-		/tn,u
	EXPERIENCE	
		a.\ frwr\
	C-l J ' IN	
Wa	TER-	CURE: *
Principlis	A FAMILIAR EXPOSITION OK THE and Results of Water Treatment,	
IN THE CURE OF
ACUTE AND CHRONIC  DISEASES,
ILLUSTRATED Ey NUMEROUS CASES IN IHE PRACTICE OF THE AUTHOR; WITH AN

  EVI'LANATION OF WATKR-CURE PROCESSES, ADVICE ON DIET AND REGIMEN,

     AND PARTICULAR DIRECTIONS TO WOMEN IN THE TREATMENT 07

        Ft MALE DISEASES, WATER TREATMENT IN  CHILDBIRTH,

               AND THE DISEASES OF INFANCY.
MARY S.
gove/xichols, '/    /  /  •'
T*T> P DnVCTflT A XT
               WATER-CURE PHYSICIAN,
                                            I
AUTHOR Or LECTURES TO LADIES ON ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY, ETC. ETC.
                  NEW  YOEK:

FOWL Eli  AND  WELLS, PUBLISHEKS,
               No. 308 BROADWAY. 
V
^x*\V
•^ 
WATER-CURE:   '
A FAMILIAR EXPOSITION OF THE  i   ,   J
Principles and Results of Water Treatment,
N THE CURE OF1
ACUTE  -,i/CHROME  DISEASES,
LLTT8TRATKD BY NUMEROUS CASES IN THE PRACTICE OF TH«. AUTHOR | WITH AN
 EXPLANATION OF WATER-CURE PROCESSES, ADVICE ON DIET AND REGIMEN,
    AND PARTICULAR DIRECTIONS TO WOMEN IN THE TREATMENT OF
       FEMALE DISEASES, WATER TREATMENT IN  CHILDBIRTH,
             AND THE DISEASES OF INFANCY.
       BY MARY S. GOVE NICHOLS,
              ■WATER-CURE PHYSICIAN,
AUTHOR OF LECTURES TO LADIES ON ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY, W.TC. BTO.
STEREOTYPED.

            NEW  YORK:
 FOWLERS AND WELLS, PUBLISHERS,
         No.  308 BROADWAY.
Boston, 142 Washington St.]               [London, No. I« Strand. 

*»■*
WB   F
      Entered according to act of Congress^>    Tear 1849,
                   BY MARY S. GOVE NICHOLS,
in the Clerk's OfBce of the District Court of the United States, for the
                  Southern District of New York. 
      WHO HAS A MIND TO UNDERSTAND
IHE WORK OF HUMAN ELEVATIOH
            A HEART TO LOVE liT,
        AND ENERGY TO LABOR FOR IT,
               3 IDfbtcatf
 THESE RECORDS OF MY EXPERIENOF 
 
PREFACE
  1 have determined to add another book to the many already published
on  Water-Cure.  I think I owe a record of my experience to my
friends; I trust it may be of service to the profession; and I am anxious
to extend, as widely as possible, a knowledge of the principles and prac-
tice of the Water-Cure, and the blessings of restored health and prolonged
usefulness.
  My distant patients, who never see me, but who rely on my letters for
instruction and direction in their cure, will, I trust, find the full and par-
ticular directions in this book of  essential service.   I have endeavored
through the  whole book to give general readers an understanding of the
causes of disease, and the means of cure opened to them in the processes,
diet, and regimen of Water-Care.   As far as possible, I have  endeavored
to make my instructions  practical, to  help  those  who*are  beyond the
reach of personal advice.   But no general rules, and no number of exam-
ples, will apply to the peculiarities of every case.   Next to personal con-
sultation, that by letter  is  to be desired; and by the publication of my
" Experience," and by a daily increasing professional correspondence, I
find my sphere of  usefulness continually widening.
  I by no means expect this little work to take the place of the valuable
Water-Cure  books now  in  the market; but it contains more particulai
directions to women, and treats more of their peculiar diseases, than any
work I have seen.  My mission has been to instruct and help woman.
After spending several years in giving lectures to women on anatomy
and physiology, I published the substance of these lectures in a book, as
I now do the results of my subsequent  labors in the  cure of disease.  I
advise ladies who are interested in hygienic reform, to read all the Water-
Cure books  they can obtain.  I have seen no book on the subject that
was not valuable.   Dr.  Gully's I think  the best, and yet there are errors
In  that which I  would like to see corrected.  The "Introduction to
Water-Cure,'" written by Dr. Nichols, contains a brief and thorough ex
position of the principles and results of the hydropathic treatment.
  It is a great error to  suppose that Water-Cure can  cnly be used sue-
cessfully in  Water-Cure establishments.  Such have their  advantages,
and, in many cases, I would greatly prefer to have a patient under my daily
•upervision  and constant care.  In some cases this personal supervision 
PREFACE.
is indispensable to a cure.  Aided by my husband, a medical graduate
of the University of New York, but, notwithstanding, a thorough Water-
Cure physician, I shall have, henceforth, increased facilities for each of
the four branches of practice: the reception of patients in our  city es-
tablishment for full board treatment; the care of those who reside here,
and come  for day treatment;  the care of patients who are  treated at
their own residences;  and answering  letters of consultation from a dis-
tance.
  Patients  at a distance should give a full and clear account of their dis-
eases, the time they have been affected, the health of their parents, if
dead, of what diseases they died, and at what age, and all facts which
may throw light  upon the  case ; especially those relating to diseases,
medicines,  habits, and temperature, or reactive power against cold.  The
usual fee for consultation is five dollars.  This should be inclosed in the
first letter,  and one dollar in subsequent 'etters, if any such are  required.
  I am aware that there are cases in this book which will hardly be cred-
ited by many who are unacquainted with the Water-Cure ; but though,
from motives of delicacy, the names of patients are not given, yet names
and particular references are at the service of any who wish them for a
useful purpose.  Many of my patients  in this city will  be happy to give
a verbal account of their experience  in Water-Cure to those who are
sufficiently interested to call on them.
  The education of earnest and capable women  for  physicians is an ob-
ject near my heart.  I have had some worthy students, and  hope for
greater facilities.  Some of our colleges have been opened to  them, and
we may in time have  others for their exclusive benefit.  At present we
must compensate ourselves by energy of will and perseverance in action
for those advantages which are granted to men, but denied to us.   " God
helps those who help themselves."
                                     MARY  3  GOVE NICHOLS. 
EXPERIENCE  II  WATER  CERE
                      CHAPTER I.

    PRINCIPLES AND PROCESSES OF  THE  WATER TREATMENT.

   Before giving an account of my own experience and  prac-
 tice, as a Water Cure Physician,  it may be well  to  give the
 reader some  general idea of the character and claims of the
 system of medical treatment which has been termed Hydropa-
 thic, Hydrotherapeutic, and other terms perhaps,  but which I
 prefer to designate, in plain English, as  the Water Cure ; and
 for this purpose  I copy here the body of a little tract, which I
 have prepared and printed for gratuitous circulation, and which
 may be obtained free of cost, by any who believe that the pro-
 mulgation of its truths will benefit the world.

                     THE WATER CURE.

   Health is the result of the  natural performance of all the
functions of life. It gives development, beauty, vigor, and happi-
ness ; and is characterized by strength of body, power and se-
renity of mind, and a keen enjoyment of all the blessings  of
life.
   Disease is the result of any disorder of the natural functions.
It hinders development, mars beauty,  impairs vigor, and  des-
troys happiness.   It is characterized by indolence, weakness,
pain, and misery ; and brings a wretched  life to a premature
and painful death.
  The  natural life is one of health, with all  its pleasures.
There is no natural death,  save the gradual and painless wear-
ing out of the vital energy in old  age.  Health  is  the law of
all organic life.  Disease is the result of accidental, ignorant, or
wilful violations of the laws of nature. 
8
EXPERIENCE IN WiTER  CURE.
   Health, as defined above, is maintained by a  simple nour-
 ishing diet, pure air, exercise, cleanliness, and the regulation of
 the passions.   Men cram themselves with the impure flesh and
 fat of diseased animals, heating condiments and spices,  spiritu-
 ous drinks, and the poisonous narcotics, as opium,  tea, coffee,
 and tobacco—injuring their digestive powers,  and  filling  their
 systems with poisonous matter; and to these are  added a long
 list of vegetable and mineral poisons, given as medicines, not
 one grain of which can be taken without permanent  injury to
 the human organism; we inhale poisons in filthy  streets  and
 unventilated buildings, and these poisons are kept in the sys-
 tem ; and the skin—the great purifying organ of the body—is
 weakened, by a neglect  of personal  cleanliness,  which cannot
 be maintained in perfection without daily bathing in cold water.
 The poisonous matter thus brought into, and kept in the system,
 weakens its powers,  interrupts its functions,  and produces  a
 state  of disease.   Nature makes a violent  effort to cast  out
 these evils—and we have pain, inflammations,  fevers, and  the
 whole train of acute diseases.   The poisons in the system, and
 the bleedings and poisonings of the doctors, weaken the pow-
 ers of nature—and we have the less violent, but more protract-
 ed agonies of chronic disease.  Such violations of the laws of
 God,  have filled the world with disease and misery.   Diseased
 parents bring forth sick and short-lived children, half of whom
 perish in infancy, and not one hundredth reach old age. Thus,
 ' sin came into the  world, and death by sin.'
   The struggle of  the system to cast out its diseases,  goes on
 as long as  the vital power remains.   Every  effort of nature is
 for health;  all pain is remedial; and all the symptoms of dis-
 ease are caused by the reactive powers of the  system.   It is
 the work of the physician to assist and facilitate these efforts  ;
 but this cannot be done by drawing out the vital  current, and
 thus weakening the reactive powers of nature ; nor  by giving
 additional poisons, to  task still more the vital  energies.  Doc-
 tors with lancets  and  poisons, have joined  Disease in a war up-
 on Nature—instead of aiding Nature in its struggle with Disease.
   The Water Cure is the scientific application of  the  princi-
 ples of nature in the cure of disease.   It is not the mere appli-
 cation of water, but it enters into all the causes of disease, and
assists all the  efforts of nature for its cure.  It prescribes a pure
and healthy diet, carefully adapted to the assimilating powers
of the patient; it demands pure air and strengthening exercise,
with other physical and moral hygienic conditions.  The appli- 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
9
cations of water, according as  they are made, are  cleansing,
exciting, tonic, or sedative.   Water clears  the stomach better
than any other emetic ;  produces powerful and regular evacua-
tions of the bowels ;  excites the skin—the great deterging or-
gan of the system—to throw off masses of impurities; stimu-
lates the whole absorbent and secretory systems ; relieves pain
more effectually than opium ; dissolves acrid and poisonous mat-
ters ; purifies the blood ; reduces inflammations; calms  irrita-
tions ;  and answers fully all the  indications of cure—to  fulfil
which, physicians search their pharmacopias in vain.   The pro-
per application of the processes of the Water Cure never fails
of doing good.   Its only abuses  come from  ignorance.   The
Water Cure physician requires a full knowledge of the system,
and  a careful discrimination in applying it  to  various constitu-
tions, and the varied  conditions of  disease.
   Medicines, too often,  instead of aiding,  check the curative
processes of nature.  They deaden and stifle diseases, instead
of casting them out.  Often they change acute affections, which,
left to their own course, would result in health, to chronic and
incurable diseases.   The patient, after being rid of the particular
action of  the disease, still retains the cause that produced  it,
with the addition of the medicine he has taken.   Often, in the
Water Cure, patients throw off large quantities of mercury and
other poisons, which  have lain in their systems for years, pro-
ducing rheumatic, neuralgic, and other nervous and chronic dis-
eases.
   As nature is making constant efforts to free  the body  from
disease, and as the Water Cure strengthens and invigorates  all
the powers  of nature, and assists in its great  processes  of dis-
solving and expelling morbid matter, it is  applicable to every
kind of disease, and will cure all that are curable.  It cools rag-
ing fevers, and gives  tone and energy to the most  exhausted
nervous system ; it soothes the most violent pains,  and  calms
the paroxysms of delirium;  it brings out the poisonous matter
of scrofula, and gives firmness to the shaking hand of palsy.
   Unassisted Na aire, where there is a large  stock of vitality,
may triumph over both  disease and medicine.   The success of
the Homoeopathic practice shows, that the less  medicine taken,
the oftener  Nature asserts her  lights.   But  the Water  Cure
equalizes the circulation, cleanses  the system,  invigorates the
great organs of life, and, by  exciting the functions  of nutri-
tion  and excretion, builds up t'ae body anew,  and re-creates it
in purity and health. 
10
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  CURE.
   Health,  once established by the Water Cure, is maintained
by it ever after.  It is rare  indeed that  a  Water Cure  family
ever needs a physician the second time.  The system threatens
in this way to destroy all medical practice.   Mothers  learn  to
not only cure the diseases of their families, but, what is more
important,  to keep them in  health.   The  only way a  Water
Cure physician can live, is by constantly getting  new  patients,
as the  old ones are too thoroughly cured, and too well informed,
to require further advice.  This is a striking advantage to Water
Cure patients, if not to Water Cure physicians.
   The efficacy of the water cure depends  always  upon the
amount of vital energy or reactive force in the patient; and this
in low  and chronic diseases must be economized with the great-
est care.  Mistakes and failures in water cure,  have come from
not knowing how to adapt the treatment to the patient's reactive
power.   The same treatment that would cure one, might fail
entirely with another.  The practice of this system, therefore,
requires  profound science,  the best judgment, and  the finest
discrimination.   These are  especially  needed in chronic,  ner-
vous, and female diseases.   In all these, the water cure is the
only effectual  remedy.  Thousands of  women are every year
doctored into  premature graves, who  might be  saved by a
knowledge of the water cure.  The world is  scarcely prepared
to believe that its processes relieve childbirth of nearly  all its
dangers  and sufferings—yet  this truth  has  many living  wit-
nesses.
   The  writer has had  a large obstetric practice  for several
years,  and has never  had a  patient who was not able to take
an entire cold bath, and sit up and walk, the day after the birth
of a  child.   I need not say,  that  life would often be the  forfeit
of even  rising  from the bed, at an early period after delivery,
where  patients are treated  after  the old methods.   The water
treatment strengthens the mother, so that she obtains a great
immunity from  suffering during the period of labor,  and enables
her to -sit up and walk about during the first days after delivery.
In all the writer's practice,  and in the practice of  other water
cure physicians, she has never known  an instance of the least
evil resulting from this treatment.
   Dyspepsia yields readily—slowly often, but very surely—
to the water cure.   There is no  patching up,  but a thorouo-h
renovation.  Some of its greatest triumphs are in nervous  and
spinal diseases;  and cases of ep'lepsy and insanity are  cured
in so many instarces,  as to encourage hope for all.   In all dis- 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  CURE.
1<
eases of the digestive organs, and the nerves of the organic sys-
tem, medicines are worse than useless.  The only hope is in some
application of the water cure—the more scientific, the better.
  The diseases of infancy, as croup, measles, scarlet fever, &c,
lose all their terrors under the water cure system.   Death, by
any such disease, in this practice, is unheard of, and could only
result  from the grossest ignorance  in  the physician,  or  some
terrible complication of hereditary disease in the patient.  Colic,
diarrhoea, and dysentery, in children and adults,  are perfectly
manageable in the water cure,  and yield  to its simplest appli-
cations, where the organism is not remedilessly depraved.  Fe-
vers and  inflammations are controlled with so much ease, and
are so shortened  in duration, as not to excite the least uneasi-
ness.   The small-pox yields readily to the water cure, and is
cured without leaving the slightest mutilation.  In typhus and
ship fever it is equally effectual;  and in  cholera, the writer
has not seen  a case that did  not yield readily to its applications ;
though fatal cases  must  occur in a general practice, with bad
patients.  The water cure is a perfect preventive.
  It may be proper to state, that all these acute diseases are
shortened, because the system, in the water cure, is enabled to
throw off as  much bad matter in three or  four days, as it could
get rid of in as many weeks, if  left to itself,  or weakened by
medication.   Thus, fever-and-ague is cured in four or five days,
without danger of relapse, as frequently happens  after  the
poisoning of quinine.   In all  acute  diseases,  the water  cure
operates  so  promptly and  effectually, and  Nature,  when not
weakened and interfered with by bleeding and drugs, carries
on her work  so beneficently, that there is not the least fear of
an unfavorable termination.
  The writer has -treated  lung, typhus, scarlet, ship,  and brain
fever,  and has never lost a patient;  and  in  only two  cases
has the fever continued over six days.  In measles, varioloid,
and small-pox, she has found the  treatment equally effective.
In one instance,  where the patient was fast sinking from sup-
pressed measles—not having slept for seven days and nights—
a single wet  sheet pack induced sound sleep,  and brought cut
the measles  thickly all over the surface  of the body;  and in
three days' treatment,  the  patient was comfortable and out of
danger.   In severs pain, in neuralgia, or tic doloreux, in delirium
tremens, and in other severe nervous affections, the  wet sheet
pack has  a  more certain soothing effect,  than any preparation
of opium, ot other anodyne, without after bad consequences, 
12
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
   Consumption is considered an incurable disease;  but there
 have been many cases in the practice of the writer in which it
 has seemed to be permanently cured, and others in which exist-
 ence  has been greatly prolonged.   Her own case is one of per-
 fect recovery from consumptive tendencies of the most alarming
 character; and there is little doubt, that in most cases the dis-
 ease might be arrested in the earlier stages of  its  progress, by
 the water cure,  while drug medication never fails to aggravate
 the disease and  hasten its progress.
   The processes of the water cure, skilfully directed, are never
 painful, and seldom disagreeable.   If irksome at  first, they
 soon become pleasant,  as the nerves acquire tone.  They may
 be gone through at all seasons, and in many cases without ma-
 terially interfering with the ordinary business and amusements
 of the patient.  They can be applied in all situations where it
 is possible to get pure water, fresh air, and a proper diet.   It
 is desirable, in many cases,  to live  at a water cure house; but
 many of  the best cures are made  by patients who  apply the
 water at home, under competent advice.   Summer is favorable
 for some  cases,  winter for others,  and spring and autumn for
 all.  A few days' treatment  suffices for an acute case,  but a
 chronic one may require weeks and months of persevering at-
tention, according to the vitality of the system and the nature
 of the disease.
  The great trouble with Americans, is,  they are in too great
a hurry.   They are in a hurry to eat and drink and to get rich.
They  get sick as  fast as they can, and they want a short  cut to
health.  Chronic disease that has  been  inherited, or induced
by wrong doing  through half a lifetime, cannot be cured in a
day by any process now known to  the world.   What we want
for water cure, is a fair trial for a sufficient length of time.
  The water cure is the most economical  system  of medicine.
It supports no druggists, and requires few practitioners.   Watei
is everywhere free, and the best diet is cheaper than the  worst,
The universal practice  of water  cure would  lead to universal
 health.  A single consultation and prescription is often all that
is necessary; and, contrary to every other system of medicine,
 the means for gaining health are also  the means of preserving
 it.  For these reasons, water cure is destined to be the greatest
 blessing ev< r bestowed upon a diseased and suffering race. 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  CURE.
'13
  This introduction will not be perfect, nor will the subsequent
pages—especially the accounts of cases—be as well understood
as I desire, without a brief description of the most common of
the processes used in water cure.
            WATER CURE PROCESSES.

