(31 --f'-/- Hi:! ^0 Surgeon General's Office fr m {(•/ten ... GXjGjC GOGC'C^uGO OO OO GajGu Q-G ©^ TAYLORA-MAVJRV BOOKS CLLCRS A. A SHORT GUIDE FOR THE Rational Crmtmmt of CJjilDtm s »» SHORT GUIDE RATIONAL TREATMENT OF CHILDREN, ealtjj anb WxnMt BY WATEE. xv- <* \*tt v C. C. SCHIEFERDECKER, M. D., MEMBER OF DIFFERENT SOCIETIES FOR THE PROMOTION OF HYGIENE IN EUROPE AND AMERICA, DIRECTOR OF SCHIEFERDECKER's WATER-CURE PLACE, WILLOW GROVE, MONTGOMERY CO., PENNSYLVANIA.. .. . PHILADELPHIA: J. W. MOORE, 103 CHESTNUT STREET. 1852. ft IrYS 100 3 3345 Iff* Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by J. W. MOORE, i the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. I. Ashmead, Printer. TO COL. J. M. MCCAETY. Dear Sir: Permit me to dedicate to you this small book of mine, with the full conviction that, true and sacred as Priessnitz's system of curing diseases is, it will gain great weight by an association with the name of one, so much its friend and patron. The benefit which you yourself, ruined as your body was by the drug-guild, have derived from the water-cure, will be a signal proof of its value. May you be long spared to support and spread, with that dis- tinguished eminence which is so much the admiration of all who know you, the truth of a system, destined to be the redeeming means of diseased humanity. I have the honor to be, Dear Sir, Your most obedient servant, C. C. SCHIEFERDECKER, M. D. Willow Grove, November, 1851. CONTENTS. • PAGE. Preface, ---....9 Introduction, --.... 53 Origin of Water-Cure, - - - . 59 Of Children from Birth, ..... 75 The Diseases of Children and their Treatment, - - 101 Thrush or Aphthae, - - - - - 105 Inflammation of the Eyes of Infants, - - - 106 Adhesion of the Tongue, - - - - 110 Worms, - - - . . . -110 Croup, - - - - - . -114 Blood-Boils, - - - - - - 128 Ruptures, - - - - - . 131 Erysipelas, ....... 133 Jaundice, - - - - ,- - 137 Induration of the Mesenteric Glands, .... 139 Scarlet Fever, - - - - - - 140 Small Pox, - - - - - - -149 Measles, - ' - - - - • - 157 Other Acute Diseases, - - - - - 160 Tetters, ....... 162 Scab on the Head, - - - - - -167 Fever, ....... 175 Exanthemata Hydrogena, - - - - - 179 VI CONTENTS. PAGE. Inflaramator^Fever, - - - - .186 Gastric Fever, - - - - - - 188 Pituitous Fever, - - - - - 191 Catarrhal Fever, - - - - - - 193 Influenza, - - - - - - 196 Intermitting Fever, ------ 198 Nervous Fever, - - - - ... - 202 Typhus Abdominalis, - - - - -211 Cramps, ------- 232 Whooping Cough, - - - - - 235 Involuntary Limping, - - - - - 240 Colic,.......243 Attacks of Suffocation, - - - - - 250 Diarrhoea, ------- 252 APPENDIX. Bruises, Scalds, Burns, &c, .... 255 Whitlow,......- 256 Hydrophobia, _..-.- 257 Toothache, - - - - - - - 259 Mumps, ...... 259 Delirium Tremens, - - - - - 261 Conclusion, ------ 269 PREFACE. A good book needs no apology, and faults are not mended by fine words. I shall therefore make no comments on the text of this work on Water-Cure, but devote a few introductory pages to a general statement of the aims to be kept in view in all the influences we exert or bring to bear on children, so as to secure to them a healthy development,—the sound mind in the sound body. We boast the human organism as the highest on the Earth. Children, then, in their growth to men and women, should exhibit a vigor, frankness and beauty, at least equal to that of a rose, a cactus or pine tree, a deer, a horse, an eagle, or a mocking-bird, which, though so far below man in their capacities, yet more perfect of their kind, much oftener present examples of nature's successful attainment. One day when I was ill and much depressed, I saw at a friend's house a magnificent cactus, full of buds, and opening flower after flower in gorgeous profusion. I drew near to admire the matchless crimson that flashed and glowed and burned in its deep cups, and the silken anthers that reposed in their luxury. I was fain to worship at the shrine of that flower, and it interpreted for me Christ's saying:—"If ye have faith 2 X PREFACE. even as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you."—" For the mustard indeed is one of the least of seeds, but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree, so that the birds of heaven come and lodge in the branches thereof." Here was this cactus, like myself, a stranger in a far country, alone of its family; its heritage of the mountain-side exchanged for a tub of earth, and the Mexican sunshine for the pale light of a northern parlor, yet blooming out as though it were the very summit and flower of all-being, as if all things ex- isted for it and it for all. What beautiful self-trust! Here are no doleful metaphysics of original sin, no fretting at circumstances, no self-torture and repen- tances again to be repented of. If I might interpret the voice of its being, it seems to say:—" I am a cactus, endowed with the organic forces, virtues, rights and enjoyments of a cactus. In my individual being, growth, development and production, I honor God, filling the place which his all-conscious soul assigns to me in nature. I make my flowers the temples of his glorious presence, and in my eloquent silence is heard the universal word of nature, uttered also for man by him who has said: -1 and my Father are one!' From him I joy to hold my life, nor seek for duties outwardly, since 'beauty is the best excuse for being.'' Am I not wholly such as I am made, and mv life such as it is given? why then should I load myself with sullen cares and vain responsibilities'? - He doeth all things well.' These attractions that PREFACE. xi urge my sap through capillary pores, or fix its glo-. bules in the leaves or flowers or spines, they are to nourish, giving to each wise choice of its appropriate aliments, and those still finer coves of pistil and of stamens whose concurrence form my seed—I have not calculated these or bestowed them on myself; it is the Father of life that inspires them all, he deigns to live in me as in all his creatures, and not least in thee, whom -he hath made a little lower than the angels.' " Now then, I thought, why not believe thus in myself, in the all-loving God, in the all-sufficing forces which he breathes through Nature? Why not assert myself as truly in my type of organization as the cactus in its vegetative life? and in that self-assertion to become radiant of blessing to all who approach me. Surely God who inspires the life of the plant below me, and the harmonious movement of the stars above me, has not forgotten or disowned myself, also the child of his intelligence and love!