-
stitution, do not let the example of other patients tempt you
to overdo—to drink more water, or take more baths  than aro
prescribed  to you.   Above  all, never let  the eulogies which
many will pass upon the douche (the popular bath), tempt you
to take it on the sly, unknown to your adviser.   The douche
is dangerous when the body is unprepared—when the heart is
affected—when  apoplexy may be feared.
  Here, then, 0 brothers,  0 afflicted ones, I bid you farewell!
I wish you  one of the most blessed friendships man ever made
—the familiar intimacy with Water.   Not Undine in her vir-
gin  existence more sportive and bewitching,  not Undine in her
wedded state more tender and faithful, than the element of
which she is the type.   In health may you find it the joyous
playmate, in  sickness  the genial restorer and soft assuager.
Round  the healing  spring  still literally   dwell the jocund
nymphs in whom the  Greek poetry  personified Mirth and
Ease.   No drink, whether compounded of the gums and rosin
of the old Falernian, or the alcohol and acid of modern wine,
gives the animal spirits which rejoice the water-drinker.   Let
him who has to go  through severe bodily  fatigue try  first
whatever—wine, spirits, porter, beer—he may conceive most
generous and  supporting;  let him  then go  through the same
toil  with no draughts but  from the crystal  lymph, and  if he
does not acknowledge  that there is no beverage which man 
             AN  APPEAL  FOR  CHILDREN.           33

 concocts  so  strengthening and  animating as that which God
 pours forth  to  all the children of Nature,  I  throw up my
 brief.  Finally, as health depends upon  healthful habits, let
 those who desire easily and luxuriously to glide into the courses
 most  agreeable to the human  frame,  to enjoy the morning
 breeze, to grow epicures  in the simple  regimen, to  become
 cased in armor against the vicissitudes  of our changeful skies
 —to feel and  to  shake  off light sleep  as a blessed dew, let
 them, while the organs are yet sound, and the nerves yet un-
 shattered, devote an autumn to  the Water-Cure.
   And you, 0 parents!  who, too indolent, too much slaves to
 custom,  to endure change for  yourselves, to renounce for a
 while your artificial natures, but who still covet for your chil-
 dren hardy constitutions, pure tastes, and abstemious habits—
 who wish to see them grow up with a manly disdain to luxury
 —with a vigorous  indifference to climate—with a full sense of
 the value of  health, not alone for itself, but for the powers it
 elicits, and the virtues with, which it is intimately connected—
 the serene, unfretful temper—the pleasures in  innocent delight
 —the well-being that, content with self, expands in benevo-
 lence to others—you  I adjure not  to scorn the facile process
 of which  I solicit the experiment.  Dip your  young heroes in
 the spring, and hold them not back  by the heel.   May my ex-
 hortations find  believing  listeners, and may  some, now  un-
 known to  me, write me word  from the green hills of Malvern,
 or the groves of Petersham, -- WTe have hearkened to you—
not in vain."
  Adieu,  Mr. Editor, the ghost returns to silence.
                                   E.  Bulwer LvttOn. 
ORANCE MOUNTAIN WATER CURE E.STABLISHMF.NT
/ 
cDntttg?   Jftatnttnitt   fitter   Cure.
WITH   ILLUSTRATIONS
RAIL-ROAD STATION HOUSE.
  This establishment, founded in 1849, is situated near the village of South
Orange, Essex County, New Jersey, five miles  from Newark, and  fourteen
miles from the city of New York, on the line of the Morris and Essex Rail-
way, by which passengers are  landed at the Station House of the establish-
ment, a few minutes' walk from the door.
  The location is upon the south-eastern slope of the Orange Mountain, com-
manding a view of one of the loveliest valleys, and two  of the  prettiest villa-
ges in Eastern New Jersey.  On the east and north-west  it is sheltered by
mountains from the sea-air and colder winter winds. 
                             SOUTH  ORANGE.
  All the requisites forsuch an establishment are here found, viz: pure mountain
spring water, beautiful  and retired walks through the woods and  upon the
mountains for several miles in extent, and shielded from the winds in winter
and the sun in summer; springs
COCOA-NUT  SrRING. 
and streams along the va-
rious paths, &  picturesque -^
scenery.
                         OUT  DOOR  PACKING ROOM.
■■LUNGE BATH. 
  In the ravine, immediately in the rear of the Institution,  flows a beautiful
brook.  Upon the margin of this stream, which descends in a rapid succession
of cascades, are the out-door baths,
WAVE BATH. 
a great variety of which have been provided.   Amon» these are found the ris-
ing and falling douche, the running and rising sitz-baths, the running foot-bath,
the plunge and wave baths.
  In the Grove, a few rods from the Institution, a  capacious swimming-bath
has been obtained  by damming the mountain stream.  For this a pleasant
screen is formed by a light awning curtained to the  surface of the  pond, afford-
ing ladies and children, at all  times,  ample opportunity for gaining that valu-
able accomplishment, a knowledge of the art of swimming.
SWIMMING  BATH.
  From many  points in the walks, where  the  prospect is not intercepted by
woods, an extensive panoramic view is presented  of the cities  of New York,
Brooklyn, and  the towns adjoining; East  and  West  Bloomfield,  North and
South Orange,  Newark, Belleville, Elizabethtown,  the waters of New-York
harbor, and Newark Bay, Staten Island, its villages, etc. 
 