                    QUALITIES OF WATER.

   Soft, fresh, spring water is  to be preferred  for all the appli-
cations  of  the water treatment;  and all water is good in pro-
portion as  it possesses  the  same qualities.  Rain water,  fresh
from the clouds, is pure, soft, and  full of  vitality; but, after
standing for some time in tanks or cisterns, it  loses much of its
living quality.   Water that  is hard, from the presence of  lime,
or brackish, from saline matter, is less beneficial than that which
is pure and soft; but I have no hesitation in prefering it to that
which is dead and stagnant.   River water is good in proportion
to its freshness and purity;  but any water is better than none ;
and there is little room to doubt that the benefits derived from
bathing in  salt and  mineral water  are to be  attributed far more
to the virtues of the water, than to any operation of the minerals
it holds in  solution.  There  is something in  the effects of  "liv-
ing water" beyond  its cleansing qualities. There is little doubt
that the skin absorbs oxygen from it,  and perhaps some  other
vital quality,   which, for want of a better  word,  we may call
electricity.   The strength and vigor often  gained by a single
bath,  can scarcely  be  accounted  for  by its cleansing qualities
or the tonic power of cold.

                         BATHINO.

  People excuse the  filthiness of going without  a full  daily
bath,  on the ground that they have no conveniences;  but this
is an idle excuse.  Wherever  a pail or even a pitcher of water
can be obtained,  a  cleanly person will have a bath, by means
of a towel, a sponge, or by standing  in  a tub,  and pouring it
over the person.  The pouring bath, by means of a large sponge 
14
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  C^RE.
or otherwise, is one of the finest that can be taken.   The shower
bath is never used in water  cure processes.  It is superseded
by either the plunge, the pouring  bath, the  dripping sheet, or
others to be described hereafter.   It  answers well enough for
persons in full health and strong reactive  power, but is found
too chilling for invalids.
  The duration of a full bath must be graduated by the reactive
power of the patient.   Where this is  aided  by exercise,  as in
swimming, it may continue for a considerable period, but a com-
mon plunge bath requires to be taken quickly, according to the
temperature of the water and the season.
  Water in its natural state varies in temperature from 48 to *70
degrees.  Sixty degrees  is a proper  temperature.  In winter,
baths may be taken much lower,  and a quick  bath,  near  the
freezing point,  produces a brisk reaction.   Tepid baths range
from 70 degrees to blood heat;  but cold and warmth are rela-
tive  terms.   Water which feels warm to  a  person in  health,
g; ves the sensation of cold to a man in a high fever.  All baths
should be of clean water, freshly drawn, and only one  person
should  bathe in the  same  water,  unless the  quantity is very
large, nor then, if there is the least risk of taking infectious dis-
eases.
  As a general rule, no bath should be taken until two hours
after eating.

                    THE PLUNGE  BATH.

  This bath is used for general daily ablutions, and to follow
the wet sheet and blanket packings.  The best method of taking
it, is by filling the common bathing tub sufficiently to immerse
the entire person.  In this, as in all other cases, the head should
be wet before immersing the body.

                    THE POURING BATH.

  After  wetting  the head  and face,  the patient stands or
crouches in a tub or any convenient place, while the attendant
pours over him one or two pailsful of cold  water; or the pa-
tient may easily give himself this bath, without assistance.
  A pleasant way of  taking the pouring  bath is, to have a
sponge large enough to hold  several pints of water.  The bather
can stand up, express the Avater with both hands upon the back
of his n^c.k,  and get a refreshing bath over his whole body. 
EXPERIENCE 1ST WATER  CURE.
15
                     THE DRIPPING SHEET.

  This convenient and powerful bath can be taken any where,
Let the patient wet his head ; then dip a common sheet in cold
water, and envelope the patient as he stands up, rubbing him
all over  briskly outside and with the sheet.  This bath is of
great use in fevers.

                       THE DOUCHE

  A stream of water, from half an inch to three inches in diam-
eter, and falling from fi\ e to twenty feet, constitutes a more or
less  powerful douche.   The head  may be wet  first, or the
stream allowed to break over the hands, held above the head foi
a moment, but the full force of the douche should  never fall
upon the head, but upon the back and limbs.   This  is a very
exciting  application, acting  powerfully upon the whole system,
and useful in many forms of chronic disease.   It is used locally
to discuss tumors, rheumatic swellings, and for spinal and ner-
vous diseases.

                      THE   SITZ  BATH.

   This is one of the most efficacious of the water cure processes,
and also one of  the most convenient for  general use.  A com
mon washing  tub may be  filled, say a  third full of  water, in
which the  patient is to sit, having first removed his clothing as
much as is necessary;  the  feet, of course, being left outside.
It is common to begin with tepid water,  and make it colder
t.-^h  bath, so that  at the  end of the week it is of the natural
temperature.
  The sitz bath is used in a great variety of cases.   Where it
is prescribed for its stimulating and tonic effect upon the nerves
of the bowels or pelvic viscera, the usual time is from ten to
fifteen minutes; but where  it is used for its derivative effect in
lessening inflammations of the head or chest, it is continued for
half an hour, or even  longer.

                THE  SHALLOW, OR HALF BATH.

  This is a bath in which the patient  can sit, with the water,
tepid or  cold,  four or five inches deep, so as to be rubbed by
attendants. Such a bath is of great service in cooling the heat 
16
EXPERIENCE IN "^ATER  CURE.
of fevers, or relieving congestions.  If more convenient, it may
take the place of the plunge bath, following the wet sheet,

                   THE  WET  SHEET PACK.

   This has been called the sheet anchor of water cure, as it ia
the  most  powerful and universally  applicable of all its pro-
cesses.  It is used in almost every form and stage of disease.
It cools febrile action,  excites  the action of  the skin,  equalizes
the  circulation,  removes obstructions, brings out eruptive dis-
eases,  controls spasms,  and relieves pain like a charm.   Far
from being disagreeable, it is a  most delightful application.
After the first shock of the cold sheet,  there comes a pleasant
glow, a calm, and usually a profound sleep.
   Lay upon a bed,  one or two comfortables and two or  more
woollen blankets.  Take a sheet,  large enough to envelop the
whole person, or  as much as is necessary; dip it in cold water,
and wring it out until no more runs from it.   Spread this  upon
the blankets.  Let the patient extend himself on his back,  upon
the sheet,  and wrap it quickly and tightly about him,  arms and
all, from head to feet,  leaving  the face free.   Bring the  blan-
kets, one after  another,  tightly about him,  one at a time, and
pack him  like  a mummy or  a baby for a winter's day out.
Either a small feather bed, blankets, or comforters may be laid
over all—enough to make a thick covering.   If very weak and
chilly,  bottles of hot water may be put to the feet, and  even
under the  armpits;  but the use of  artificial  heat is seldom ne-
cessary, and always is as much as  possible  to be avoided.   If
the head ache, a  towel wet in  cold water must be applied.
   The patient should remain in the pack until  warmth is fulW
established, and the whole skin is in a glow, and just r'.j,uy  to
burst into  a perspiration.  But if he is nervous and uneasy, he
may be taken out  at  any time.   Sometimes It is desirable  to
sweat the patient.  This in most cases is readily accomplished.
   On coming out of  the pack,  the patient must go  as quickly
as possible into a plunge, pouring, or other cold or tepid  bath.
This rule is invariable, except when, in cases of high inflamma-
tion, one wet sheet follows another in quick succession.

                    THE BLANKET  PACK.

   The patient is packed in dry blankets, instead of  the wet
sheet, and remains until a perspiration is excited, which is con- 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
17
tinued or not,  according to  the nature of the  case.  A cold
bath follows.
   On coming from any  of these baths, the patient should be
well rubbed with coarse towels,  a brush, or the hand,  or with
all these;  and sometimes much friction is necessary to excite
the skin,  quicken the  circulation, and produce a healthy re-
action.
   Hand  baths,  foot baths, &c.  are too easily  understood to
require any explanation.
   Further remarks on baths,  as well as directions for diet, exer-
cise, clothing,  &c. will be found  in other portions of this work,
particularly in the chapter on Consumption.
                      CHAPTER  II.

  FEMALE PHYSICIANS--MY EARLY EXPERIENCE AND STUDIES.

   In giving to the world some few of the results of my work,
I make no attempt to explore or define the sphere of woman.
Each individual must do  this for herself.   But I assert, that
woman in her nature is eminently qualified to heal the sick.  If
it were thought needful at this day to bleed and poison people
into health, I would by no means recommend woman for the
work.  This is clearly not " woman's sphere."
   Woman has great quickness in understanding principles. I do
not say in discovering them.  The first, and more rugged proces-
ses of intellection belong  to  man.   Woman reasons well from
principles, and acts wisely  and kindly, particularly where affec-
tion induces her to act, and affection should be the prime moving
power in constituting woman a physician,—a teacher—-an artist
or indeed, to qualify her to act usefully or successfully in any
sphere.   She feels  quickly and tenderly.  She sees and com
prehends with a rapidity that  makes the conclusions of reason
seem intuitions.   By all this  she  is  fitted to be  a physician.
Then there is a propriety, a delicacy, a decency,  in a woman being
the medical  adviser of  her own sex—which  most people can
«ee.
  Many  delicate ladies  have  said to  me, that they would die
before they would submit to examinations needful to their c
by a male physician.  We have reason  to  believe +1
vomen, with that innate  and shrinking  mp'1 
18
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CUKE.
ornament to the sex, do give  up their  lives a prey to hopeless
disease, simply because women are not qualified to act as phy-
sicians.  They cannot  commit their cases to those who should
care for them—they cannot persuade themselves  to submit  to
exposure to men,  and they linger a  few  years in untold and
unconceived misery, and  die  when  they should be in the full
flush of life, and in the midst of usefulness.
  Alas, for woman ! her lot in this age, as in all previous ages,
has been one of suffering, and the depth and bitterness of that
suffering is known only to herself and to God.
  The general prevalence of  those diseases peculiar to woman,
constitutes a fearful necessity for the education and training of
women for physicians.   The Healing Art opens a broad field of
usefulness to our sex, but no woman can enter this field and be
really useful, without deep devotion.   We must  desire above
all to be of the greatest use, and then we shall  seek to be pre-
pared to accomplish the end we have in view.
  At this day it would be a  matter of much difficulty, if not
of impossibility, for  women to enrol themselves as members of
the medical profession,  by studying the  Healing Art.  We
cannot receive a  diploma from an Alma Mater, that has borne
us through a course of study like an infant in arms.  No long
established institutions, no ancient and  honorable  societies offei
us support and facilities on our untried way.   Single-handed,
we  must grapple  with iron prejudice and a time-honored cus-
tom, grown hoary in a dotage of error.   We have work to do
to strengthen our hands.   We may be  thankful that work will
strengthen them.   We have difficulties to overcome, that would
sharpen meaner wits than ours.
  The discipline of self-culture is wholesome.   The  labor of
self-education  goes far toward creating the mind  it is meant to
improve.   At  first thought, the obstacles  interposed  between
woman and one of the learned  professions, seem  absolutely in-
surmountable.   But it is not so.  " There  is  not anything de-
nied to persevering and well directed effort."   Men cannot con-
cede to us our position, but they can help us to secure it, when
the purpose to attain it has come fully into our  hearts.   Men
are willing to  do this individually, though not  yet corporately.
  I am a  witness of the  truth of this assertion,  for scientific
men have acknowledged  my earnestness of purpose, and assist-
    "ie in the attainment of knowledge, and rejoiced in my use-
        ' ^uo-h they could give me no diploma—albeit diplo-
                 °iimes,  to men whose wit. worth, or scientific 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
19
 attainments  do not move the especial  reverence even  of  us
 women.
   Fulton did not get a certificate to prove that he could build
 a steamboat.   He built it.  Priessnitz has no diploma—but he
 has won  name and fame  by his deeds  without it.   Men love
 justice, and when womai  is truly  qualified for the responsible
 work of  curing disease,  she  may  not only accept,  but give
 diplomas.
   The necessity for female physicians being sufficiently appa-
 rent to the most careless  observer, the question very naturally
 presents itself for an answer, how are they to be educated for
 the work ?  The answer  must be  different in each individual
 case.   It is a great  mistake to suppose  that men,  and particu-
 larly scientific men,  are  opposed to  the education of women.
 They are ready and willing to help  all who can and  will profit
 by their assistance.   Let woman have the living germ of suc-
 cess in her heart, and she will succeed.   " God helps those who
 help themselves" —and man does the same.  It would be the
 poorest economy to waste effort on  the mass of idlers.
   Though I  do not feel  bound to apologize for being one of
 the first women to devote myself to the  work of the physician,
 I  may be excused for giving a few  explanatory words respect-
 ing  my choice  of a profession, and  my public lectures and
 labors.
   I  think it needful  to do this,  in order more fully to gain the
 confidence of  the public.   I want to be heard by the people,
 because I have most important  truth  to  tell  them—I want to
 labor for them, because I know I can  do  their work well, and I
 have plenty of witnesses to the truth  of  this  assertion, though
 it  may seem  a little egotistical.  I  have not come  hastily or
 lightly into my present work.   My preparation has been going
 on providentially, as I believe, many years.  I have lived to
 outlive the ignorance and consequent reproach of a great many
 people.
   I took my  place in the great  field of labor  which I  now oc-
 cupy, from a necessity of my being.   I  first received benefit
 from the practice of water cure in my own  case, and then  I
 sought to  benefit others.
   Years since I had a sister.  I remember  when the  red deep-
 ened on her cheek, when she began  to press her hand upon her
 side, and to cough—a hollow,  boding cough; and  then came
physicians, and all the effort was made to save her, that could
be made with the knowledge they had.   But she faded away 
20             EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.