—Answer again, O cactus, since to the Almighty God, flower or angel are ministers alike, and Mediation died not on Mount Calvary. Considering farther, I perceived indeed the living truth of that organic faith and self-trust in the plant, which becomes in man " the peace surpassing all un- derstanding, and the faith which moveth mountains," which in respect of the organic life is health, to the senses beauty, to the affections loveliness, to the intel- lect truth and perfect order; which, to the individual possessing it, is happiness; to the society which pro- fits by it, virtue; and to God who inspires it obe- dience. xii PREFACE. But I saw also how this internal state was sustained by correspondent external harmonies. I examined the soil where the plant grew, it was but a tub full, but it was in due proportions, loam and gravel, such as the cactus specifically requires. The atmosphere also here had the same proportions of oxygen, hydro- gen and carbonic acid, as that of Mexico, whence the parent-plant was brought. Its temperature was kept at a mild summer-heat; nor, however apparently limited, was any external element or circumstance deficient, but a true correspondence existed between the essential life of the plant and the sphere in which it was developed. What then are the external correspondences neces- sary to my life, to human life, by which it can deve- lope itself according to its own law or type of being, as the cactus according to its own vegetative law and type? The cactus sustains harmonious relations: 1. Elementary, with the air and the waters; 2. Mineral, in its secretions from the soil, and 3. Solar, with the heat, light and electrical activity of the solar ray, exciting its germination and all the processes of its growth and evolution, communicating to it that vegetative energy which secretes from the soil, air and water the elements which it requires. In its natural site we should probably find other relations with various plants, animals and insects, use- ful to it and served by it, but which, as appears from its isolated life, are not indispensable. These harmonies, for a human infant, if we study the law of its development, must be vastly extended and all PREFACE. xiii of them serve but as the prelude to a higher class of relations, the human and social, the spiritual and divine. To obtain a fair parallel we must besides have in the first place a child well born; an immense conces- sion, since it demands exemption from hereditary dis- eases, sound health in the parents, their mutual fitness in a true marriage of souls as well as bodies, and catenation of favourable influences over its concep- tion and gestation, which few individuals have either the wisdom or the opportunity to realize, since, when we advance from plants and beasts to the more com- plex conditions of human life, these matters require social combinations and intelligent calculations, to which hardly any society, characterized, as our own, by religious fanaticism or infidelity, by industrial competition, the separation and hostility of interests, has attained or can attain. Every child is the concrete history of his ancestors, and its life, whose essence God inspires for all, is in its form or character phenomenal,— 1. Of the spherical and humanitary conditions which have modified its organization; 2. Of the influences of birth, education, social grade and circumstances generally in which it is reared. Leaving the deeper problems of spherical and social influence as beyond the limits of our present study, let us take the child as it comes into our hands, and its destiny for good or evil, for health or disease, for weal or for woe is entrusted to us. It is a talent which we are expected to restore with interest. Let 2* XIV PREFACE. us understand where our province commences, and distinguish our duties. We receive from God the earth and the seas, the sur- face at least of the planet, on which we live; but only a small part of this is prepared as a cradle or nursery for the human race, like the natural rose-bowers and peach-orchards of Persia, or the eternal spring of tropical table lands, or the South Sea Island groves of banana and cocoa-nut, where rich and tender Na- ture "satisfies man's mouth with good, and renews his youth like the eagle's." The earth affords only the crude germs which our own energy and skill, developed through our wants and sufferings which call them into action, must cul- tivate and refine. There are metallic ores and earths provided, but God leaves it to man to smelt and refine them, to ma- nufacture knives, saws and axes, to set and polish jewelry, to make glass mirrors and lenses. There are wild grains and forest fruits provided, but it is for the toil and skill of the husbandman and gardener to bring forth the large nutritious and highly flavored fruits, vegetables and grains, or the choice flowers of our parterres. There are many animals fitted for the service of man—horses and wild cattle, dogs, birds, &c, some of which he has already succeeded in domesticating; others, as the zebra, ostrich, buffalo, elk, &c, whose uses are reserved for the societies of the future; but these must all be trained, educated for the functions desired of them, their races gradually developed into new species and varieties of breed, and their organ- PREFACE. XV izations and instincts modified in relation to these functions, until, as in the case of the setter or pointer which will sometimes go through all the desired evolutions the first time he follows the sportsman, of the Durham or other fine milch-cows, or the highly bred racer, they seem to be even in their instincts results nlmost equally of human and of divine intelligence. But the choicest germ thus entrusted to our human providence is man himself, the infant, in whose fresh generations humanity continues to live, whilst, the transformations of our individual lives are concealed by the shroud of the grave. And this infant, it is also an ore, a wild flower, a crab-apple, an animal with untutored instincts, a spirit clothed in strange garments of matter, which asks of us in the name of our Heavenly Father who sent it here, to assist it in developing a body in which it may fitly and truly ex- press itself, so that its life may praise God and bless its fellow-creatures and joy in reciprocated love. First, shall the baby live or die? Be not too hasty to say, it shall live, for a very large proportion of the children which are born, perish ere they have counted three summers. Thousands in the close, and rank civilization of the East are yearly sacrificed by their own parents, who send them to another world because they are unable to provide for them in this. Still nearer home, the muddy waters of the Thames and the grave-yards of London, of Edinburgh, of Boston, of New York and Philadelphia, disclose the same sad secrets. The offerings, made by those Pagan nations who sacrifice human victims and cause their " first-born to pass through the fire." necessity con- xvi PREFACE. tinues among the civilized heathen idolaters of Mam- mon; and