.
A NEIGHBOURING  VILLA.
The drives through a circuit of ten miles are varied and full of interest.
HEMLOCK CASCADr 
   The original building is 40 by 90 feet, three stories, with piazza of the same
 height extending the full length of the house.  To this,  during the past winter,
 two wings, each 31 by 51 feet with piazzas, making in all 230 feet of sheltered
 promenade, have been added.   Besides  the  large number of new, sweet, and
 well-ventilated chambers thus obtained, a beautiful dining hall  30 by 50 feet,
 and 14 feet ceiling, and a Reading-room, and a well-arranged Lady's Bath-room,
 have been added.
   These increased facilities will enable the Institution hereafter to receive, and
 comfortably provide for, upwards of One Hundred Cure-Guests.
   The establishment is admirably adapted for the water-cure practice in win-
 ter, (which for many diseases is the most favorable period of the year,) being
 fitted up in a very superior  manner, and  provided with abundant supplies  of
 cold and hot water.  Ladies who require it need not leave their rooms for treat-
 ment, as private baths are attached to a large number of them.
   A bowling-alley and billiard-table are attached to the establishment.
   The Reading-room is supplied with some of the chief journals of the  Union
 —several New-York daily's, a number of the  standard  American periodicals,
 the Courier des Etats Unis, the Illustrated London News, Punch, etc., all  of
 which are received immediately after publication, and regularly filed.
   The Institution will furnish saddle-horses, and horses and vehicles, at reason-
 able rates.  For the  benefit  of invalids  whose afflictions compel them  to as-
 sume a reclining posture when  riding,  a carriage has  been constructed with
 especial reference to  their wants. This can be used to bring patients to the
 Institution when the  usual conveyances cannot be resorted to.
   To  ladies who desire that form of exercise, small flower gardens are allotted.

                                TERMS.
   In Winter, $8 and  s$10; and $10, $11 and $12 in  Summer,  payable always
 weekly.   Consultation fee, $5.   Persons occupying the whole of a double room
 or requiring extra attendance, will be charged accordingly.  Board of private
 servants, $3 per week.  Children always received conditionally.
   Patients must provide themselves  with  four coarse  thick  linen sheets, two
 thick  blankets, two thick comforters, and  six towels; or, when  unavoidable,
the same may be hired of the Institution for $1 per week. 
  Persons coming to  the establishment  from New-York, leave the foot of
Courtlandt street at  8 1-2 and  10  o'clock, A. M., and  4 and 6 o'clock, P. M.
Upon leaving Newark the Conductor should be notified that  he has passengers
for the Water-Cure.  The time occupied in reaching South Orange from New-
York is about one hour.   Visitors can come from and return to the city several
times during the day.  Newark is connected with New-York by hourly trains.

  If the Superintendent is requested, he will send the vehicles of the Institution
to meet passengers by the Southern trains at Newark.

  DR. JOSEPH A.  WEDER, late of Philadelphia,  is  the  Physician of the
Institution.  He is a graduate of the Medical College of Freyburgh, in Baden,
Germany; he has visited the  Graefenberg Institution, conducted by the celebra-
ted Priessnitz; many of the  water-cure  establishments of  Europe; and  has
had twelve years experience in  Hydropathy.

  Letters upon professional business should be addressed to Dr. Weder; all oth-
ers to the Superintendent,  Geo. H. Mitchell, directed to South Orange, Essex
County, New Jersey.
May 1st, 1851.