and died.   I saw  her in her coffin, so beautiful that she seemed
not dead, but sleeping.  The hectic red was still upon her cold,
dead cheek, when they laid her in the grave.  And  then my
brother, who had  studied medicine, and was just beginning the
world, sank with  this disease.   He was attacked with  violent
bleeding at the lungs,  and a hard cough,  but such was his
strength of constitution, that it was four years before he could
die, though he was subjected to all the  poisonous  medication
of the allopathic profession in which he was educated.   But he
sank at last, and not long after his death I was attacked  with
cough  and  bleeding at the lungs.  At the first attack I felt that
I was doomed ; that I must speedily  go down to the grave  as
my brother and sister  had gone.   I remember well, though
some ten years have since elapsed, laden with many joys and
many sorrows—I  remember my feelings when my lungs  were
first ruptured.   The blood rushed rapidly into the trachea, and
as I threw  it off by violent coughing,  the thought of my work,
my great work for woman, rushed through my  mind.   The
darkness that then shrouded the land on the subjects of health
and disease was palpable, and I felt the importance of my mis-
sion to be in proportion to the evils I  sought to remove.   The
thought of  leaving my mission  unfulfilled,  of  leaving woman
to suffer and die under the black pall of ignorance  that enve-
loped her then, was more than  I could bear.   I fainted and fell
as if dead.   It was at a lecture.   The people gathered about
me, and carried me into the air; and after  a time I revived.
With life came hope, or more properly speaking, trust.  It was
only for a moment that my faith had  failed,  or  my  trust  been
disturbed.    God knows best, was then, as it has ever been, the
watchword  of  my soul.  After this bleeding,  I had  a severe
cough, and  all the symptoms  of  consumption.   By  constant
bathing, exercise in the open air, and very simple and careful livino-,
and ceasing entirely from my labors, I became rapidly  better.
My cough disappeared.  I regained my strength, and my lungs
seemed able to bear exertion.   I again commenced speaking in
public, and all the arduous duties connected with my profession.
Various causes combined  to make me labor far  beyond my
strength, and affliction came upon me with a crushing weight.
Under the  joint pressure of labor and sorrow my lungs again
became ruptured,  and this time the very fountains  of my life
seemed to be poured forth.   In about four days  I  bled al-
most three  quarts from my lungs.   I  was reduced to infantile
weakness.   In this state I sent for a  German water-cure and 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE,
21
homoeopathic physician, who attended me with great care and
kindness till the bleeding ceased.  As soon as I  was able,  I
commenced a regular course of water  cure  treatment, which
I kept up  with the most untiring zeal, until my lungs seemed
fully restored.   It is now five years since I have been able  to
sustain the full burden  of the labors of my profession.   Four
years I  have labored in this city, and 1  am willing to compare
my work with that of the strongest man.
   I have now good health, but I  have a strong  tendency  to
pulmonary difficulty.   Great mental  suffering will induce  con-
gestion  of  my lungs, and exposure to the bad air of an unven-
tilated and crowded  lecture or concert room, will inevitably
make me cough next morning.  But  by proper care in my ge-
neral habits, and  the necessary applications  of water cure,  I
maintain comfortable health all the time, and a power of endu-
rance surprising to those who know me best.
   It is not my'wish to  speak of my  own course any further
than is needful, in order that others may  be benefited by my
experience. It would be wrong for me to withhold facts  that
might be of use,  from fear that I  should  incur the  charge  of
egotism.
   When a young girl, at school,  an  incident occurred, which,
though  slight in itself, and  apparently worthy of  no particular
notice, probably determined my position in life.   I  was away
from home.  The gentleman where I boarded had some medi-
cal works  in his library.   I read them from curiosity, and was
much interested ;  so much that  I  was constantly thinking  how
I could  procure more books. I read what I found in my friend's
library secretly, and after some months I returned  home.   I
found my  eldest  brother  engaged in the study  of medicine.
He had Bell's Anatomy at home  with him  occasionally, and
sometimes left it for some days at a time.   Without his know-
ledge, and  unknown, indeed, to any of the family, I  commenc-
ed studying these books.  Time passed, and I  became  deeply
interested  in the subject.  One day my brother was explaining
the circulation of  the blood, and foetal circulation was  inciden-
tally mentioned.    He was not master of his subject.  He made
some mistakes which I  corrected,  and finished  his explanation
for him.   He stared at me with much astonishment, and asked
me if I  had been  reading his books.  I was obliged to confess
the truth.   My brother was much dissatisfied with my unwo-
manly conduct, and was determined that I should read no more.
He ridiculed me,  as the mosc effectual means of influencing  a 
w
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
timid young girl.   He told me mockingly, that he would bring
me a book on obstetrics.   I blushed scarlet and could not  talk
with him; but nothing broke my  habit  of reading  his  books
till he hid them.  Finding no opportunity  to  gratify my  love
for medical study, I turned my attention to the study of French
and Latin, the best preliminary studies for  me, though I  was
not aware of the  fact.
   Shortly after this period I married and went to live  in New
Hampshire.   I now procured  medical books  from  editors for
whom I wrote ; these I exchanged with a physician in the town
where I resided.  It happened that one of the books* that I
had the good fortune to procure, was  devoted largely to  the
illustration of the sanative effects  of cold  water: its  use  was
particularly  recommended for children. About this time I read
Dr. John Mason Good's works, and  my attention was arrested
by his remarks on the use of water for the cure of  fevers.  I
read these  books in 1832, sixteen years before this  present
writing.   About this time I had a  child,  and  began  the use of
water by having her bathed in  cold water daily from  birth.
Soon after, I commenced using water  in hemorrhages and fe-
vers.   The physician who had loaned me the books, also used
water in fevers, I think in all cases, giving little medicine.   The
patient was  bathed during  the  accession of the  fever in cold
water—ice-cold,  for  it was drawn  from very deep wells,  and
cloths wet in cold water were  laid  on the  head.   The patient
drank plenty of cold water. This practice was wholly  success-
ful.  At this period I only used water in fevers and hemorrha-
ges,  and with children, and with the last  rather with the inten-
tion of preventing than curing disease.  My warrant  for  this
practice was obtained wholly from the before-mentioned books.
It was not till years  afterwards that I heard of Priessnitz  and
Water Cure as I now practice it.
   From this time I was possessed with a passion for anatomical,
physiological and pathological  study.   I could never explain
the reason of this intense  feeling  to  myself or others ; all I
know is, that it took possession of me, and mastered me whol-
ly ; it supported me through efforts that would otherwise have
been to me  inconceivable  and  insupportable.  I am naturally
timid and bashful; few would be likely to believe this who only
see my doings without being acquainted with me.  But timid
as I  was,  I sought assistance  from  scientific  and professional
• Book of Health, published at London, being a sort of Domestic Materia Medica. 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CUAE.
23
men.   I went through museums of morbid specimens that but
for my passion for knowledge would have filled me with horror.
I looked on dissections till I could see a  woman or child  dis-
sected with far more firmness than I could now look upon the
killing of an animal for food.  My  industry and  earnestness
were commensurate, notwithstanding my health was far from
being firm.   I had innumerable difficulties to contend  against.
When I am dead these may be told for the encouragement of
others—not till then.   When I retired to  rest at night I took
my books with me; the last  minute  I cou*d  kaep  awake was
devoted to study, and the first light that was sufficient,  was im-
proved in learning the mysteries of our wonderful mechanism.
My intense desire to learn seemed to  make every one willing to
help me who had knowledge to impart.   Kindness from  the
medical profession, and  the manifestation of a helpful  disposi-
tion towards my undertakings, were everywhere the rule.
   After my marriage, I had resided  for several years in New
Hampshire, and then  moved to  Lynn,  Mass., near  Boston.
Here I engaged in teaching, and had many more facilities for
pursuing my studies than ever before.
   In  1837 I commenced lecturing in my school on anatomy
and physiology.  I had before this given one or two  lectures
before a Female Lyceum formed by my pupils and  some of
their friends.  At first I gave these health  lectures, as they
were termed, to the young ladies of my school, and their par-
ticular friends whom they were allowed to invite, once  in two
weeks; subsequently once a week.  In the autumn of 1838 I
was invited by a society of ladies in Boston, to give a course
of lectures before them, on anatomy and physiology.   I gave
this course of lectures to a large class of ladies, and  repeated it
afterward to a much larger number. I lectured pretty constantly
for several years after this beginning in Boston.  I  lectured in
Massachusetts, Maine, N. Hampshire,  Rhode Island,  New York,
New Jersey,  Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio, and  also on the
island of Nantucket.   Physicians were uniformly obliging and
friendly to me.   I do not now recollect but one exception, and
this was a " Doctor" who I believe honestly thought that know-
ledge was, or would be injurious to women, and  therefore he
opposed  me  in  my efforts  to  teach.   I have forgotten his
name, and I presume the world will do the same.   But T have
not forgotten, and never can forget, the many who  have held
out the hand of help tc me, anc1 through  me  to others,  for I 
24
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
have never learned selfishly;  what I have gained for myself I
have gained for others.
   The passion that has possessed me from  my first reading on
pathology I consider provident'al.  I believe fully, that I have
been set apart from my birth  for a peculiar work.   I  may be
called enthusiast and superstitious for this conviction, but  it is
mine as mucii as my life.  My ill health from earliest infancy,
the poverty and struggles through which I have passed,  and
the indomitable desire which I have had to obtain knowledge,
all seem to me so many  providences.  During the time that I
studied  alone my enthusiasm never for one moment failed.   Day
and night, in sickness and in  health, the unquenchable  desire
for knowledge and use  burned with undiminished flame.   I
studied  day and night, though all the time  I  had to labor for
bread, first with my needle and later with a school.
   It may be said that I was an enthusiast,  and that my enthu-
siasm sustained me.  I grant  this, but will those who make this
assertion define the word enthusiasm ?   To me it means, as it
meant through those many long years, an unfaltering trust in
God, and an all-pervading desire to be useful  to my fellow-be-
ings.  If these constitute religious enthusiasm, then I  am an
enthusiast.
                     CHAPTER III.

                 MEDICAL PRACTICE.

  It is not my object to attack any school of medicine.  I wish
to give a very brief history of the principles and practice of
the scientific schools of medicine, and also to give some results
of my own labors in water cure.
  I know that it is considered by some, presumption for a wo-
man to come  before the public as a physician.   It is very un-
plesant to some  to see long established  customs broken, and
long cherished  prejudices set  at nought,  even when a great
good is to be achieved.  But this is by no means the only class
of persons in the community.
  " Upward and onward," is the governing thought  and the
impelling motive of thousands.   To  these I speak—to these
I bring the results of my investigations and  my labors.  The
thought and  the deed commend themselves to such as these, 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
25
 with  no hindrance  from respectable  custom  or  grey-headed
 prejudice.
   In looking over the history of medical science, we find that
 Allopathy has great claims on our respect.   The Allopathic
 school has always insisted on its professors being educated.
   Whatever has been known of  anatomy,  physiology,  and
 pathology,  in  the  past,  has  been taught  by the Allopathic
 school;  and there  is no  difference between the professors of
 Allopathy and Homoeopathy in  this respect.   Both  insist  on
 thorough education.  Both  schools  have  been  laborious in
 noting the characteristic symptoms of disease, and the effects
 of what they considered remedies.  Perhaps the Homoeopathic
 school has been most earnest and  assiduous in this last work;
 but Homoeopathy being of recent date, must rest  its  claims to
 our gratitude more  on the zeal and minuteness of its observa-
 tions and  discoveries, than  on the length of its  days, or  the
 voluminousness of its records.   The members of the Allopathic
 profession  have differed with  regard to the primary cause of
 disease.  Those of the homoeopathic profession, I believe, have
 been united.
   Amongst the Allopathists, one portion have advocated what
 was termed the Humoral* Pathology, and another, the Nervous
 Pathology.  Of  all the  nervous  pathologists, Dr. Billings is
 clearest.    He says,  " all diseases have exhausted nervous influ-
 ence for  their cause."   He says further,—
   " During health,  the capillary arteries go on with the work
 of nutrition and  secretion,  the  muscles are fed, the mucous
 surfaces  are lubricated just enough to  prevent any sensation
 from the substances that pass along them—the serous surfaces
 are made sufficiently soft  to slide upon each other without sen-
 sation, and the skin  is kept soft  by an insensible  vapor.   All
 this time, there is another process going on, which is the re-
 moval of superfluous matter by the absorbents."
   After  demonstrating that all these processes are carried  on
 by the nervous  energy,  Dr.  Billings  shows  by  irrefragable
 argument,  that the loss of this energy  must produce disease.
   Bcerhaave seems,  in the latter part of his life, to have had a
 glimpse of this doctrine ;  indeed, he admitted the agency  of
 the nervous power.  In proof of this,  we may mention that in
 the 755th of his aphorisms,  where he lays down the proximate
cause of  intermitting fevers, he makes  a change in the fourth
edition.   Hitherto it had stood—" Whence, after an accurate
examination of the whole history, the  proximate  causs of in-
                             2 
26
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  CURE.
termittents is established  to  be viscosity of the arterial fluid."
To this in the fourth edition is added,  " Perhaps, also, the in-
ertia of the nervous fluid as well of the cerebrum as of the
cerebellum destined for the heart."
   This theory of disease is  shadowed  in  Cullen.   According
to Cullen,  the system  is superintended  and regulated  by a
mobile  and conservative  energy seated  in the  brain,  acting
wisely but necessarily for the good of the whole.  This energ}',
he considers  to be  distinct from the soul, and acting not only
for the preservation, but the recovery of health.
   Faint traces of this  theory of disease may be found  in the
Brunonian system.
   Darwin carries the idea farther, under the name of sensorial
fluid.   Broussais comes next  to Brown with his theory of " or-
ganic  contractility."
   Humoral Pathology asserts, that morbid changes in the blood
are the cause of disease.
   Homoeopathy asserts that psora is the cause of disease.
   A little reflection shows that all these  statements are true,
and that it would be an  error for either school to assert that
the evil it sees is the only cause of disease.
   It is clear, that if all the functions of the system are  carried
on, and the whole  maintained in a state of health by the ner-
 *>us  energy,  then  if this nervous energy is wasted by any
abuse, either by too much labor,  too much thought, the domi-
nation of passion, or by taking poisonous stimulants, the ner-
vous power, being thus wasted, cannot maintain the system in
' *>.alth.   The  consequence is disease,  and the deposition of
morbid matter in the system, which would have been thrown
 *fc if the nervous power had been left to do its work.
   ilms we see that the observations of nervous and humoral
pathologists and homceopathists, have  all been valuable and
truthful.
   The practice of both these schools  is understood.  It is to
give as remedies the most virulent poisons known to us.
   The extreme minuteness of the doses  used  by homoeopaths,
has been a great recommendation to  those who have seen the
bad effects of  allopathic doses, and yet have not lost their faith
in medicine.
   I have used homoeopathic medicine with care and in entiro
good  faith, upon myself  and my patients.  The result  of my
trials  with it has been to convince me, that though it h  s been,
end is, a great  negative good to the world, it has no positive 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
27
efficacy.   But the hygienic rules insisted on  by  Homoeopa-
thists are worthy of  all praise.
  With regard to allopathy, I must say that I studied it hon-
estly, and because it poisons and oppresses the human constitution
with drugs, and debilitates  it with bleeding, I consider it one
of the greatest evils that now rests upon the civilized world.
But I do not attach the blame of this evil to individual practi-
tioners of the art.  Monarchy and despotism are bad—gigantic
in their badness, but kings and despots may be good men.
  These evils have their origin with the  people, and our only
hope of removing them is in promoting the intelligence of the
people.
  I maintain that the cause  of disease is one—the want of ner-
vous energy.  Numerous occasions spring from this cause.  In
the fact,  that diseasing matter is left in the system,  not only for
years but for generations, is seen the foundation of the asser-
tion of the  homoeopathic school, that psora  is the  cause of all
disease.
  The great questions for humanity are, What is the cause of
disease ? and what remedial treatment is best ?
  As a water cure physician, I maintain that nervous  energy
is restored, and morbid matter cast out of the system, by means
of the proper application of water cure.
  We see that in case of disease,  morbid  matter must be ex-
pelled from the system, and by means  of  the nervous energy.
It becomes important, then, to know whether we shall add to
the evil already in the system, and to the labor of  the already
enfeebled vitai energy, the  most  virulent  poisons known to us,
and which are called medicines, and thus still farther waste the
vital energy by compelling it to strive to  expel  the poison of
the disease and the  poison  of the medicine at once.
  I contend that we can add to the vital power continually, by
the water cure.
  With regard to the evils  of blood-letting,  I have only to say
in the language of Scripture, "the blood  is  the life."   The
regular medical  profession  is rapidly purifying itself from the
heresy of blood-letting, or taking the life of  patients.
  Majendie, Marshall  Hall, Eberle, and many others, are doing
this work, and there  is no  doubt that  the  good sense of the
community is aiding in it more than physicians or people are
aware.
   It is impossible to  do any justice to the subject of blood-
letting, in a paragraph, and I  shal  not therefore  attempt it. 
28             EXPERIENCE IN  WATER  CURE.