those immolations, consecrated by Indian superstition, recur amid the industrial competition of Europe, as in China, bared of all illusion, as mere re- sults of destitution and degradation, of social impro- vidence, of the crushing of class by class, of the weaker by the stronger in our life-scramble. With us the cases are yet comparatively few where the parents are intentionally guilty of the death of their own offspring. Ignorance of health conditions, mistaken fondness with its over-feeding and over- clothing, improper food, close rooms, filthiness and drugging do the rest. Let us now consider the natural relations between the child and the external world, of whose harmony its health, happiness and virtue are as truly expressive, as by the researches of Lamarck and Geoffroi St. Hilaire it is seen that each type of vegetative or animal life on the earth has been the modified result of the sphe- rical influences preceding and accompanying it, and that "all changes at the surface of the earth have been connected with a variation pre-existing, slow and continuous, of the different and consecutive surround- ing media." The spheres or media in which we live, observed from the subjective point of view, take from human nature their terms of classification, and we may distinguish in them objects of the senses, objects of the affections, and objects of the intellect. Yet as many objects come at once under all these heads in their different relations with us, it is more convenient to adopt that point of view which St. Pierre has cho- sen in his admirable chapters on natural harmonies, PREFACE. xvn the 10th, 11th, and 12th of his Studies of Nature. He classes them as Elementary, Vegetable, Animal, and Human, to which we may add the term Divine, as completing and resuming in itself the Natural Series. The first elementary relation which the child con- tracts on entering the world, is with the atmosphere. Its lungs, inactive during foetal life, .now find their proper stimulus, and transmit through the filmy mem- branes which divide their air-cells from the ramifica- tions of the pulmonary artery, the oxygen absorbed by the blood and carried in the general circulation to the various tissues of the body to effect there the transfor- •mations necessary to their growth and activity. The baby's lusty cries seem to say that he finds the world rather a rough customer, and perchance may some day return it the compliment. This atmosphere whose chemical constitution does not apparently differ from the equator to the poles, in the Simoom or the North-wester, is a mixture of azote, oxygen, and carbonic acid gas in definite proportions. In a state of purity it holds that precise relation to the blood and lung-tissue of warm-blooded animals, essential to the respiratory harmony, a principal ele- ment of that integral health which results from the combined harmonies of all the organs and apparatus composing our organic system. A slight change in the composition of this atmosphere, as the subtraction of a little oxygen, the addition of a little carbonic acid, such as probably existed in those remote periods when immense coal-formations were produced by a primitive vegetation, would suffice to destroy man xvin PREFACE. and most of ihe present animals, permitting only some more rudimental or inferior organisms. Temporary changes of this character gravely compromise our health, as we perceive when they are effected even for an hour in a close and crowded room where every one who breathes, subtracts from the air of the apart- ment a proportion of its oxygen at every respiration, and imparts to it an additional proportion of carbonic acid. Other causes of impurity are the effluvia from animal bodies even in health, much more when diseased, and most pernicious when diseased of a contagious or a putrid character, as small-pox, typhus fever, &c. All these exist permanently in a more or less diluted state in the atmosphere of cities, and chiefly in those foul reeking alleys and rotten piles of buildings in which thousands of poor families are huddled. When we enter the houses themselves, the evil is more con- centrated, since there are no facilities for proper ven- tilation; and even when the weather is favorable, a pernicious prejudice keeps the windows closed for fear of taking cold. A great number of children, both rich and poor, are poisoned slowly by bad air and close rooms, and perish of various diseases excited by such treatment, which proceeds from the general ignorance and ne- glect of this first and simplest of our elementary re- lations. I have seen a child actually in convulsions from this cause, and relieved at once by opening the window and allowing it to breathe. It is not to the heat, as is generally supposed, but to the exhaustion of oxygen gas and excess of carbonic acid in the PREFACE. XIX air, that we are to ascribe the famtings, the heaviness and stupor which occur in crowded churches and lecture-rooms. Those employed in this country for medical lectures are shamefully pernicious in this re- spect, and annually levy a life-tax on the students frequenting them. Each professor remains but one hour, and, while lecturing, is in a state of active ex- citement, which renders him comparatively uncon- scious of the state of the air, but the students from whom a close attention is required for six or seven hours, of which four are consecutive, sit passive vic- tims at once of poisoned air and scientific stupidities, a very practical commentary on the benefits which their future patients are to divine from studies thus pursued. Precisely the same state of the air is attained when many persons are breathing in an ill-ventilated room for a short time, or a few persons for a long time. Hence we frequently find the nursery and the sick- chamber in a condition, equally fatal to health as a medical lecture-room or -------, of course, other crowded assembly. This source of impurity every family may avoid by keeping the top of the windows a little opened, with a good fire in the room, if the weather be cold. A second class is more subtle and widely extended, as the effluvia from privies, sinks, slaughter-houses,gluefactories,pig-pens,cellars,grave yards and the thousand nuisances of cities which com- bined with privations, with destructive excesses, and with the various moral nuisances which belong to close habitation, tell so heavily on human life, that in Paris where they know how to take statistics, it has XX PREFACE. been ascertained that the population is extinct be- tween the fourth and fifth generation of city life, and is kept up by supplies from the country, on whose resources cities act like social and industrial Mael- stroms, or a machine in which human beings are ground up as raw material to come forth again in the shape of different products to which they have been sacrificed. To avoid their impure atmosphere and other per- nicious influences together, there is no other course for parents open, than to remove at once from the cities to the country. There is yet a third source of impurities in the various miasms of fever, cholera and other diseases, which, though more rife in cities are not confined to them, and some which are local, as in low and marshy districts. These are all more or less beyond the con- trol of the individual man, and require for their extir- pation the wisest and most extensive social combina- tions. A beginning has been made in the institution of quarantine. It would lead too far to enter deeper into these matters and does not properly belong to this book. Another elementary relation is that which we sus- tain with the earth. A fine couple of playmates truly! our little rosy- cheeked urchin and the big planet, old heavy mother earth! Never mind, they will understand each other. See how he rolls and tumbles and gambols like a dog over the lawn, or turns a somerset—that's it, over and over again, hurra! And think you the old mother loves not to feel her little ones on her big heart? In PREFACE. XXI all these arrant sports through tender infancy, she inspires in us those healthy rural instincts which in riper years will make the sturdy farmer, the noble fellow-workman with the sun, by whose labor and love and thought he refines those germs of beauty and utility in her vegetable and animal life which God entrusts to human care. Our grand explorations and our infantile sports, are,. perhaps, equally important in planetary results, as to the eternal eye which looks through the shadows of centuries, the forms of the acorn and of the majestic forest oak are equal in the past, both crumble into dust, and equal in the future containing both in germ. The soil by its exhalations exerts important influ- ences upon our health. This we may appreciate by the general vigor and soundness enjoyed by the in- dustrial classes engaged in agriculture, unless where local vices, as in miasmatic districts, counteract this effect. The Indian, and the trapper, and hunter who come to shun the walls of a house, as if it would stifle them to sleep under anything closer than the shade of a tree or a rock, whose slumbers are lulled by the breeze of the prairie, or who in cold nights seek the hollows where the cattle have been lying, prove by their elastic health and the ease with which they recover from injuries which would prove fatal to feebler frames, the grand tonic influence of an earth-bed in the open air, connected with other habits of an analogous character. Nature makes us pay dearly for our civilized luxuries with compound in- terest on compound interest. Ceasing to be luxuries, they become the necessities of infirm health, and we 3 XX11 PREFACE. lose at the same time the enjoyment of artificial conditions and the power of enjoying the primitive nature which we left behind us in our first desertion of that unwritten law, to which the savage for the most part still adheres. This does not prove that we are to retrograde into savages, (it would be sublimely ridiculous to see a dandy with kid gloves play the savage,) but that we are to advance and become true men, and shows how careful we should be not to put nature out at the window while we admit art by the door. A correct physiology easily reconciles and combines the advan- tages of both. A remarkable evidence of the healing powers of the earth is given in the cure of scurvied sailors long strangers to her friendly bosom, who often when put on shore to die, are revived by the fresh smell of the soil, and graze with their loosened teeth and bleeding gums on any green thing they can find. In a few weeks these incurables are almost re- stored to health. The mud and earth baths used in different parts of Germany, f. i., Steben in Bavaria, have shown remarkable results. The little human vermin of our cities who anterior to their pupa-transformations into news-boys, street- sweepers and the like, are left to take their delight in the gutters, really fare better in their chances of health, notwithstanding a thousand drawbacks, than most of those delicately reared children whose mo- thers are afraid for them to dirty their hands. " Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolfs teat, Wintered with the hawk and fox, Power and speed be hands and feet." PREFACE. XX111 There are for man two paths of development, one of necessity and adversity, constantly threatening destruction, and awakening the strongest efforts of his self-preservation in their conquest, the other of charm-attraction and sympathy which lead him on- ward unconsciously to a harmonious expansion of his life. The pine tree is a natural emblem of the first character, the magnolia, perhaps, or the rose of Cashmere, of the second. We cannot, under existing conditions, attain the second, so that it is the part of wisdom to take the first. Nature is always faithful to such as trust her faithfulness; and, without any af- fectation of asceticism, we shall be the healthier and happier in proportion as we earnestly cultivate the primitive relations which she offers us. Water among the fluids, as light among the aromas, is essentia] to every definite form and order of struc- ture, from the crystal to the highest form of animal life. It is necessary to their existence, to their pre- servation and to their regeneration from decay or dis- ease. Water is the principal solvent, penetrating and cleansing bodies, as truth penetrates the soul and washes away errors and the evil dispositions resulting from them. This is not effected suddenly in either case. The first effect of dissolving dirt only causes it to show more plainly. The first effect of water- cure, after it has fairly taken hold of the system, often exacerbates the diseased conditions, revives old symptoms and causes the organic dirt to show itself in hideous boils, eruptions and evacuations of other kind, with grave functional disturbances before wash- ing it out entirely in eruptions of horrible fetor from XXIV PREFACE. the skin and mucous membranes, presenting in grains or globules the mercury and other mineral poisons which have infected the organism and which were causes of organic error, because they fulfil no true relation in its tissues. Water has been recognised by the instinct and common sense of the chief religions of the earth as the material symbol of the spiritual regeneration, as it is actually the instrument of or- ganic regeneration into Jiealth, the only sure basis of spiritual regeneration. In England, as well as in all other northern countries, immersion and ablution were used in order to have protection against the cold air; and only when in the 17th century the bap- tismal immersions were