In my " Lectures to Ladies on Anatomy and Physiology," page
226, some interesting facts and authorities are given.   The
regular profession of medicine has been and  is, the depository
of much knowledge.   My hope is, that it will not lag behind
the age.
  It is known that the faculty bleed less, and give less medi-
cine, and use more water than formerly.  I see no good reason
why this reform should not go on progressively with the intel-
ligence and consequent demand of the public.
  The greatest men in the  profession have sanctioned the use
of water.   Hippocrates, the father of medicine,  used water in
his  treatment of disease.   His  works bear  testimony to the
cure of cramp, convulsions, gout, and tetanus by water.
  Galen, who  lived in the second century, cured fever with
water only.
  Celsus recommends water for the cure of certain diseases.
  Boeerhaave recommends water to make the body firm and
strong.
  Hoffman, a contemporary of  Bcerhaave, wrote on  water for
the cure of disease.   He  said if there was  a universal medi-
cine, it was water.  Hahn also  wrote on  water cure, and one
of the best water cure works was  written by Currie, a Fellow
of the Royal Society, Liverpool, and published in 1799.
  In 1749, Rev. John Wesley published a work on water cure.
He gives a list of eighty diseases curable by water.
  Dr. Billings and others have had a correct theory of disease.
Their error has been in introducing medicines into the system,
which they thought increased the nervous or contractile power.
The medicines being poison,  ind recognised as such by the vital
organism,  have aroused all the energy left in the body to cast
them out.   The poison has not increased the  power, but  stim-
ulated what remained, to action, and has thus resulted in still
greater waste to the system.  Increase of  action has been mis-
taken for increase of power,  and the stimulation of poison for
the tonic or strengthening  effects of medicine.
  The frightful effects of various kinds of medicines can hard-
ly be exaggerated.  One of  the most common is calomel.
  Salivation and the destruction of the organs of speech, and
of the nose ;  incurable rheumatisms and paralysis, with rotten-
ness of the bones, have been caused by calomel,  and minor ills
produced by it are everywhere.   But with regard to the effects
of medicines, a volume would not do them justice.
  Of  homoeopathic medicines, I must  say, that if I believed in 
                EXPERIENCE  IN  WATER CURE.    •         29

their potency at all, Lshould believe it an evil potency, because
they are the poisons of allopathy.  Chalk, charcoal, and cuttle-
fish, and several other substances used  by the homceopathists,
are exceptions.   These, surely, cannot do injury.  I should not
fear to drink the water of Lake Superior, if a few  grains of
arsenic had been mixed with  the whole of it.  On the same
principle I have never feared homoeopathic medicines.
   The darkness of this civilized era, with respect to the effects
of medicines upon  the  human  system, and the blind faith cf
even  educated  people in physicians, is to me one of the most
astonishing phenomena in the world.   But  there is encourage-
ment.   Light—more light,  is the anxious cry of many.
   Some  years  since,  I passed  through the Albany Medical
College.   I saw there human bones that had rotted down under
the poison of mercury.  I saw uterine  tumors, ranged in glass
vases,  weighing  from one to more than twenty pounds.  Doc-
tors had doubtless done all they could to cure these diseases.
With what they had done, or in  spite of  it, the victims of igno-
rance  and abuse had  died.   Knowledge  would have  saved
them from sufferings which cannot be described, and  from pre-
mature death.  When I saw these things, and many more that
I cannot speak of,  in  that College, a devotion to woman—to
the work of spreading light  on the subject of health and dis-
ease, was kindled in my heart, that death only can quench.
   I felt then that I would  lay myself  on the  altar, and  be
burned with fire, if  woman could be  saved from the darkness
of ignorance, and the untold horrors of her diseases.
                      CHAPTER  IY.

        GENERAL  VIEW OF MY PRACTICE AND  SUCCESS.

   In 1843 I obtained books from England on the Water Cure,
and much practical information from Henry  Gardner Wright,
an English gentleman, who spent some  time  in  this country
during that year.   He brought several  works on Water Cure,
and being in  bad  health,  he applied the  water in  his own case
successfully at  my father's house,  where he  remained some
months.   The books  that he brought,  the accounts that he
gave me of Priessnitz'  practice, and Water Cure  practitioners
in England, and his application of water in his own case, added 
80
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
to my j. ractical knowledge and conviction on the subject, remo-
ved the last remnant of my faith in drugs, and induced me to
practice water cure alone in every case that  came under my
care.   I soon saw what qualifications were requisite to make a
successful practitioner  of water  cure.   There are no rules of
practice applicable to all cases, but the water  cure  physician
must have judgment to adapt the treatment  to the vital or re-
active power possessed by the patient.   A practice that would
be eminently successful in one case, would  surely destroy life
in another.  Care and ability in  the diagnosis of  disease, and
skill in adapting the treatment to the  strength and peculiar
idiosyncracy of the patient,  are indispensable to success  in
water cure.
   In 1844, at  the  opening of Dr. Wesselhoeft's  water  cure
house in Brattleborough, Yermont, I  went to that  place.  I
boarded near the water cure house for  three months, and ob-
served the practice very  carefully.   I also gave lectures  to
classes, composed of ladies who were  under water treatment,
and others.  From Brattleboro'  I went to  Lebanon Springs
water cure house.   They had no resident physician, and I  con-
cluded to remain for a time in that capacity.   I took charge of
the patients there for three months with the best success, and
then came to  New York, in the latter  part  of the autumn of
1844.   I went to Dr. Shew's water cure house in Bond-street,
and remained  for  some weeks and saw his  practice.  I then
took rooms, and gave lectures  to  classes of  young ladies, and
advice to patients,  and attended  to out-door practice till May,
1845, when I went to reside at my late water cure house,  261
Tenth-street.  There I have given  lectures to classes of ladies,
and have taken board and day patients, and have also attended
to out-door practice as at my  present residence.
   The first two years I had a large number  of board-patients,
who came from a distance, from  Connecticut, Northern New
York,  Rhode Island,  Ohio, Kentucky,  and  several  from  the
Southern  States.^  During  the  past  year,  my practice  has
changed its character.  Water cure houses  have  been estab-
lished  in different  parts of the  country, and patients can be
treated nearer  home ; consequently I have  not had  so many
board-patients.  I  have now a much larger practice in the  city,
which is doubtless  owing to the spread of intelligence respect-
ing water  cure amongst the people, and also to the fact of my
having become known.
   I have looked over  the records of my practice in  this  city, 
                 EXPERIENCE  IN  WATER CTRE.             31

 noting all failures and  deaths,  and their causes.   Only two
 patients have died under my care—both children ; one died in
 the summer of  '47, the  other in  the summer of '49.   The first
 died of  disease  of the brain and dysentery, the last of dysen-
 tery.  Both were  about nine months of age ; both were born
 of unhealthy mothers, and were  scrofulous.   They seemed not
 to be organized to live any longer.   The water greatly relieved
 them, and they suffered very little.   The suffering was not to
 be compared, for a moment, with what is endured in these dis-
 eases under drug treatment.  I  had  a little patient about five
 years of age, who had  hip disease.  It was the worst case I
 ever saw.   He  was treated under my direction, and I saw him
 occasionally for about a  year, with the most remarkably benefi-
 cial results.   At the end of this  time, his mother fell very sick,
 and the child went into  the care of a very ignorant black wo-
 man.  I had not seen him for some  weeks, and knew nothing
 of the hands he  was in.  One  day I was called in haste, and
 found the child very low from the effects of retained pus,  sev-
 eral outlets in his hip being closed entirely, whence had flowed
 pints of scrofulous matter within a few months.   I probed and
 syringed the cavities of  these abscesses, and  the child revived
 from a comatose state, but he was  too far gone for hope.  I
 told the parents this, and  they called  an allopathic physician.
 The child died under his care not long afterward.   I have thus
 carefully chronicled the  failures  of my practice,  with  what I
 consider their causes.
   It may seem  strange,  that with a large practice, I have  had
 so few deaths.   I do not attribute this to my skill altogether,
 though I believe that I understand my profession ; but it has so
 happened.
   Several persons who had consumption have been treated by
 me for the alleviation of  their symptoms, when their cases were
 hopeless.  Four of these have died, but at the time of their
 death they were not  under my care,  and  in each  case I told
 them  there  was no  hope of cure, but that they could be re-
 lieved, and they were much relieved in each instance.
   I have treated with  entire success, the following diseases:
 Brain Fever, Typhus Fever, Lung Fever, Ship Fever, Delirium
Tremens, Small Pox, Scarlatina,  Measles, Chicken Pox, Vario-
loid, Inflammatory Rheumatism, Spinal Disease, and the whole
train of Female  Weaknesses, and Uterine Diseases.
  I have treated Hernia,  injuries of  the lungs, and other inju-
ries ;  and I have a large  and most interesting obstetric practice. 
32
EXPERIENCE IN WATER ClUK.
   I  have treated  Fever and Ague, Croup, Influenza, Diseases
of the Eyes, Jaundice, Dysentery, and Cholera, and have been
equally successful  with all.
   I find that the confidence of the people of New York, and the
public generally, is daily gaining strength in water cure.  I direct
the treatment of patients by letter in different parts of the United
States, and I believe the day is not far distant, when intelligent
persons everywhere will be their own physicians to a great extent.
I have already educated a great many mothers in this city, so
that  they are physicians  in  their own families,  and successful
ones too.   Occasionally they call for  advice, but in the  main
they do not need me.
   I am now looking toward the  education of women as physi-
cians, and particularly to attend  to  obstetric practice.   If our
medical colleges are not soon opened to woman, others will  be
founded  where she will  be educated.   The spirit of the age
will not any longer submit to bonds.
                      CHAPTER V.

              WATER CURE  IN ACUTE  DISEASES.

  Many persons  who  have become sensible of the excellence
of water cure in chronic diseases, know nothing of  its wonder-
ful uses in acute diseases, and  frequently ladies who are  under
water treatment for chronic ailments, have sent for a physician,
and submitted their children to a course of drug practice, when
they have been attacked by fever, or some other acute malady.
  They have thus laid the  foundation with their  children, in
the most tender and susceptible period of  life, for  chronic dis-
ease, perhaps of a very obstinate character.  Mothers who are
so ignorant as to injure their children in this manner, only need
to be enlightened.  A few  cases of fever, measles, or small
pox, or any acute disease successfully treated with water, either
seen by these persons,  or accurately recorded for their perusal,
will save children and others from the  evils of drug treatment.
  The effects of water cure in acute  disease, have only to be
seen to inspire the  fullest c^ofidence;  for so rapidly are  fevers 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  CURE.
33
 and all  acute maladies subdued by judicious water treatment,
 that the remedial effects thus obtained seem absolutely miracu-
 lous.
   If people  only  knew the  remarkable  and  almost  mar-
 vellous  way  in which all  violent  and  febrile diseases  yield
 to a judicious  application  of this cure,  drugs would  be  at a
 discount, and blisters  and the lancet among the thousand hor-
 rors of the past.   In my water cui*e experience,  I  have had
 abundant evidence that depletion by bleeding or purgatives is
 never required, that counter-irritants are unnecessary tortures,
 and that all  the  indications of a rapid  cure, without unneces-
 sary weakness or poisoning can  be attained by this mode  of
 treatment.  If a patient has vitality enough to have a fever,
 he has life enough to be  cured, and always can be, except in
 fatal lesions of vital organs.
   In illustration of the foregoing,  I will give cases that have
 occurred in my practice during the three years last past.

                      CASE OF CROUP.

   This  affection of the  mucous membrane of the  larynx,  so
 often fatal to  children, is the terror of parents, and  the dread
 of the faculty, from  the suddenness  of its attacks,  and the
 rapidity  of  its progress to  a  fatal termination.   A boy, ten
 years old, the son of  a distinguished allopathic physician, had
 a tendency to the disease, which had apparently been strength-
 ened by the usual treatment in his previous attacks.   When
 called to him, his croupy, rattling breathing, and dry, barkinr/
 cough, could be heard over the  whole  house, and he had not
 apparently an hour to live, unless  immediate relief could be
 afforded.
  The boy,  as is usual in such cases, was of a full habit, and
 possessed of strong reactive powers, and the treatment  Avas
 made proportionally active.   Placing him in a tub,  I first pour-
 ed over, his  throa-t  and  chest two pails full of cold water, and
then rubbed the  parts until the skin was quite red.  He was
then packed in the  wet sheet, and well covered with blankets.
With the glow and perspiration  came the relief to his breath-
ing,  and  freedom from  the  choking distress.  As soon as the
perspiration was fully established,  he  was  taken out of the
sheet, and drenched with cold water, followed by rubbing with
coarse towels, after which he was put into bed, quite free from
the croupy symptoms. 
34
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE
  The inflammatory action, however, was not entirely subdued,
and on the afternoon of the same day the symptoms began to
return, when he was again packed in the wet sheet.  This was
followed by a pouring bath as before, and  the cure was com-
plete.
  There is no doubt that a similar treatment, varied to suit the
constitutions of different patients, would cure every case of this
disease, except in the last stages of its most violent forms,
which may be beyond the powers of any remedial agents.
SMALL-POX.
  Mrs. D., a very beautiful woman, who had been in feeble and
delicate health from  her  childhood, was taken on the  6th of
April, 1848, with small-pox.   She is a  catholic, and had kept
the fasts of the church faithfully.  She  had been for a short
time previous under  water  treatment, and it being Lent,  was
living on a very spare and temperate diet.   This  was exceed-
ingly fortunate for her, as her system was filled with scrofula,
and she had a strong tendency to inflammatory action.
  Mrs. D.  was seized very violently. The chills were excessive,
the fever was burning.  It  seemed that the flame of  Vesuvius
was kindled in the system, at the same time that the frosts of a
thousand Laplands were freezing her.   The pain  in the bones
was most excruciating, and her head she declared was " split-
ting" all the time.   Her face became frightfully swollen.
  The first day she  was enveloped in  a wet sheet, the disease
as usual not having declared itself, and the other treatment  was
adapted to what seemed a " crisis" in the technical lano-uage of
water cure.  The second  day, the fever,  the chills, pain in  the
head and bones, and  swelling cf the face, made me very certain
that it was a case of  small-pox.  Still, as ship-fever was  at the
time very rife in the  city, I  would not give the disease a name
until the third day.  The family knew very little of water cure.
What they knew was from reading and report.  They had not
seen any cases treated by water.
  Under these discouraging circumstances it is not at all won-
derful that they should be exceedingly anxious.  The morning
of the third day came; the eruption  had not  appeared    The
disease had received  no name, and the patient was in the  hands
of a woman who had no diploma, and was treated according to
a new system, of which they really knew nothing.
  The husband, with the tenderest love for his wife, was in an 
                EXPERIENCE  IN WaTER CURE.             35

agony of anxiety.   He wished to call in a physician; and the
man who was their family physician, before  this experiment in
water cure, was an  allopathist.   Of course I was greatly dis-
tressed at the thought that this delicate, weak and  beautiful
creature, should fall under allopathic treatment at such a fright-
ful moment as the present.  I doubted not that she had small-
pox, and I had just as little doubt that with  the poison of med-
icine, added to  the terrible disease raging in her  system, she
would either lose her life or be badly  mutilated.  I felt almost
certain of the first, quite certain of the last.   In the short time
that the lady had been under my care I had become tenderly
attached to her.
   I  spoke earnestly to the anxious husband.   I told him what
madness it would be to subject his wife to the poison of medi-
cine, and the terror of her disease  at  the same time.  I told
him  of the uniform success of proper water treatment in these
cases.   I begged for time.  He left all to his wife.  She  deci-
ded  to try the water a little farther.  He consented very cheer-
fully, on condition that I would be willing to have another  phy-
sician called  in.   I  begged  to  be allowed  to consult with  a
water cure physician.   They ccnsented.  I called in Dr. Shew,
who was very attentive, and behaved in  the most gentlemanly
manner.   We,  of  course, agreed  as to the treatment.   Dr.
Shew called several times, and reassured the family very much.
   The fever became so intense  the third day, that instead of
enveloping the patient in  a single wet sheet, she was covered
with four folds of wet linen at the period of the greatest heat,
and two and three folds, and then one fold, as the  heat abated.
   These folds of linen were covered by thick blankets, and re-
moved at proper intervals, and the patient  sponged with cold
water, and then fresh linen was  again wet and applied.   The
efflorescence began to appear the third day, but was very full
on the fourth.  The pustules were  most abundant, the disease
assuming the confluent form on the face.
   The bowels were kept open and free with water  injections,
and  the patient took the juices  of fruit  for  nourishment.  The
fever was subdued  by the constant application of the water;
the itching,  so  frightful  usually during the recovery, was not
even uncomfortable in this case.  The face  was kept covered
with wet linen.   The room was much darkened,  though the
windows were kept open,  and a current of fresh air was all the
time admitted.
   The patient,  lovely charactt: of Mrs. D. doubtless assisted ^ 
36
7TPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
materially in the avorable issue of the disease.  It was enough
for her to know  ,hat any process was necessary, however disa-
greeable ; she f ubmitted so sweetly and cheerfully, that all felt
that the beauty of her countenance must be preserved as a cor-
respondent 1/i  her  beautiful spirit, and with  pleasure I record
that it was preserved.   She was not marked.
   Very terrible boils on the head and limbs attended Mrs. D.'s
recovery.   These were  lanced  in several instances, and large
quantities of scrofulous matter evacuated.   These were treated
with water only.

                CASE OF MALIGNANT  TYPHUS.