discontinued in consequence of clerical quarrels, cold water bathing came more and more out of general use. The ignorance of the people in medical matters was another reason why cold bathing was looked upon as dangerous, since it was the interest of the drug-doctors to invent new names, new methods and new medicines, and to cry down all the old ideas and practices, &c, &c. Every look into history shows us that from time immemorial cold water has been considered a very necessary means to preserve and restore health. The Greeks and Romans never erected a bath without a "Piscina," a cold bath. Hippocrates, Celsus, Caelius Aurelianus, and Galenus call cold baths very useful and healthy; Musa recommended them strongly to Augustus and Horatius; Plinius and Seneca give testimony in their favor, and Lampridius says that the emperor Severus cured his gout with cold water alone. Thu- cydides, (De Bell. Peloponn. Lib. 1. cap. 49,) after PREFACE. XXV describing the plague which was raging in Athens during the Peloponnesian war, says that many of the sufferers threw themselves into water and were cured. Lucian calls the Chinese of his time Makrobioi, (long- livers,) and ascribes their long life to their great pro- pensity to drink much water. Sarcone, Wright, McGregor, and Jackson, (Coll. of Select Treat, for Pract., Vol. XII. p. 27; Vol. XVIII. p. 592,) observed the excellent effect of cold water in malignant fevers. Desgenettes describes the case of a French soldier of Napoleon's army in Egypt, who, suffering of the pest, escaped from the hospital of Boulak, sprang into the river Nile, was about one mile and a half below Em- babath fished up and cured. Andreas Tiraqueau, a celebrated jurist, drank only cold water and washed himself daily with it; he gave the world forty-four healthy children, and forty-four learned books. Wie- land and Bodmer, reaching the respective ages of eighty-one and eighty-three years, drank nothing but water and washed. Ninon de l'Enclos and Diana de Poitiers kept theii* beauty unimpaired till the age of seventy years, by drinking freely cold water and washing with it. Friedrich Nicolai slept once in a convent in the Tyrolean Alps, where all the monks appeared very lively and hardy, though most of them were over one hundred years old. They gave as a reason for this condition their rule, which allowed them to eat only one hearty meal for dinner, while breakfast and supper was very simple, and the only drink water. Hufeland acknowledges, that men might live up to two hundred years, if they would avoid diseases, medicine and vices, and use freely 3* XXVI PREFACE. water. The Jews, Mahomedans and Hindoos have made the bath a practical rite of religious hygiene, and by their daily and thorough ablutions, bring their organism into that state of purity and elasticity in which the soul can play most purely and freely, and receive its admonitions from higher worlds. But enough of these historical truths, for which I refer to the history of the Water-cure, annexed to this book. Those agents which stimulate more than they nou- rish, weaken the organism; but cold water, in its pri- mary effect, is the opposite of a stimulant, and it be- comes a tonic only as in connection with its cleansing properties, the depressing effect of the first chill is followed by a reaction in the elastic vital forces of the organism itself. This is a spontaneous and not a forced expression of higher vitality. Hence the pleasurable vigor suc- ceeding a well managed cold bath by swimming, plunging, douche or simple ablution, with proper fric- tions, does not give way like that produced by coffee, tea, chocolate or spirituous liquors after some hours, to a state of sinking and depression which craves the repetition of the stimulant, and makes the system feel ill at ease and below par until it is obtained, when a fitful excitement again takes the place of that calm strength and self-poise which belong to the health of an uncontaminated organism. Coffee, tea, chocolate, vanilla, opium and spirituous liquors are direct stimulants, which force the organ- ism to express a higher life for a little while only, to abandon it afterwards to greater depression; whoever stimulates with them, is spending at once the interest PREFACE. XXV11 and principal of his organic fortune or stamina of constitution. He may not always be directly con- scious of this, either from the firmness of his nerves, or because he cannot appreciate what is going on within him. All persons are not capable of taking cognizance of their own sensations, of comparing them at different periods, and of tracing the connec- tions of cause and effect; but the laws of the vital organism are unitary and universal, such apparent exceptions notwithstanding. The same substance may be a direct stimulant, and merely a stimulant.to one person. To a second of firmer nerve and stronger assimilative powers it may only be highly nutritious. Of onions especially, as well as of food in general, in comparing the states of fever or diarrhoea with that of ordinary health, I have observed this, and appa- rently of coffee and tea. To a third person, these substances shall be both nutritive and stimulant, but one property decidedly predominating. What ap- pear to be exceptions, are merely the different rela- tions which the same substance sustains to the organ- isms of different temperaments or individuals, but the law remains unchanged in its essence, and all direct stimulus by the introduction of substance into our organism which they cannot assimilate to the nou- rishment of their tissues, is ultimately depressing, dis- easing. A constitutional effect sometimes becomes manifest only on the child or grand-child, visiting on their de- teriorated organisms the sin of their parents. A ro- bust father may, while infected with psora or syphi- lis, beget a child who shall come into the world half XXV111 PREFACE. a wreck, and drag out a lame and shattered existence, while the father individually recovers apparently his former robust health. Thus, if children begotten during the excitement of a debauch or the depression consequent on one, a deteriorated condition, tempo- rary and functional with the parent, becomes perma- nent and organic with the child, and such instances of deteriorated offspring resulting from most deplo- rable ignorance or carelessness are continually ob- served. .Cold water contrasts in its tonic powers with the above mentioned agents. It is an indirect stimulant, which merely arouses the dormant vital powers to assert themselves in self-preservation. It is a rough, candid friend which does not flatter us with a facti- tious strength and liveliness, but makes us conscious of our faults and weaknesses by a searching criticism. Thus it causes us at first to shrink and shiver as we shrink and shiver morally from the exposure of our faults; but after repentance comes amendment, and after amendment soundness, health, vigor, and this is the same in the moral and physical world. Here it is well to remark, important to remember, and most fortunate to observe in practice, (since over treatment is not only the fault of beginners, but also of almost every practitioner in the water-cure in this country, who, by bathing to excess, too often and too long at a time, by using wrong and too strong appli- cations of the water, compromise, often for years, the benefit of nature's grand restorative,) that the vital reactions which follow the cold bath, however widely they differ from the direct stimulation of coffee, PREFACE. XXIX liquors, &c, do not the less determine the evolutions and expression of latent vital force. If this be de- termined more rapidly than is consistent with the nu- trition of the body by food, and the natural influx of electric nerve-power from the earth, the air, and the various vegetable, animal, and human organisms with which our uses, pleasures, senses, and affections bring us into communion; if, in short, Nature is hurried, she will play us the old trick of the goose that laid a golden egg every day, but her master being in a hurry to get rich, cut her open, and that was the last of the golden egg. By hurrying water-treatment, as by the ordinary gymnastic exercises which have in view no out- ward use naturally directing the amount of force to be expended, we gain not real strength, but a fac- titious tone or irritability. More than fifty cases which came from other hydriatic institutions to me, have proved the truth of this remark; besides this, every day's experience, when drug-doctors, without any knowledge even of the simplest principles of hy- driatrics dare to prescribe water applications to some extent, shows it clearly. We can cut a great many capers, but our life is not sound, sweet, and reliable, and, in the end, our doing becomes the martyrdom of being. Amongst all the forms of water-uses, the best in a hygienic point of view, is that which nature prescribes to the savage and the peasant, and to animals all over the earth—to plunge and swim in streams. We have thus a natural temperature varying little from that of the atmosphere, a little cooler in summer and a XXX PREFACE. little warmer in winter, and throughout the warmer zones and seasons a source of delicious refreshment, as in the colder a most bracing tonic. The sensation of moving in a new element is entirely "sui generis" and indescribably pleasant. It operates a sudden transition from physical heat and fatigue, and from mental or moral anxiety and depression, and gives us an expansive sympathy with the great life of nature, as if, like the fluid that embraces us, we entered into every thing and received every thing. Our citizens, with their humdrum artificial habits, cannot by the highest stretch of imagination conceive the mere joys of physical existence known to the healthy child or beautiful savage of the Pacific isles, whose symmetry and uniform health have excited the admiration of so many navigators, and of which one of the chief na- tural causes is the cultivation of his aquatic relations. It is well known that they are almost amphibious. The peculiar motions of swimming, raise the cla- vicle and scapula, expand the upper lobes of the lungs, and determine full respiration in them, so as to give precisely that development needed to counteract our so common tendencies to consumption. Tubercles form in the great majority of cases in the upper lobes of the lungs, and it is this region that is contracted and inactive in persons of phthysical conformation. To effect free and full respiration here, is the primary indication in prevention or cure, and by no method can this be equally well attained as by swimming, where it is done unconsciously and in connection with other uses and pleasures. For either children or adults, next to swimming or the daily tub- PREFACE. XXXI bath, envelopment and friction with a cold wet sheet is most to be commended. It is the mildest form of the cold bath, and is suitable for invalids too weak to bear any other, although highly refreshing to all per- sons. It requires the services of a strong and healthy assistant whose friction imparts' much magnetic vir- tue at the same time with the tonic influence of the cold water. More or less friction should invariably accompany and follow every form of the cold bath, and it is more efficient when administered by another person. The circulation thus attracted and quickened on the surface, must be sustained by gentle and con- tinued exercises. Otherwise chilliness supervenes after some minutes, and much of the tonic influence of the bath is lost. In feeble persons even trouble- some congestions .are thus .occasioned by neglect of friction and exercise after the bath. An opposite extreme is equally to be avoided by excitable temperaments, whose strong vital reactions deceive them in regard to the amount of force they have to spare, and who, by too violent and long-con- tinued exercise after the cold bath often exhaust themselves for the day. The management of these vital vibrations in the use of cold water requires a very delicate wisdom, and constitutes the secret of success or failure in most cases of treatment. In earth, water, and air, we have the continents and representatives of solid, fluid, and gaseous bodies: there is a superior order of relations which we sus- tain with a class of agents, sometimes classed as ma- terial, sometimes as immaterial, which constitute the media through which spirit acts on matter, which we xxxu PREFACE. shall designate as aromas, and of which the elemen- tary and generative principles are, heat, light, and electricity, whose combination is presented in the solar ray. The generative action of heat on moist soils is fa- miliarly known, and not less so to the chemist and physiologist is the necessity of light to perfect and characterize the type of all forms and organizations, from the crystal to the highest form of animal exist- ence. Deprived of it, substances possessing a strong affinity for each other, will remain mixed, but uncom- bined in the chemist's laboratory, plants grow feebly, are blanched, and cannot reproduce their species. Amongst animals, contrast the comparatively rudi- mental structure of moles, of eyeless fishes found in subterranean streams, of the slimy reptiles under planks or rocks, with the higher organic types in which light has more fully co-operated. To get a clear and comprehensive view of the solar influence, let us ascend a high mountain till we come to a point where the solar ray, after having traversed space for ninety-five millions of miles without creating any thing, begins to manifest itself. The air is becoming