   In December last, Mrs. B., a young married lady, in Hudson-
street, who had  been weakened by uterine and spinal disease,
was  attacked  with  typhus fever  in  its most malignant form.
When called to see her, I found her suffering from a violent pain
u the head, and  lying in a very low state, with the characteris-
tic effluvia, and other symptoms of typhus.  It was a case such
as, under allopathic treatment, no one would expect to recover
in less than from twenty to forty days.  Some idea of the ma-
lignancy of the disease  may be formed from the circumstance,
that the mother-in-law of the patient, a  strong, healthy woman,
from merely assisting  in the first rubbing bath prescribed, was
attacked with headache and vomiting, and was very ill for many
hours.
   The rubbing baths and wet sheet packings, administered  at
short  intervals, cooled down the parching fever, brought out the
morbid  matter in the system, and in  six days the fever was
conquered.  During the time that the  fever was at the worst,
she was immersed in the sitz bath,  or in the wet sheet pack, or
enveloped in wet bandages  all the time.  It was the most se-
vere weather of  the winter, and  yet she was kept in a room
without fire, and the window was open  all the time.
   She was able to  go about the house in two weeks, and her
health became much better than before her illness,

                   CASE OF SHIP FEVER.

  A  young Irishman, aged seventeen, was  seized with  ship
fever directly after landing at New York.  He was fat and full
of blood, and the fever seemed as violent as was possible.   He
was first put in a tepid bath,  &nd rubbed until the  skin was 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
37
perfectly cleansed—a  ceremony that had not probably been
performed  before since his birth.  After this, he was sponged
in cold water, and then packed in a very wet sheet.  When he
came out of  this, he was put under a dripping  sheet, and rub-
bed  for some time.   At the third  pack the peculiar eruption
appeared.  His tongue was very foul, and his mouth very sore.
D uring  the day he had, in the morning, a dripping-sheet bath,
then a wet-sheet  pack, and then again a dripping-sheet bath.
He then lay  enveloped in a wet sheet and very slight covering
besides, and  drank water till afternoon.  He was then packed
again, and  again  put  under the dripping sheet.  During the
night, he lay in a wet sheet, slightly covered.   This  sheet was
several times wrung out of fresh water during the night.  For
five days he  took nothing but water.   The  sixth day he ate a
bowl of gruel during the  day, and went out of his room.  The
seventh day he went out doors, and after that was free from
fever.   He was very weak, and greatly emaciated, but  imme-
diately regained his health and strength, taking only one bath' a
day after the fever was subdued. The treatment was graduated
to the degree of fever.
   This case is a fair sample of ship fever in the average, when
aubmitted to water cure.   It is never dangerous when taken
by contagion and properly treated with water.   If those phy-
sicians who have fallen victims to it had known of the  efficacy
of water treatment,  and  been allowed to try it, they  would
without a doubt have all  been saved.

                        VARIOLOID.

   Mrs.------- had varioloid.   She  was attacked with great
pain in the bones and intense chill, with considerable fever.
She was put first under a pouring bath and rubbed into a glow.
A cold wet bandage  was put about the abdomen, and another
about the head ;  then she was wrapped in blankets till profuse
perspiration was induced.   She was then well rubbed with the
cold dripping sheet.  This treatment was substantially repeated
until the third day.  The fourth she was about the house as if
she had not been ill.

                      SCARLET  FEVER.

  Miss-------was taken with a very malignant form of scarlet
fever, which  was then rife in the neighborhood.  She was de- 
38
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
lirious, and the fever was of the worst type, and ran very high.
She was first put under a pouring bath, then packed in the wet
sheet.  The wet sheet packs, and dripping sheet baths succeed-
ed each other rapidly,  for several days and nights, before the
fever was subdued.   The throat sloughed horridly, and large
quantities  of matter were thrown off.  She took nothing but
water for ten days, and  four wet sheets in the twenty-four hours.
She  lay enveloped  in  wet linen  when not  in  the wet sheet.
The fever was then  subdued, the appetite returned, the throat
got well, and the patient fully recovered,  with  no drug poison
in the system,  and with health greatly better than she  had ever
before enjoyed.

                        SCROFULA.

  Miss L. S---- was a child of diseased parents;  the father
a drunkard, the mother died young of consumption.   This child
was attacked with  purulent  ophthalmia at two  years.  The
glands of the throat were also affected.   Health conditions at
her home were almost  all wanting.  The food of the  child was
very bad,  pork  and lard making a considerable portion  of it.
At the age of ten years she went to reside with a relative, who
fed her on plain substantial food,  giving  her no flesh but the
lean muscle, and this  but once a day.  She was bathed daily
in cold water.   The first year after being thus treated, she had
a fever.  In the course of the next year, she was affected with
scrofulous sores in the  head.   A large quantity of  matter was
thrown off.  Shower bathing, and constant bathing of the head
and syringing the ears, were resorted to.   The first attack was
in autumn.  The next autumn she  passed through  a similar
affection of the head, with the same treatment.   The third year,
after sea bathing,  she was attacked with scarlet fever.  The
writer was  called early one morning,  with the information that
L. S----was ill and delirious.  Found  her in a raging fever,
the scarlet  rash appearing  like a flame over the whole surface
of the body.   She  was immediately undressed and put in a
common shower bath, and a large quantity of water poured over
her.  The steam arose  as if the water had been poured on hot
iron.  After this bath she was thoroughly rubbed, and wrapped
in a wet  sheet,  and put in bed.   The heat continued intense,
the throat  was  terribly swollen,  but the delirium  was  gone.
The wet sheet was wrung out of  a tub of cold water once in
fifteen minutes,  and the tub of water changed once  an hour. 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
39
(It  would have been better to have had clean water for each
application.)   This  process  was  continued  unremittingly  the
first twenty-four hours,  and in all cases should be  continued
till  the heat  abates.  The next morning after her first attack,
she was washed in Castile soap-suds.   After this,  clean  water
was poured over her as she stood in the tub, and then she was
thoroughly rubbed.   After the first twenty-four hours, the fever
had so far abated, that frequent changes of  the wet sheet did
not seem needful; but for several days almost constant bathing
of  the head, arms, and feet were resorted to,  and the sheet
was renewed once an hour.   After the fever abated so t^at the
patient could be put in dry clothes, she was wholly bathed seve-
ral  times in the day, and she bathed constantly her arms,  chest,
and head.  The quantity of scrofulous matter discharged from
the throat was  almost incredible.  The throat was gargled at
first with Castile soap-suds, and afterward with clear cold  water
very frequently.  This fever might well be termed a crisis, in
which the system  relieved itself of psoric matter.   In three
weeks the patient was convalescent.   During the whole illness,
the only substance  used  which could be called medicinal was
the soap.  The food was gruel made of wheaten meal, and
bread of the same.
  After  she  became convalescent,  a  physician called and ad-
vised a cathartic.  I objected strongly, and none was  taken,
or  needed.   The triumph of cold water was complete in this
case,  and the cure created much remark where the scrofulous
habits of the patient were  known.   After this fever, she had
no more affections of the head,  nor, indeed, any indications  of
scrofula.
  Before this fever,  this  child was very dull and stupid,  parti-
cularly at the period when  the head was  affected; at  those
times she seemed almost idiotic.  After this last crisis, she be-
came active and bright, so much so as to be remarked as a very
bright girl.
  This case was treated several years since.  I should not now
Use soap as I then used it.

         INFLAMMATION OF  THE LUNGS FROM INJURY.

  Miss H., of Waterbury, Conn.  This was a case of inflam-
mation of the lungs, from repeated blows received in the region
of the lungs  and stomach, from the handle  of a machine used
in the manufacture of buttons.  When she came under  my 
40
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
care, the inflammation was so exceedingly violent, that only just
sufficient air to sustain life was admitted  into the lungs.   The
portion of the chest involving  the lower part of the lungs wis
swollen,  so  as to resemble a large  breast.  The breath was
drawn with the utmost difficulty, and  the swehed portion of the
chest was so tender tc the touch, that it seemed at first impos-
sible for her to bear  the pressure of the wet sheet,  and  pack.
But she breathed easier on the first application of the wet sheet.
Each succeeding application was  equally useful with the first.
In a few weeks  the swelling over the  chest disappeared, the
inflammation  was subdued,  the  breathing  became easy, and
the strength  greatly increased;  and the young lady returned
home, with directions to continue her  cure, with entire  confi -
dence that health would be attained at no very distant period.
She had continued to improve, as we anticipated,  when  I last
heard from her.

                     FEVER AND AGUE.

 , A child of four years of age, living on Long Island, in a por-
tion of the island pretty well adapted to the production of this
disease,  was attacked and suffered regularly, and greatly, for
three weeks.   She was brought to me at the end of  that time.
When the chills came on, I placed her in a bath, and  poured
two pails  of cold water over her.  I then  rubbed  the  whole
surface of her body for several minutes, and put a wet bandage
around the body.  She lay down, was  covered, not at all hea-
vily, fell asleep, and began to perspire.  This bath and bandage
broke the regularity of the fits.  When the  fever came on, she
■was bathed and enveloped in wet linen.   During the  cold stage
she was treated as above.  Her food was measured  to her ac-
cording  to my judgment of the quantity proper, for her appetite
was  inordinate.   The bowels were kept open by injections, till
they became regular.   In ten days she was cured.

                      TYPHUS FEVER.

  I was Galled in the winter of '47-8 to a case of tyrhus  fever.
The  patient, a young woman, was given up to die.  I had so
little hope, that  I asked the mother if she was prepared to see
her daughter die, whilst we should  be putting her in the wet
sheet.   She said that she was prepared  to  see her die  if she
was not put in, and was also prepared for the worst if she was; 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
41
and added,  that no blame should be thrown on water cure in
case of her  death.   I immediately prepared to put her in the
sheet.  The mother assisted.   We stopped once after the pro-
cess was begun, thinking that she was dying—but as she con-
tinued to breathe,  we finished the envelopement.  She began
to revive in ten or fifteen minutes after she was enveloped.  She
continued to revive  under the treatment,  and  ultimately reco-
vered.

                       BRAIN FEVER.

   Miss-------, aged 24 years.   I first saw this young lady on
the 24th of  June,  1848.  She was then entirely delirious from
brain  fever; her whole system seemed on  fire,  particularly the
brain.  Her employment was  that of musical  and mathemati-
cal teacher,  and  she had made great and  long continued exer-
tion in both departments, and had acquired  a high reputation.
Her system was  infected with scrofula, though she was very
energetic and persevering.  These two excellent qualities had
well nigh wrought her death.
   When I first saw her, she was  entirely insensible to the fact
of her illness, and thought  her fever and  difficulty of breath-
ing owing to the heat and closeness of the room, though every
window and door was open.   I first put her into a shallow bath,
and rubbed her for some  minutes.  This slightly abated the
heat.   I  then took  a large heavy linen sheet  and dipped it in
cold water, wringing it  only so  as to keep  it from  dripping.
She was  enveloped in this for an hour, then put in a cold pour-
ing bath  and rubbed for two  minutes, and then put  in a deep
hip bath  for half an hour.   The fever was abated, but the de-
lirium continued the same.   During four  nights I watched by
her, giving  her  the following treatment.  When the fever fit
came  on, I put her in the wet sheet  as  above.  She was gen-
erally peaceful and silent for an hour in this.   I then took her
out of the  sheet  and put  her in a  cold  pouring and rubbing
bath; out of that she  went in a deep hip bath for thirty min-
utes,  out of that  into a wet sheet as  before  for an  hour, and
sometimes an hour and twenty minutes.  Then out of the sheet
into the pouring bath, then into the  deep hip  bath for half an
hour, and then under  a dripping sheet.  All these processes
consumed the night, and as morning came, she would fall asleep
cool and quiet.   During the day she usually had one wet sheet
pack, and twc or  three hip baths.  The fever was much more 
42
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
 violent in the nignt.  After these four nights of watching and
 unintermitting treatment, the fever was broken and sanity began
 to return.   In eight days she was sane, but not free from fever.
 On the tenth night from the commencement of the treatment,
 she  had  a violent accession of fever,  but no delirium.  The
 eleventh day she was slightly feverish, but perfectly sane.  The
 twelfth day she  had no remains of the fever ; she was perfect-
 ly sane and had no return of insanity, or aberration of mind in
 the slightest degree.

                INFLAMMATORY  RHEUMATISM.

  Mr.-------was suffering from an  attack of inflammatory
 rheumatism and the poison of tobacco leaves, which he had
 applied by the advice of some quack.   Thorough bathing and
 bandaging the swollen limbs with  wet linen, the fomentations
 being often renewed, soon cured this attack.

                     DELIRIUM  TREMENS.

  I  have  treated  several cases of delirium tremens, substan-
 tially the same as brain fever, and with the same results.   The
 worst cases of delirium were calmed and soothed in ten min-
 utes after being enveloped  in the wet sheet.   The length of
 time required to complete the cure,  varied, of  course, accord-
 ing to the intensity of the disease.   The cases that I have
 treated have been those of literary men, and  passed mostly
 under the name of brain fever.

                    CASE OF DYSENTERY.

  Mrs.-------was attacked with dysentery. She was a woman
 of full habit with much reactive power.   Much  blood had been
evacuated  from  the bowels when I saw her first.   She took
first a tepid bath, followed by the douche upon the  bowels,
then the  abdomen was  enveloped in  four folds of wet linen,
which  was wet  in cold water,  and  renewed  once an hour.
After each passage, an injection of cold water was  given.  A
wine-glass of water was drunk each  hour.  The diet was very
sparing, consisting  of gruel,  or dry toast.  In three  days  the
dysentery was entirely cured. 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
43
DYSENTERY.--A CASE ILLUSTRATIVE OF  THE DANGERS OF  INJU-
                    DICIOUS TREATMENT.

  The great danger of unskilful  water treatment is from con-
gestion, and here you  will mark well what I tell you.   Take
for instance, a case of congestion of the lungs.  A patient who
knew little  of water cure, had congestion of the lungs.   She
took a cold sitz bath for half an hour.  There was no reaction,
she  was so  feeble.   She was greatly chilled; the blood was
driven forcibly to her lungs, and she bled profusely, and nar-
rowly escaped with her life.   Another case.—Last summer, the
dysentery was very prevalent and fatal.  A gentleman had lost
one child, of dysentery, under  allopathic  treatment, and when
his only remaining child was attacked,  he  sent for a water cure
doctor.  This physician, though a man of skill, and  success in
the  main,  has the German mania for " forcible treatment."
He saw the child but a few minutes, and wrote his prescription
hastily.  This prescription  involved treatment with very cold
water.  The consequence was, congestion.  There was not re-
action.   The surface was  chilled, and the  blood  driven inward
upon the bowels.  The congested vessels burst, and the hemor-
rhage from the bowels was frightful.  The water cure used in
this case was pretty nearly the water kill.   I found the patient
bleeding profusely.   I immediately put her  into a bath  of 92
degrees, and put bandages about the bowels of  the same tem-
perature.   I used cold injections to stop the bleeding from the
bowels, after each evacuation; I also poured water from a
pitcher upon the bowels once an hour, and twice a day she was
immersed in the tub  of  water at 92  degrees.   The bleeding
from the  bowels ceased  as by a charm.   The whole surface,
and particularly, the abdomen, was rubbed much with the bare
hand.   The child recovered as by a miracle.
  Now the  same care and discrimination should be used in
cholera as in dysentery.  The first symptoms of cholera are anal-
ogous to dysentery.  Those water cure doctors who use as much
cold water for the weak as for the strong, who take no account
of the reactive power of a patient, will succeed with one  class
of patients  and fail with  another.  They lack discrimination,
and  though  they will inevitably do much good,  they cannot
fail of doing some harm.  Those who have judgment to  adapt
their treatment  to the vital power oi their patients, will cure
all curable cases. 
44              EXPERIENCE  IN VATER CURE.
                      CHAPTER VI.

             WATER CURE  IN  CHRONIC  DISEASES.

  The treatment of  chronic disease, requires for the  best suc-
cess, that the physician should understand the degree of recu-
perative power possessed  by the patient, and what organs are
most oppressed by disease.   Congestion is particularly to  be
guarded against.   Water cure processes, which would be most
beneficial  in  one case,  will produce death from congestion in
another.   In no disease is water treatment more beneficial than
in consumption, both in curing  the disease, and alleviating it,
where it cannot be cured ;   but the treatment may be so unskil-
fully applied, as to aggravate  every" bad  symptom.  So  of
chronic diarrhoea, dysentery,  <fec.   These may be aggravated,
and rendered fatal, by unskilful treatment.
  The chief conditions of cure in chronic disease are, first, that
the physician should know how to adapt his treatment to the
state of the patient; secondly, .that there be pure water,  pure
air, proper diet,  and exercise, and all  those  means  that are
really as much a part of water cure as  water itself.   Having
all these,  the patient  must have a good disposition.   By this
I do not mean a quiet temper, though this is desirable ;  but that
the patient should be disposed to profit by the cure,  and to
second the efforts of the physician in every possible way.  The
great foe of water cure in  America, is the restless hurry of the
people.   Many of them are enemies to all fixity constitutionally.
If they have been ten,  twenty, or fifty years getting sick,  they
want  to  be cured in a month, and often think it very hard if
the water cure physician will not promise them a cure, of per-
haps a life-long  disease, in that time.   A few patients have a
sufficiently clear understanding,  and firm purpose to go on for
years in the cure.   I have had  patients who  have been one,
two, and three years in regaining their health.   They have per-
severed like sensible people, and they have their reward.  It is
true, that some benefit always is experienced,'where water cure
is properly applied,  in chronic diseases,  in a  few  weeks;  but
sometimes it is so small, that the patient's faith is severely tried,
if he has not a clear understanding.
  I think tr 2 most common errors in the treatment of chronic 
EXPERIENCE in waier cure.              45
 disease,  are too forcible treatment,  and too abundant use of
 proper or improper food.
   A great many diseases can  be cured by simple abstinence
 from bad forms of food, or by taking small quantities of good
 food„ Dyspepsia, chronic diarrhoea, gout, and other diseases,
 may be brought as instances.  In all things we first want to
 know our duty, and then we must have the will to perform it,
 or the knowledge is of no use.   Patient perseverance in a right
 way, brings reward sooner  or  later.   The  writer took daily
 cold baths for seven years,  before full reaction took place after
 the  bath.   But reaction came at last—a warm,  delicious glow,
 that was a full reward for years of chills.
   It is a great mistake to suppose that one cannot cure chronic
 disease,  unless they go to a water cure house, or are under the
 immediate care of a physician.   If a patient thoroughly under-
 stands his or her disease, and has the  requisite  energy to  ac-
 complish a cure, it  may be  done almost  anywhere,  and with
 very meagre advantages.  I have  known  delicate and  feeble
 women,  who have done wonders for themselves, at home, with
 no physician  but their  own clear understanding,  and no help
 but  their own  indomitable energy.
   It is  very  necessary, that water for the cure of disease,
 should be pure and living, and in most cases  cold.  All water
 used for water cure processes should be fresh drawn  from the
 fountain.  Water soon loses its life by standing.   Hence, rain,
 or cistern water is not as useful, as even hard water that is liv-
 ing  from the  fountain.  If tepid water is used, it should be
 water fresh drawn with warm water poured in to make it the
 desired temperature.  There are many cases when only tepid
 water can be used for a time.
   No person should  go into a bath that  another  person  has
 used, unless it  is as large as  a  pond or river.  The practice in
 some water cure houses, of having ten, twenty, or thirty patients
 go into  the same bath,  cannot be too severely  reprobated.
 They take the life from the water if the bath is small, and they
 leave their own impurities if the  bath is large.   We have only
 to suppose  a  case  of contagious disease,  such as  syphilis, or
 small pox, or a patient with cancer, going into the same plunge
 with us, to make us feel the horror of the impurity.
   The conditions  of cure,  then, in chronic diseases  may  be
 briefly enumerated,—skill, patience, perseverance, pure living,
cold  water, proper exercise,  pure air, and good food, in proper
quantities. 
46
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
          CAfiS OF DYSPEPSIA AND  GREAT  COLDNESS.

   Mrs.-------bad been long afflicted with dyspepsia, accom-
panied by such intense coldness, that it seemed  next to impos-
sible to bear any  treatment  in  which  cold was an ingredient.
A single wet towel over  the chest, and a dry blanket  pack
made ever so close and warm, caused the  most  entire chill for
a long time.   But this  sort  of packing was persevered in, ac-
companied by the dripping sheet when she came  out of pack,
and long-continued rubbing with the  hand. This pack, gradu-
ally increasing the towel till we used a half, and then a whole
sheet,  and the friction, together with  strict attention  to  diet,
the use of the vagina syringe  and sitz bath, and after a time
the abdominal bandage,  so  far restored vital heat,  that  after
three months treatment, she was able to take the douche, and
then  she rapidly recovered her natural  strength  and heat.
The dyspepsia got leave of absence, and good health came in
its stead.

              SPINAL DISEASE  AND DISTORTION.

   Miss-------, aged 18 years, of very delicate and frail or-
ganization, came  to me in the summer of 1847.  She  had
spinal disease, and distortion of the chest,  from  tight lacing—
the false ribs lapping over each other.   She had been suffering
from cough, and seemed strongly tending to confirmed scrofu-
lous consumption.  She was  very weak, and obliged to refrain
from exertion, and lie in bed  much of the time.   Her appetite
was poor, and very capricious.  She was put through a careful
course of treatment,  which was gradually increased in force, as
her strength  increased.   She  took  gymnastic and calisthenic
exercises daily, under careful supervision.   In nine months, her
chest had enlarged five inches, her ribs had resumed their true
position,  her health was firm and good, and her strength would
allow  her to walk several miles without stopping, and  without
fatigue.

           SCROFULA.--CASE OF  AN INFANT.

  A babe of six months, who had been nursed by  a scrofulous
nurse, came under my care.   I had seen the child of  the nurse,
and accidentally remarked, from its  appearance, that the infant
was scrofulous, and that \:ahss the  matter was  thrown off by 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CUiiE.
47
boils, it would lose the use of its limbs.  This seemed iemark
able to those who heard the observation, as the babe, though
quite old enough, had never been able to stand, and had then
Doiis.  This made them think  that  the other infant, who was
nursing the same mother, might owe  an illness with which it
was afflicted, to  the milk of the scrofulous nurse.  The other
babe was brought to me.  According to my advice, a healthy
nurse was  procured  for it at once.   The child was suffering
from indigestion, emaciation, and general irritability.   She had
a very large brain, and active nervous  temperament.  I advis-
ed  a quiet nurse, with good temper, and little intellect.
  I put the child daily in a wet sheet pack, and dripping sheet
bath when it came out.   In less than two  weeks, a large por-
tion of  the  surface  was covered with a scrofulous eruption.
Continuing  the  treatment the eruption  disappeared, and the
child recovered good health, under the care of its quiet nurse.

                         DYSPEPSIA.

  Mrs.-------had dyspepsia and chronic  inflammation of the
stomach, of  the most alarming character.   She had been the
mother of a large family of children, and was also afflicted with
falling of the womb and flooding.
  At the time I  was called to her,  she was reduced,  by large
loss of  blood in repeated floodings.   She was apparently dying
when I first saw her.  There seemed no heat, or vitality in the
exhausted system, except at the pit of the stomach, where there
was burning inflammation.  She  had been treated by water,
but very injudiciously, ice aud ice water having been constantly
applied over the region of the  stomach.   The blood was thus
drawn from the  surface to the centre,  there being scarcely any
reactive power,   and the congestion  was  very frightful when
I was called.  The limbs were cold as death, the pulse low
and fluttering, and the prospect  of life seemed very doubtful.
I applied hot fomentations to the stomach, and active friction
to the  limbs,  for a long time before much apparent effect was
produced.   At the end  of six hours  almost unremitting exer-
tion, with two efficient assistants, the  circulation was establish-
ed—the whole  body was  comfortably warm, and the patient
could look  about and speak with considerable ease.  The treat-
ment in this case was by much friction, the application of the
wet sheet,  ice water thrown upon the uterus  with the vagina
syringe, and the most careful attention to the nourishment of 
48
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CUKK.
the patient.   For days she took food by the tea-spoonful, and
sipped water to cool the burning inflammation of the stomach.
The improvement  was immediate and steady.   The inflamma-
tion was subdued;  then she regained her strength,  and then
her emaciated frame began to be covered with flesh.  In a few
weeks she had  gained twenty pounds.   She went into the
country as soon as  she was able.   Some eight weeks passed,
and she returned so renovated  in health  and appearance, that
when I called to see her, I did not recognise my emaciated pa-
tient, in the full,  rounded form of the lady before me.  Had
I not heard her voice,  I  might have left without being at all
aware that I  had seen my patient.   I had never seen her until
I was called to her1 in her illness.
  This case shows that water cure, like all other modes of prac-
tice, may be so injudiciously administered as to  become a means
of great evil,  instead of good.

                    CASE  OF NEURALGIA.

  Miss-------had  been  ill  from  birth—had taken a  great
deal of  calomel and other medicine during her  early years.
The consequence of the errors in the training of this young lady,
and the constant medication to which she was subjected, was
general derangement of the health, very bad eyes, and finally
prolapsus uteri and  spinal disease,  accompanied  by the most
distressing neuralgia, which seized  upon  different portions of
the body at  different times.  At one period .the nerves of the
face and neck would be the seat of pain,  at others, the lumbar
region of the back, or the sacrum, or the uterus.  Her sufferings
during these accessions of  pain, were absolutely frightful.  She
had also constant dyspepsia, fluor albus, and vomiting of bile
in the  morning.   Her  spirits  were  greatly  depressed,  and
although one of the most benevolent and self-sacrificing per-
sons in the world, and one of the most deeply pious, there was
an irritability that showed  itself  almost  beyond  control, with
those nearest and dearest to her.  Such a complication of mis-
eries I have seldom seen.
  At the time she came under my care, she was suffering from
an attack of acute inflammation of the uterus.   She could not
stand upright, or  walk across the  room.  Her physician said
to me, that there was nothing for her but to die.
  She was treated for this attack,  and relieved, and shortly
after came un^3r regular treatment at my house.   She remain- 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
49
ed three months with great advantage to her health.  Indeed,
the worst symptoms  were overcome during this time,  but it
remained for her to follow out my directions,  to complete her
cure at home,  at a great distance from me, and amongst those
who had little knowledge and less faith respecting water cure.
In less than a year from the  time she commenced, her  health
was very firm and good—so much so that she  could walk
miles,  or for hours, without a pain of any kind  being induced
by the exertion.

            TIC DOLOREUX, OR FACIAL NEURALGIA.

  Mrs.-------came  to me  with violent tic doloreux  in the
face.   She had suffered  for months  with  it, and was given up
to great discouragement and depression.
  She passed through a  course of tonic treatment by  water,
consisting mostly of wet sheet packing during the paroxysms,
dripping sheet, and sitz bath.   She was packed  once a day, re-
maining for an hour in the wet sheet, after the pain was relieved.
In one month she returned home free from the  disease.
  A number of cases of chronic disease, with complications of
a sexual character, will be found under the head of female dis-
eases.
                     CHAPTER VII.

  CAUSES, PREVENTION, AND TREATMENT OF  THE DISEASES 07
                         INFANCY.