too thin for us to breathe, the blue of the firmament disappears in a black void above us, and the green splendors of earth's fairest gardens give place to the glacier and flee before the eternal ice-breath. All forms of living organism cease, and the very elements fade into uncertain and ghost-like existence on the confines of vacuum. Descending from these altitudes of eternal death and frost, it grows brighter and warmer as we near the PREFACE. XXX111 extended surface of the earth,—first a belt of moss clings to the rocks or grows beneath the snow, form- ing a pasture for the chamois, then the larch, pine and other resinous plants cheer the bleak landscape with their evergreen, and provide harvests for the bird and squirrel. Foliage and flowers, with thou- sands of winged and climbing, running and creeping creatures soon start into existence round us, as we accompany the solar ray in its descent to the plains and valleys, where the teeming hosts of life and wealth of prairie, forest, brake and swamp issue from its intense embrace, and we are lost again in the positive infinite of countless forms, of real and con- crete life, as before in the negative infinite of blank space and elementary dissolution. It is also in the vernal season as the Earth turns her breast towards the Sun, that these effects of crea- tion appear. Each spring as it renews the life of the earth, commemorates that epoch when the stars sang together at the birth of their little sister. Germs and seeds that slept, now unfold into being, and the birds, our mother earth's winged poesy, repeat the songs she teaches them in those hours of rapture, when she, like them, melts on the heart of her radiant lover. We are next to consider that the sun, being thus the active creative cause of all organisms or bodies, becomes the medium through which God inspires the souls of those bodies, and the spiritual properties of love, truth and use, or practical energy, manifested through these organisms in the ratio of their develop- ment and perfection. We may observe the manifestation of intellect and 4 XXXIV PREPACK. affection to cease simultaneously with the phenomena of organic life, as the circulation stagnates by the withdrawal of heat in freezing; and we observe them all revive together by timely removal to a warmer atmosphere. The social affections are strictly dependent on physical comfort, their genial manifestation is sup- pressed by cold and darkness and starvation. Mark the magical change in a party of friends, which, after exposure to the bleak wind, travelling some stormy winter-night, find themselves housed be- fore a brilliant, blazing fire which thaws the current of song and mirth and social interchange of mind, together with the icicles on their hair, and the snow upon their coats. On the other hand, the reciprocal influence of our passions or affections in exciting physical warmth is equally well-known. Thus we speak of a warm heart, and a clear head, and the flush of colour, with physi- cal warmth beginning in the chest, and extending to the whole surface, are perfectly sensible to us in meeting those we love. From these general con- siderations on the sun and his ray, as the cause of all vital growth, movement and passion on the surface of the earth, let us proceed to make a special appli- cation to our household-life, and the rearing of children. Well might one exclaim, on seeing the provision of our cities, whose families degenerate and become extinct at the third or fourth generation—" put out the light, and then put out the light of life."—Here we have millions travelling on through the long winter- PREFACE. XXXV night of social destitution, whose misery excludes at once the light and warmth of the sun, the refinements of affection, and the opportunities of mental culture, from their nests piled in narrow alleys, and obstruct- ed by hills of ordure. Yet scarcely more fatal to these is their exhausting toil under such conditions, than to many of their wealthier fellow citizens—the mistaken delicacy with which they seclude them- selves from their truest friends, the earth, the air, the water and the sunshine: the only friends that never forsake us, that never misunderstand us, which are always ready to help us, and whose favours never compromise our independence. The sunshine is the smile of God made visible in nature, and inspires vigour and cheerfulness in our bodies and souls, just as it disperses the clouds from our atmosphere, and quickens vegetation. Those nations and classes who live in the sunshine, whether we seek them on the quays of Venice, or on Indian hunting grounds, or by the banana of tropical island gardens, are still free from our metaphysical and invalid habits. What strength and life they have, is really their own, and available for enjoyment. It is not until men begin to house themselves that they become introspective in their minds, and cultivate habits of self-torture in their religion and morality, corresponding to the neural- gias and dyspepsias which invade their debilitated frames. How often, when we have been consider- ing ourselves the most unfortunate or ill-used individ- uals, has the laughing indifference of nature done more for us than any condolence or sympathy. Though our climate and the squeamishness and bad XXXVI PREFACK. habits of our people have scarcely permitted me to make satisfactory trial of it; I am convinced that a tonic agency of great value might be obtained by exposure of the whole skin to air and sun, either out of doors in the milder seasons, or in towns, or during the winter season, through the intervention of a win- dow. When we think how large a surface we keep either covered or exposed, how immense an influence the tone of the cutaneous capillaries, and the activity of their pores have on the whole system; that we have expanded here on a sensory surface about one half of the whole nervous system, the objective por- tion, whose subjective correspondence is found in the brain and spine; when we consider how great func- tional disturbances are occasioned by a superficial burn or blister; we shall be convinced that medical science possesses in the sunshine the simplest and most pleasant of agents, a new and valuable resource in the treatment of many cases of chronic disease. Children, with peculiar grace and convenience, may wear such clothes as allow the solar ray to play freely about their skins in the fine weather, and the tone, thus communicated from the skin to the mucous membranes, will save them many a catarrh and croup and diarrhoea. If we combine with these light and convenient manners of dressing our children, some application of their forces, f. i., in gardening, we shall procure for them a treasure of robust health, which is scarcely known among our parlour children. Most children have a