  This is a subject of the first and last importance.; and who-
ever has  the instinct of paternity or philanthropy  in his heart
will feel that he has duties connected with it.  Last year, during
the four  hot weeks of July, 1,702 corpses were buried in the
city of New York, and 802 of this number were infants, under
five years of age.  In 1847, out of  15,788  deaths, 7,373 were
of children under five years old, and of 3,519 deaths in July
and August, the number of 1,848, or more than one-half, were
under the same age.
  Here is this frightful infantile mortality staring us in  the
face, and who  raises  the  voice of explanation or reprehension
with regard to its causes ?  And faw are awake to the subject,
                            I 
60
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CJRE.
and  know that " the curse causeless cannot  come," but the
majority know nothing of  causes or remedies.   They only know
that they  suffer, and they go  on beseiging  the  doctors for
poisonous drugs, and Heaven with prayers that their children
may be saved.  As the fatal  season to infants approaches,
many an anxious mother is casting about for the best preven-
tive of disease.  One gets  some soothing syrup, or some lozen-
ges, another some tincture of rhubarb or blackberry cordial, or
some of the  many patent nostrums  which  enable  quacks to
build themselves palaces with the money of the ignorant.  Some
of the orthodox in the medical faith give their children mer-
cury in the form of the blue mass, or send  for a doctor at the
slightest appearance of  illness.   What we wish to understand
and explain to the public is, the origin and nature of the fatal
diseases of infancy ;  their causes, appearances, progress, and
results; the treatment usually pursued in these cases, and the
reasons why it is unsuccessful; and lastly, the  means of  avoid-
ing or preventing such diseases, and the proper mode of  treat-
ing them to produce a successful  result.   If  the different
schools of medicine would investigate the subject, and give the
people  the information they so much need, they would show
cause why the public should honor the medical profession.
  A large proportion of the  causes  of infant mortality begins
with the constitution of the mothers.   The ignorance and con-
stant violation of the laws of life by mothers, insures the death
of half the children in the civilized  world,  before they have
reached the age of five years. . Ignorance of  our duties to our-
selves and our children is steadily, day after day, month after
month, and  year after  year, doing its  work of death in the
world.
  No mother can give health to her child unless she is herself
healthy.   Women enter the married  state weak from the con-
finement of a boarding-school, and often squeezed into the vice
of corsets till their poisoned blood  has been unable to circulate
sufficiently to nourish the body, much less to keep it in health.
They have half-breathed and half-lived, and been crammed with
useless knowledge, and  regular  or quack medicines, till life is
as much a burthen, as death is a terror.   With no dependence
for health, but upon  a  doctor,  who  cannot create it in  the
midst of their wrong habits, they marry  and enter  upon life.
They are old in their youth—they  are sick and languid—they
want to lounge upon a sofa because  they have no strength for
the duties of life.   Many have spinal  disease  and falling of the 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
51
womb to begin t'-.e world with.   Women who have to bear the
responsibilities of maternity are afflicted in almost nine cases
out of ten, with headache, or languor, and  a sort of lazy debil-
ity,  with  pain and  weakness  of  the back,  especially at  the
monthly period.  Very likely the sight is impaired ; then, there
is the faint, hollow  stomach, especially  in  the  morning, which
is accompanied with a debility  of the abdominal muscles, and
a dragging down of the  internal viscera, which  causes the suf-
ferer to bend forward, and thus cramps the lungs and prevents
their being properly  inflated.   Instead of four pints  of  air,
perhaps three are inhaled, and  thus one-quarter of life is sacri-
ficed at every breath —years are thus taken from life,  but what
"is the loss of years to the loss of health, which is the  crowning
 joy of human existence ?   When these  sick ones,  who call
themselves well fifty times a day,  if they  are  asked  as many
times  " how do  you  do ?"  are afflicted with  dyspepsia, and
costiveness, and piles,  and a general weakness  and inability to
depend on themselves, which are most painful to bear, and then
when  they begin to become conscious that another being is
growing within them,  instead of feeling a  thrill of joy  that a
new love is nestling under their heart, they feel a more deathly
sickness than I can describe.  Most truly it may be said, that
children are born at fearful  cost.   The mother wrestles with
pain, and nausea, and  weakness, through the  period  of gesta-
tion—and  often  with death at  the time of  birth—and she
knows no way of escape.  She complains  to her  friends, per-
haps, and they smile and say that " women must have a thou-
sand and one pains if  they have  children; these things are to
be expected; they are a  matter of course; who ever  heard  of
having babies without  suffering?"
   The doctor recommends patience; takes a little blood, that
is, takes a little of his patient's life when she so much  needs all
she has, and  cheers her  as  much as he can;  and the hapless
mother suffers on  the allotted time, and then,  perhaps, has
milk leg,  or puerperal fever, or an abscess in the breast, or a
permanent falling of  the womb.   And women think that all
these horrors  are the legitimate  consequence of the fulfilment
of the command  to increase and multiply.  And they are not
aware  that  they cannot  give a healthy life to their  children,
whilst  thus prostrated in their own  best energies by disease.
How many times must the plain truth  be uttered in the world's
ear—ye cannot give away what ye do not possess ?
  It is not one class,  or  two classes of mothers who are thus 
52              EXPERIENCE  IN  WATER CURE.
afflicted, ana v, ho bear babes  to swell tne frightful mortality.
Those who live in luxury and idleness,  and those who live in
want  and  hard labor,  are the most diseased  and the  most
wretched;  but everywhere, those who violate the laws of life,
suffer the  inevitable consequence of wrong.   The feeble mo-
ther, of necessity, gives  birth to a child more or less diseased,
or with tendency to disease.   It is true,  that  the vital powers
of the sick mother are exerted in the best possible manner for
the child, so that often comparatively healthy children are born
of sickly mothers.  But  after  all, the children are only compa-
ratively healthy,  and great care is needed  in the first years of
their life to preserve them  from the often fatal diseases of in-
fancy.   The  child is born, and consigned to some  ignorant
nurse,  who swathes its  body tightly with a band,  so that it
cannot breathe with any healthy freedom.  Its stomach is nau-
seated with an unmentionable potion, and its head is smothered
in bed clothing, so that the close air  of  the sick room is ren-
dered closer and more  unhealthy still, by being breathed again
and again, under smothering clothes.   Its dress  seems  pur-
posely contrived with pins,  and straps, and  belts, and  many
garments,  to  make  it uncomfortable;  and its feet are rolled
close in a pinning blanket,  so  that it  cannot get  the benefit of
the little exercise of  kicking its little feet.  But,  perhaps, the
worst wrongs that baby  has to  encounter, are  the poison of
drugs,  paregoric and the like,  and its sick mother's milk.  It
is not a month since  I was  called to lance an abscess on a poor
woman's breast, and her babe was nursing from the same breast.
She had what the doctors  call a milk  leg, which ultimately
ulcerated and broke, and discharge I some pints  of corruption.
Can we expect a babe  born of such a mother  and nursed on
such food to live many months ?   Will not the filth of the city,
sending up its plague steams in the hot summer weeks, poison
the last wretched remnant  of  ;ts little life ?  We may be sure
of it.
   Those children who are thus  born  and reared, cannot  live.
The dysentery with them is death.  The ill-made vital organism
is worn out.   The disease  is the  sure  prognosis of death in
many cases.   No earthly means can  save.   I have been called
on in hot weather in several instances to such cases among the
ignorant poor.   The mother, a pale,  consumptive creature, or
a bent bilious-looking being, who seemed hardly to have strength
to hold her miserable infant in her arms;  the child,  with the
stamp of deal';h on every feature, as the mother thought,  per- 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CTTSE.
53
haps, only slightly sick of summer complaint.  They had heard
of water cure, and though not in a state to fulfil one of the con-
ditions of the cure, they had sent for me,  wiUi a vague  sort of
notion that I would work some miracle for their child,  and keep
off death from it.  I always deal frankly in such cases.   I-say,
your child must die in the  city,  and probably will die in the
country ;  but your only chance is to take  it into the  pure air
of the country,  and to take it from the breast, and feed it  on
good milk, and care for it properly.   They would listen to me,
and  presently ask me if  I would not take charge  of  the case,
though I had just assured them that the  child must die in the
city.  Perhaps they would go into the country for a  day or
two,  well supplied with  paregoric, and when the child grew
worse, they would return, and send for two or three doctors.
   Intelligence is as  necessary to the proper treatment of chil-
dren  and the adoption of the water cure, as the water itself;
and though a great number  of intelligent  people may resort to
drugs and doctors, yet no really ignorant person will be devoted
to water cure.
   The first cause, then,  of infant mortality, is the ill health of
mothers—the fact that children  are born with half lives, and
less than  that.   Then they are fed on the  sick milk of the mo-
ther,  or the milk of unhealthy cows, or on other bad food.   I
have known mothers who were well informed on most common
subjects,  who still did not know any better  than  to give their
young children flesh as food, and even pork; and when fever
comes to the child, or the ulcerated sore  throat of scarlatina,
or when  they have scrofula  in its many loathsome forms,  de-
stroying the beauty of the skin  by foul blotches, taking away
sight and hearing,  and producing death by consumption, king's
evil,  or some other disease—they never once  think  that they
have brought these ills upon their children,  by depriving them
of their natural and proper food, and giving them  the fat and
flesh of sick animals.  For let it be known everywhere,  that  a
large  portion of the flesh of  animals brought  to market is dis-
eased ;  and we have good reason to believe that all pork, fat-
tened as it is ordinarily, is full of scrofula.
   The air that many children breathe is close and  unhealthy.
The open air of confined localities would  be bad, even if they
were  suffered to go out and  breathe it;  but they are shut up
often in what is worse, without the benefit of exercise.   Some-
times they live through the first  months with  no apparent dis-
ease —they  are only  wha/. is termed " very  cross children;" 
54
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
but when the period of dentition comes, then the f'rae of  trial
beo-ins.  Then comes the dreaded diarrhoea,  which is met with
quack medicines, the base  of  all of  which is opium;  or with
doctors' drugs,  which,  whatever  they may be,  can hardly be
worse.  The poor child, with its half life, is doomed to do bat-
tle with fearful  odds—all the evils of city life, and medication
besides.   If  it lives through  the  dysentery or summer  com-
plaint, there are measles, whooping-cough, scarlatina, and other
maladies,  and death often comes as attendant,  or consequence
to these diseases.
   The first duty of mothers is  to render their own health firm.
By practising water-cure through  the period of gestation, the
nerves are strengthened  so  that the suffering from nausea and
weakness  and other evils of pregnancy is escaped, and the pains
of parturition are greatly abridged;  and sometimes an almost
entire  immunity from suffering is obtained,  and the health of
the infant is secured as much as that  of the mother.  The con-
finement and dosing of the sick room are also escaped at the
time of birth.   In all my obstetric practice  for several years
in New York, I have never had a single case  where the mother
was not able to  walk  from the bed to the cold bath  the day
after the birth of her babe, and in  no case has any after ill con-
sequence come to the mother or infant from  this course;   and
the children of  such mothers  have  passed  through  teething
without difficulty, have escaped dysentery altogether,  or  have
had it lightly; have had whooping-cough, measles, and scarla-
tina with no danger at all, and  but slight inconvenience.
   In the management of children, the first rule is, avoid drugs
of every kind and quantity.  The nursing infant takes medicine
whenever  its mother takes it.   Get pure air,  and plain, simple,
healthful food for your child.  In his first years the child should
eat no animal food.   Bread, fruit,  milk, and  vegetables should
constitute  the infant's nourishment.   Flesh, gravies,  grease,
sweets, pastry,  and condiments should  be especially  avoided.
Grown people should be sparing in their use, but they should
give none  of  them to their children.  The clothing of  children
should be loose, easy, not too much nor too  little,  and flannel
should not be worn next the skin.  All clothing worn during
the day by infants or  adults, should  be removed  on going to
bed, and one long cotton garment  should be worn  in the night.
Day clothing should be  thoroughly aired at night, and night
clothing during  the day.  When  flannel is worn by infants or
adults, it  should not be worn next the  skin.  It irritates  and 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  CURE.
55
harms the skin.   Exercise in the open air  is as healthful foj
infants as for grown people.  Thorough cold bathing should be
used daily for children  from infancy, and if  they have any ill-
ness,  the water cure  will assist nature to throw it off rapidly,
and in a manner to secure the future health of the child, whilst
drugs  remain to poison and oppress the system for we know
not how long.
   One of the pleasantest fruits of knowledge is that we become
self-dependent.   The mother who has had her  health restored
by water cure, and who has learned  to prevent and cure disease
in her family, is relieved from a thousand nameless fears.   She
is not frightened out of her common sense at the illness of her
infant, but she manages it wisely, and its sickness is soon past.
And the saving of expense  for doctors is no trifling consider-
ation.
   From long experience and wide-spread observation of disease,
I have become fully convinced that, to children born of healthy
parents, and fed on simple, proper  food, and bathed daily in
cold water, all the diseases of childhood are  divested of terror.
Such children have them very lightly, and without danger.
But the mother asks what is proper food for her infant.  If
iTie mother  is  healthy, if she retires  to bed as early as ten
o'clock, if she rises at six and takes  a cold bath, and breakfasts
with no drink but water, and with no rich or indigestible food,
such as flesh meat, hot  bread, &c, if she have  exercise and a
proper industry, if her  mind is free from dominant passions or
corroding cares; if she eats a dinner for health, and not for a
morbid gratification,  and a supper  like her breakfast,  to be
digested,  then the mother's milk is the best food for the infant,
not at all hours of the day, but at regular periods,  separated
by an  interval of three hours, when the child is young.   As
soon as a child will sleep through the night without food, it is
well for it to do  so; no  fear need be entertained of a hunger
that does not disturb  sleep.  If the  mother's milk be insuffi-
cient, cow's milk, diluted  with water, with the crust of bread
boiled in it,  or rice water, or thin gruel, is  good food for the
child.   It is too common  for  children  to be fed on what is on
the table, and a great many things are put on the table that
had better be buried than eaten by any one,  and especially, by
children.  A potato,  ripe  and mealy,  may be very good food
for a child, but covered with  butter, salt and grease, it is very
bad food.  If people will eat condiments,  such as mustard,
"eppei. oil, grease, pickles, spices, old cheese, and smoked food, 
56
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
and salads, and drink tea and coffee, let them prize the health
of their children enough to spare them the evils of such feeding.
   Babies are almost always fed too much, and with too rich
food.   A cow's milk is much  richer  than the milk of  the
mother   An infant of  a day  old, when its mother's milk is
wanting, is often condemned to have its delicate stomach filled
with rich pap, wholly unfit  for  its  digestive powers.  A few
tea-spoonsful of sweetened water would be far better nourish-
ment, whilst  the little one is waiting for the milk of the mother.
   Last year I was one  Sunday at Fordham, waiting for the
:ars, when an accident had detained them.  We had to wait
till deep into the night.   A great crowd was assembled at the
station-house, and  in it was a nurse, who had brought a babe
three weeks  old to the chapel at Fordham, to be christened.
The babe had had  no nourishment since the morning, and its
cries were piteous.   I obtained some water  and  white sugar in
a tumbler, and a tea-spoon.   I warmed each spoonful of this
sweetened water a little in  my mouth, and then gave it to the
baby.  After being  thus  fed, the child's hunger was  perfectly
satisfied, and it fell  into a sound sleep.  We should have found
it difficult to  have obtained milk, and if  we could, the sugared
water was the best  for the babe.
  A friend of mine  was separated  by ill health for more than
a year from a young infant, being ordered to travel  by medical
men.   The child was fed so badly as to  be an idiot when re-
stored to its mother.  Its frightful illness continued for years,
and was only removed by the most wise  and resolute care on
the part of the mother,  who substituted  plain food,  and the
cold bath and  exercise  in the open air, for flesh, milk punch,
paregoric, a close room, and a  total neglect of bathing.   The
reason  and health came in time to bless and reward the mother's
efforts.   Another child  was fed on pork till scrofulous ulcers
were made to cover the  throat, and the  doctor was called to
cure what was termed " king's evil."  I was at one time called
to prescribe for a child who  was fed much on pork and fat food,
whose eyes were nearly  destroyed by scrofula.   The child was
cured, and the eyes restored, by simple food, bathing,  and gen-
eral attention to the habits.  I  have seen the worst  forms of
scrofula  overcome  in children by these means.   Children are
more readily  cured of disease than grown people.   Their bodies
more  rapidly change by growth, and the growth  is in their
favor.  Children born of very unhealthy parents may, by wise
treatment, have their health constantly increased so that their 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
57
 lives may be insured for a much greater length of years than
 those who are born strong and well, and  brought up in an un-
 wise and unhealthy manner.   I have seen a child, who, at the
 age of two years, was almost devoured with scrofulous sores in
 the head and eyes, and other parts of th° body, and yet, by
 careful training, living on vegetable food,  and constant applica-
 tion of the commonest processes of water cure, she  was at the
 age of fifteen perfectly cured of the disease.  She is now over
 eighteen years of age, and for the  last three years I have not
 known her to be sick a day.   Though it is so short a time since
 water cure has been generally known in this country, yet I have
 practised it  in a considerable degree for nineteen years, and I
 know a physician in New England,  who used branches of water
 cure practice as many years  since ; for we  consulted together
 over a case of typhus  fever some sixteen  years ago.
   Any course which tends  to render the general health of a
 child firm, diminishes its danger  in  the diseases of  childhood,
 or exempts it from their  attacks altogether.  And any course
 that weakens and deteriorates, exposes the child to disease and
 death in early years.   Scarlatina is particularly fatal to child-
 ren who are  fed on a rich and animal diet, and who are seldom
 bathed.   Though I have never had a case of scarlet fever that
 I  have  not cured, I have still seen  great  suffering from the
 ulcerated  sore throat, in my patients  who  have been fed on
 rich food, and not bathed, whilst those who had been bathed,
 and fed on simple, plain food, have  been scarcely affected at all
 in the throat.  The  average duration of scarlet fever in my
 practice, is from three to six days.  I once had an  extreme
 case of scarlatina that lasted two weeks, and it was only on the
 twenty-first day that the patient was able  to walk about out of
 doors.   But  in  this instance the whole  organism was deeply
 infected with scrofula from birth, and the child  had been fed
 on pork,  and in its early years the  parents would as soon have
 thought of drowning the child as bathing her.   Ordinarily, the
 duration of the scarlet fever under my treatment has been from
 three to  six  days, but  in children  who have been badly fed,
 even if they  have had  daily bathing, the sore throat continues
after the fever is  entirely removed.
  To give  the treatment in one case of scarlatina—we have not
given the treatment in all, because water  cure must always be
adapted  to the vital or reactive power of the patient, and the
violence of the fever determines the amount of virulence.
  A. B. was  a case of  malignant scarlatina.   The disease com- 
58
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
menced with delirium.   The patient was  bled, had an emetic,
and Dover's powders, and was laid on a soft feather bed.  After
this, calome.  was  given;  on the third day the patient died.
Three other fatal cases that came under my observation were
treated with like allopathic wisdom.  Dropsy of the chest suc-
ceeded the fever, consequent  on bleeding and  purging.   The
patients lingered longer but died.   The fourth case was of the
most  malignant character,  accompanied  by  delirium.   The
patient did not sleep for an incredibly long time.  A physician
was called, who put a brond wet bandage around  the stomach
and abdomen, and  another around the head, and  directed the
patient to be  sponged.   He gave some medicine, but I did not
have an opportunity to see what it was.  I was told, however,
that little  medicine  was taken.   The patient  fell  into a quiet
sleep, directly the  wet  bandage was applied, and awoke with-
out delirium.   The cure was rapid.   The  child who took the
fever from this patient, and who  had  been fed on  vegetable
food, and daily bathed, was under my care, and was only  con-
fined a week  to the house, and was able to play a portion of
each day.
  My treatment in scarlet fever has consisted of packing in the
wet sheet,  and pouring baths,  sponge baths, and sleeping  in a
wet night dress, wet bandages, and if the  extremities are cold,
much friction with the bare hand.  Drinking water constantly
and gargling the throat with cold water, and often cleansing the
mouth and throat, a very slight  nourishment, with  frequent
changes of clothing,  and fresh air, constitute the  treatment  in
scarlatina; also, injections, to open the bowels.  Last winter I
was called to a very violent case of  scarlatina, which the father
of the child was himself treating, having a good knowledge of
water cure.  The  fever was  so violent that it was not readily
subdued, and the mother becoming alarmed, I was called in.  I
asked the  father  how much  he  had done.  He said he had
packed the child once a day.  The patient was fat and ruddy, -
and  full of blood  and life.  "You should pack him once  in
three hours,"  said I, "if  you cannot overcome this fever with-
out.   Please  get  ready a pack instantly."  He  went  to the
pump out doors, and wrung out a ver)^ heavy linen sheet.  It
was folded so as  to present four thicknesses to the child, and
was frozen when he brought it in.   I  smiled, as he proceeded
to envelope the  child,  because the  severity of the fever fully
warranted  the application, and because this  heroic  treatment
was worthy of Priessnitz,  and not one water cure doctor in a 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
59
dozen would  have dared apply it.  " This treatment," said I,
" in a different form of scarlatina, where the vitality was low,
and the  extremith s . were  cold, would  kill the patient."   " I
know it," said the  father, quietly; " I  applied the water  ac-
cording to his fever."
  " If you know so much," said I,  " you have no need of me."
And  the event  proved that  it was not necessary for me call
again.
  Water cure doctors would  have small practice if all parents
were  as well  informed as this gentleman.
  There is not one of the diseases of childhood that yields more
readily to water  cure than measles.  Parents who have a mode-
rate knowledge of water treatment need no physician.
  A few weeks  since  I was called to  a case of suppressed
measles.   The child was not  weaned, and another  child  of  the
same family had died a short time previous of the measles.   It
was only from the fact that the disorder was in the house, that
they knew that this child had measles, the efflorescence upon
the skin  not  having appeared.   The fever was  intense.  The
child seemed to be in great pain, especially in the head.  For
seven weary days and  nights this babe had  not slept.  Worn
with watching and anxiety, and grief for the loss of  the other
child, the parents  wished to try water cure.  The  doctor, a
very estimable and inquiring  man, sent for me, wishing himself
to see water  cure tried.
  I took the child,  which was moaning  in pain and fever upon
the mother's lap, and prepared to envelope him  in a wet sheet
as large as his little body.  The grandmother exclaimed, "You
will not put the  child in a sheet wet in cold water?"  I asked
the parents if they were afraid.   They said, No, and the doctor
very kindly assisted in  the envelopment.  Within  five minutes
from  the time that the wet sheet and blankets were  wrapped
about the babe, he slept  a  tranquil, sweet  sleep.  This con-
tinued an hour.   In less than an hour and a half he was taken
out and  put in a tub,  and  pitchers of cold water  poured over
him.   When I took him from this bath the measles were  out
upon him as  thick as snow-flakes in a storm.
  For several days he had two packs a day, and two  in  the
night  also.  Then  he  was put  to bed in a wet night-dress,
which was wet  once  or twice  during  the night,  and _ he  was
often sponged.   A wet bandage was kept  around  his chest,
day and night,  as he had the peculiar cough that  accompanies
measles  badly. 
(JO
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
  In five days he was convalescent, and his recovery was rapid.
  In ordinary cases of measles, I have found two or three visits
enough to put the patient on the sure road to health.
  In whooping-cough I have found water cure equally bene-
ficial.   I have reduced the most violent case of whooping-cough
by one week of constant treatment, so that the cough was not
even an inconvenience.  But to do this we must have thorough
treatment and no child's play.  The pouring bath twice a  day,
two wet-sheet packings, and constant bandaging, will produce
rapid results in this disease, and make it break through  all sci-
entific rules of duration.   Some cases, however, hold the patient
much longer than others, with the same amount of treatment.
  I have treated varioloid and chicken-pox with as entire  suc-
cess as whooping-cough, scarlatina, and  measles.   Th^ treat
ment is substantially the same.
                     CHAPTER VIII.

                  FEMALE  DISEASES.