fancy for gardening; there is probably no one, on whom, under favourable cir- PREFACE. XXXVll cumstances, some flower, or tree, or vegetable will not exert a specific charm strong enough to interest him and her in its culture and uses. This furnishes the best exercises—not straining and irritating the nervous system like our idle gymnastics, whose vio- lent efforts, when not positively injurious, cultivate a factitious and fugitive strength; but gentle, perma- nent, and interesting us in their objects, so as to render us unconscious of the effort. Work thus per- formed, is real play for mind and body alike. Gilbert says under the head—Exercises in his Hygiene: " Mere bodily labour without thought, object or inter- est, as in the treadmill, is as little related to the due exercise of the entire man, as intense application of mind in a sedentary posture, and in a confined room. There must be a feeling of interest or responsibility combined with the bodily exertions; such pursuits as call for the regular and varied exercises of all the faculties of body and mind, will be found to yield the more proper stimulus to the former, and the most appropriate pabulum to the latter. Let there be a due share of mental excitement, then the powers of the constitution will expand with the occasion, and its capacity increase with the mental ardor awaken- ed. In such a state of the mind, it grapples cheer- fully and successfully with difficulties which would be quite appalling to the passive or uninterested per- son. The boy with his kite or gun will exert all the powers of his muscles for five or six hours, or even a whole day, and scarcely complain of fatigue ; while the same amount of muscular power, exerted against his will, could not be secured by ordinary means." 4# XXXV111 PREFACE. G. gives then a case, one precisely similar to which occurred with one of the servants of my father—I give G.'s own words: "A young man, desirous of seeing his female friend fifty miles off, decided upon a journey on foot, which under the mental stimulus peculiar to the case, he performed in one day. He found, however, that the object of his affections was at a party ten miles further, to which he repaired on foot without delay. He joined there in the pleasures of the evening, and danced most of the night with his wonted vigor and vivacity. Now had this perform- ance been divested of those circumstances which operated as mental stimuli, undoubtedly he would have sunk down with exhaustion before he arrived at the end of his journey." But attractive out-door labours, whilst they power- fully promote the child's development or adult's health, may be at the same time sources of pleasure or profit, and initiate us into the most cherished pursuits and valuable industry. It is a custom in many German families, of which Zschokfce has spoken in his admirable tales, to train every youth, whatever his prospects in life, to some mechanical trade ; thus at once assuring him subsistence in case of reverses of fortune, a better change of health and physical development, a medium of sympathy with the labouring classes, and a healthful recreation at all tune; thus, e. g. the Grand Duke of Saxony Weimar is an excellent turner; Louis the XVI. was a good locksmith, &c. In the study and co-operation with nature for the pure love of the object, man becomes an artist, and inspiration finds him unawares. The plants have PREFACE. XXXIX wonderful secrets to tell us yet, which no botanist has suspected. Such pursuits also exercise the most wholesome influence in correcting the vagrant imagination which, in the absence of sensible subjects of attachment, compromises the efficiency of life by its dreams and idle fantasies. The education of the age, so prone to abstractions, which teaches even the most practical matters, as arithmetic, geometry and physiology, in a simply theoretical manner, and which concludes, without having furnished to the pupil any means of earning at once an honest livelihood; stands peculiarly in need of some practical improvement of this sort, and I have been gratified to observe the late movement in Massachusetts and Maryland on the subject of farm schools, though it is desirable that our active relations with the vegetable kingdom should com- mence at a much earlier period than these can pro- vide for. I will conclude these hints by quoting, from a noble book, Sue's Martin the Foundling, the history of a cure accomplished by his father, the late Dr. Sue. " He was summoned one day to a rich invalid, and he found a man expiring from the exhaustion caused by excess of every kind; the blood impoverished and vitiated in its essence, circulated feebly in his veins more like a fluid of death than of life. The greatest doctors had abandoned this unfortunate man, predict- ing his speedy end. The savant, the profound thinker, bethought him of those fearful and mysterious tales, which told of the infusion of young and generous xl PREFACE. blood in the exhausted veins of old men, nearly dead from debauchery—they suggested an admirable idea. Hangings of silk and gold, impregnated with perni- cious perfumes, covered the walls of this opulent dwelling, and kept it in a half obscurity. These hangings were taken down, the genial sun was suf- fered to enter everywhere, and the walls were hidden by masses of green branches freshly torn down from resinous and balsamic trees, exhaling in abundance those gases that render the air vital and pure; then young, robust and healthy nurses alternately came and applied their full breasts to the mouth of the dying man. Scarcely had his parched lips been moistened by the regenerating milk, scarcely had he breathed the vivifying and salubrious air, exhaled by the fresh branches by which his bed was shaded, than he seemed to revive, his impoverished and cor- rupted blood seemed to be renewed and regenerated; he was saved, he lived; and his safety had caused neither tears nor blood. Pure and nourishing milk, and a few branches from the green trees, and the genial rays of the sun, were the only instruments of this marvellous cure." To develop this subject would require volumes, and would include the adaptations of diet, in the widest sense, and of aliments, varied in accordance with ages and temperaments. As it is incompatible with my limits, I content myself with remarking the immense importance of observations in this field, and the culpable ignorance and apathy which now pre- vails. St. Pierre remarks the specific attachment of animals to plants, he observes how each tree or herb PREFACE. xli becomes a centre of relations for numerous species, to some of which it furnishes a dwelling, to others food, a sphere of existence either permanent or tem- porary, partial or complete. He shows how, by the harmony of contrasts the life of the largest quadruped