  To all who are interested or uninterested in water  cure,  I
have something to say;  for all are  interested  in  health.  We
fall little short of the truth when we say, that the whole world
is sick.  I have hesitated somewhat as to what portion of my
experience  I should give to the public in the present volume.
I have decided to speak to women, and mothers particularly,
being satisfied that I cannot  achieve  a higher good  than  to
enlighten these as widely as possible with regard to the condi-
tions of health and disease.   I have endeavored to give plain,
practical, home directions.  Many women are ill and wretched,
and feel life to be a burden instead  of  a blessing, who cannot
go to a water  cure house  to  recover their health.   But they
have  wells  and  springs of pure water at  home.   What they
want  is instruction.  Many of them display a heroism in the
endurance  of  suffering  equal  to that of  Washington or Bona-
parte ; and give them knowledge, and that same heroism will
save them—will  restore them to health and usefulness.
  And for every individual thus relieved,  an added  joy will
spring in my life, whether I know the fact of such relief or not.
" We are members one of another,"  and the universal life-spirit
circulates  in every heart  more freely and joyously,  for every 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
61
new influx of wisdom, and goodness, and  consequent health,
that is received by the world.
   The following directions and cases  are written for my sisters
in all plainness of speech.  I love truth too well to conceal it,
and thus obstruct its blessings.

             PARTICULAR DIRECTIONS TO WOMEN.

   Women have  too long contemplated their diseases as the
atheist  contemplates the world—as coming  without a cause.
There is  much hereditary disease,  and tendency  to disease;
aside from  this,  we are responsible for our illness;  and this
responsibility, which I am now contemplating,  is not removed
from  us because we  are ignorant of the laws and conditions of
health.   If we take poison we are  responsible, whether we do it
ignorantly or advisedly; that is,  the body  is responsible,  and
we cannot escape.   Our ignorance  of physical laws never lessens
our suffering when we  violate them.
   Women have many troubles, of  which they know neither the
cause nor the cure.  They think these things  come upon them
because they are women.
   The most common diseases  of women  are  painful  and ob^
structed menstruation,  fluor albus, and prolapsus uteri.   Pro-
perly speaking, these are all symptoms attendant on a weaken-
ed or prostrated nervous system.
   The causes of these affections are various.   Hereditary dis>
ease comes first,  then  the ignorance and errors of mothers, as
to the training of children;  tight dressing, impeding the circu-
lation of the blood and nervous energy; excessive amativeness
and its indulgence, either social or solitary.   All these  causes,
and many more,  waste  the  vital or nervous power, and the
result is, what are called female diseases, such as  fluor albus,
or whites, obstructed or  painful menstruation, piles, prolapsus
uteri, or falling of the womb,  and general neuralgic affections,
such as tooth-ache,  and  other facial  pains,  pains in the spine,
and a great many  other miserable  aches.
   The question first  to be answered by each woman who  finds
herself suffering from either of the above maladies is—What  is
the cause  of  my disease ?  Is it tight dressing,  improper  food
or drinks,  late hours,  the round of fashionable  dissipation; or
is  it excessive labor,  or mental anxiety, or excessive indulgence
of amativeness ?
   We must not hide from ourselves the fact,  that solitary vice 
62
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
in young persons, and the too great indulgence of amativeness
by married partners, are powerful producing causes of all ner-
vous diseases.  We must look life in the face, and meet its evils.
In all cases of female weakness, the cause or  causes must be
first ascertained and removed;  then  the different  applications
of water are rapid in curing the disease.  In whites, and falling
of the womb, the sitz bath,  vagina syringe,  and wet  compress
about the abdomen,  will often cure without other applications
of water, when the cause is removed.
  Interrupted menstruation is often a cause of great alarm, but
it is only a symptom of weakness,  or  disturbance in  the  vital
economy,  and as soon as the strength is restored, or the disease
overcome, the vital  energy is again  at liberty to cause this se-
cretion.   In  water  cure, menstruation is often suspended for
some months, with much advantage to the patient,  as the ner-
vous power required to produce this fluid is employed in build-
ing up and restoring the body to health, when the menses will
again become regular.
  The different processes of water cure, with the exception of
the douche,  are  passed through at  the period of the menses,
not only with safety to the patient,  but with great advantage.
Ladies have often made inquiry of me relative  to the use of
baths during the menstrual  period,  and I take this method
of replying  to  all at once.   Baths,  with the exception of the
douche, should be used more at this  time, if there is any differ- ■
ence,  than at any other.

                 CASE  OF  UTERINE DISEASE.

  Mrs.-------had been several years afflicted with  falling of
the womb and nervous debility.  She was a woman of great
natural energy, had borne several children, and  felt the strong-
est wish to take proper care of her  family.   But her unfortu-
nate  disease baffled  all  her wishes,  and the skill of the physi-
cians  to whom  she  resorted.   She had constant leucorrhcea,
piles, and pain across the back,  with the dragging-down sen-
sation in  the abdomen and  back,  which so generally attends
prolapsus.   She had also painful and irritating dyspepsia, what-
ever she might  eat.   So capricious  and unhealthy  was her
appetite, that she took whatever she fancied, and suffered ac-
cordingly.
  When she came t.  me for advice,  she said she could not go
from home to a wate  cure house to be treated.   Whatever she 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
63
did,  must be done with such slender means as she could have
at home.   I saw at once  that  I might  trust to her energy,
when once she had the requisite knowledge.
  I gave her advice.  The following is a copy of the directions
in her case.
  Thorough  sponge bath on rising, with much friction  with %
soft flesh brush.
  Put a wet bandage about the abdomen ; pin it quite low, so
as to support the uterus.   Wet this  bandage three or four
times a day.   Mid forenoon take a sitz bath, beginning with
tepid water; take it  fifteen  minutes  and gradually  cool the
water.  In a week use the water cold.  Mid afternoon  repeat
this  bath.   Move the bowels with a  syringe every morning;
use  the vagina  syringe  four times  a day,  injecting a pint of
water each time, cold.
  Eat no pork, fat meat, or gravies ; no pastries, and no con-
diments, except a little salt.
  Drink only cold water.   Eat fruit and  brown bread.  Sleep
on a mattress.  Wear no clothing in the night that you have
worn during the day.  Ventilate your rooms thoroughly.  Make
all your clothing  loose.
  These directions the  lady followed to  the letter.   In a few
weeks an  eruption appeared  upon the  abdomen, which was
succeeded  by a  plentiful  crop of boils,  which  extended over
the  surface  covered  by the wet bandage.  The bowels recov-
ered  their tone  and  regularity.  The piles ceased.   The dis-
tressing leucorrhcea was  cured.   The digestion became good.
The  uterus recovered its  contractile power.  The pain  in the
back, the  languor and weariness  were gone.  In a word, the
patient was well,  and that by a course of domestic treatment,
and in less than five months.

          CASE OF UTERINE  AND NERVOUS DISEASE.

  Mrs.-------, a lady of large brain  and very active temper-
ament.  She was piously educated, and with large benevolence
and conscientiousness, had the most intense desire to be  useful.
But  all her wishes were rendered abortive by the state  of hei
health   In early childhood she became  addicted to the soli-
tary  habit, so prevalent amongst children and  young people,
and so very hurtful,   The result  was, that at  the  period of
maturity there was entire prostration of the tone of the ner-
vous  system.  The uterus  was so weakened, that  there was 
64
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
flooding about three-fourths of the time.  The '.ommencement
of the menstrual illness was marked  by severe pain, and the
dulness,  languor,  weakness,  and  despondency  which  were
present the remainder of the time,  kept the patient much of
the time  confined to her  bed.   I  first saw the patient in the
summer of 1840.  She was then florid from determination of
blood to the head, and  a good deal  bloated from a dropsical
affection, owing to the loss of blood.  A superficial observer
would have  called the lady very  healthy.  The  pupils of the
eyes were much dilated, owing  to the weakness of  the nerves
of vision.   This gave the eyes a very brilliant appearance, and
added to  the general impression that  the  lady  was in  good
health.
   She had attended one of my lectures, in which I spoke of
the effects of solitary vice upon the nervous system.  This was
the first light she had had on the  subject.  She was interested
and appalled.   She seemed to herself to have taken the very
first lesson in self-knowledge.  She immediately came to me for
advice.  With the frankness and  earnestness of a true woman
and a Christian,  she told  me everything  in  her  case that
seemed needful to be known.  I  gave her general  directions,
such  as she could follow  at home.   The principal of  these
were, to lie on a hard bed,  to resolve firmly not to be seduced
into a single repetition of the fatal  practice, to live on simple
diet, to drink only water, and bathe daily.  In the winter of
1846, she again called  on  me.  She had married meanwhile,
but had not waited till her  strength  was restored.  The conse-
quence was, she had suffered a  miscarriage in  an  advanced
stage  of pregnancy, and was reduced to great weakness.  Her
state was about the same as when I  first  saw her.   This con-
dition of  weakness and uselessness, to one who has the nature
of an apostle, who would do and suffer all things  to make the
world better, was very terrible.   If  she only had  been obliged
to submit to suffering and  privation in consequence of her ill-
ness, she would have borne it very patiently, but the sting of
her disease was that  it hindered her from doing the good that
her heart continually impelled her to do.
   I was greatly affected by the earnestness and  loveliness of
spirit, and at the same time, the utter powerlessness of this
dear lady.   I recommended her  to  come at once  under full
water treatment at my house.  She came, and began immedi-
ately to gain strength.   She went on  progressing very rapidly
for some time, when she became pregnant.  She then returned 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
65
home and kept up mild treatment, suited to her state, till the
seventh month of pregnancy, when she was seized with whoop-
ing-cough.  Thinking it only a cold, she neglected to call on
me till she became very bad ; she then  came to me.  At this
period I never saw whooping-cough so violent.   The accessions
of the cough were such, that I feared miscarriage momentarily.
I put her under treatment, which consisted principally of a suc-
cession  of wet sheets  and pouring baths.  In  one week the
cough was so far cured, that it was not even an  inconvenience.
But the concussion of the cough had been  too  violent for the
weakened  and delicate uterus.   She was taken with labor in
another week, when seven  and a half months  advanced, and
bore one dead and one living child.  The labor was four and a
half hours, and very severe.   The birth of the children was
greatly complicated by the rupture of the membranes, which
occurred at the very commencement of the  labor, and the fact
that there was unnatural  presentation with both.  A quarter
of an hour after the birth, she was washed  in cold water, and
slept.   The  next  day she arose and walked to the sitz bath,
and after the bath she sat up some time.
   The lingering illness of the infant was a very  great injury to
her  health,  as she exerted herself  greatly in its  care.  Its
death occurred after some weeks, and  then she immediately
recovered her strength  by the proper application of water.
   The  year after, she bore another  child, with comparatively
light suffering.  She was able  to walk  to  the  cold bath the
next  day after the birth  of this child, and to  go out of her
room in one week.  She now enjoys excellent health.

        CASE OF  RUPTURE ANBf PREMATURE DELIVERY.

   The following case is illustrative of the terrible sufferings to
which women are liable from their diseases, and the malprac-
tice of  physicians ; and though in some of  its features it is of
an extraordinary character, it is but one  of  hundreds, in  which
women unnecessarily suffer, first from their own ignorance of
the laws of their being, and next from  the deplorable and in-
excusable quackery of pretenders to medical science.
   Mrs. D., a lady of New York, was afflicted with  inguinal
hernia (rupture in the groin), during the seventh month of her
pregnancy.  The  family physician was consulted, and instead
of using the proper means for reducing the hernia, he decided
that it could n)t be done without first bringing on labor,  which 
66
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
he proceeded to attempt by the administration of ergot!   The
operation of this poison upon a diseased nervous  system, was
terrible and disastrous.   The unnaturally excited efforts of  the
uterus to expel the foetus, did not produce the desired effect,
but brought on the most frightful convulsions, and after three
days of indescribable sufferings, the whole system stink, and the
action of the uterus entirely ceased, nor could the deadly ergot
excite it to another effort.  At this stage the foetus was extract-
ed with instruments.
  After this scene of wrong and outrage, in which this deli-
cate,  diseased,  and nervous lady had been  a  victim, and  in
which she had suffered  a thousand deaths, besides the wholly
needless murder of her  offspring, I was called to attend her in
a second pregnancy.  Her recent sufferings  had weakened an
already diseased constitution, and the retchings and vomitings
were  so severe as to threaten abortion.   She was treated with
the half pack in  the wet sheet, constant fomentations of wet
linen  to the stomach, sitz baths, and injections.   In a week  the
sickness of the stomach was gone.  In  the seventh month of
pregnancy the  intestine again  descended, and  symptoms of
miscarriage appeared.   Pressure  immediately reduced the rup-
ture, a wet bandage  and wet compress  were applied, and se-
cured so as to fit properly.  The  half pack was again resorted
to.   The  nervous  system  was thus soothed, and strength re-
stored.   The patient, from being  in much suffering and unable
to sit up at all, became  very comfortable in health, and able to
sit up, and walk about without any inconvenience.
  Those who had  recommended doctors, and trusses, and med-
icines, were greatly disappointed and  troubled,  when they saw
her supported by a simple compress and bandage, fashioned of
cloth, (properly, of course,) and saw her pain relieved, and her
strength restored, and only by the aid of water in its various
applications.
  The delight of my patient at this happy change may be easily
imagined, for  the  remembrance  of her  former  sufferings was
awfully vivid, and  no persuasions could induce  her again to
trust  herself in  the hands  of a  physician, though but few,
holding the same rank  in  the regular  profession,  it is to be
hoped, would treat a case of hernia with  ergot and a miscar-
riage.   For the honor of humanity, it is to be hoped that more
would vote for the indictment of such a practitioner, than would
defend his practice.
  I attended the case to its termination.   A constant and per« 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
67
severing application of the proper processes of water cure in-
creased the health and strength of the patient.  Her labor was
attended with  but little suffering, and no inconvenience from
the rupture ;  and she was able to leave her room on  the third
day after delivery, and  mother and child have got on as well
as could be desired.
  Those who accuse water cure physicians  of speaking harshly
of the poisonings and malpractices of allopathic doctors, need
but to be acquainted with such facts as the above,  to sympa-
thize  with us in our impatient feelings, and with their abused
patients in their needless sufferings.

INFLAMMATION  AND  ULCERATION  OF THE UTERUS  AND  RENAL
                          ORGANS.

  Mrs. C. had  been injured in delivery, the os-uteri being torn
on  each side.   She  was very scrofulous, and inflammation of
the uterus,  including the whole renal  system, was the conse-
quence of this  injury.   She was  well-nigh doctored  to death
according to different systems, after the negative good  of ho-
moeopathy had been tried for some time.  The urethra was ulce-
rated through to the vagina,  and  one of her physicians thought
proper to inject into the vagina a strong decoction of capsicum,
(red pepper,) in the  ulcerated state of the parts.  The burning
agony of  the  sufferer during this worse than savage infliction,
may be conceived, but  cannot be described.  When we think
of this most delicate and sensitive portion of woman's organism,
subjected to actual cautery and lavements  of  nitrate  of silver,
(lunar caustic,)  and capsicum, (red pepper,) we see the  need
that  some one speak so that the voice be heard.   This lad/,
a sweet, darling woman,  the idol of her husband and parents,
was given up to die; and  her suffering  was so great that she
could almost look to death with joy, as her only relief.  For ten
months she did not set her foot upon  the ground.   She lay in
hopeless torture a great part of the time, given up by her friends,
and experimented upon by doctors.   At last  some one  recom-
mended  water  cure.  The homoeopathic  physician  who had
attended her,  thought it might be well for her to try it.  But
most  of her friends thought it would be useless, and her mother
said to me,  " If  you cure my daughter,  it will  be a miracle."
I examined the case  carefully when first called, and gave  it  as
my opinion that the lady could  be cured.   I can never forget
the mingled look of suffering and of joy that struggled in the 
68
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
face of this young creature,  when she thought that there was
a possibility that she might be restored to health, to be a bless-
ing to her kind and manly husband, instead of  a burden;  and
that she might once again be a mother to her little ones.  That
look haunted me till the young mother was fairly in my house
and under my care.
  She was treated by wet-sheet packing, sitz baths, injections
of water, fomentations with wet linen,  and a very plain, bland
diet.  Her recovery seemed little short of miraculous.  In one
month she walked two miles with ease, and went home to have
the supervision of her family and continue her cure.  I saw her
a short  time since in excellent health.

                     UTERINE DISEASE.

  Mrs.-------  had been fifteen years  laboring under disease
of the womb,  and general nervous prostration.   The period of
the appearance of  the menses, was always marked with great
pain and violent symptoms of hysteria.   The menses generally
appeared once in three weeks.  The hysterical symptoms were
of such  a violent and convulsive character, that  the patient was
often entirely exhausted by them.
  "She suffered many things of divers physicians, and was
nothing bettered."   Homoeopathy was at last resorted to.  For
a time she seemed much relieved by the prescriptions, and then
she relapsed again into her former greatly suffering state. The
symptoms of  hysteria seemed entirely at variance with  her
general  character and temperament—she being  not at all " ner-
vous,"   or imaginative,  in the usual sense of those terms,  but
possessed  of much energy  of  character, and  calm common
sense.   She saw her  own case  clearly, and  exercised great
self-control, and knew perfectly when she was about  to be over-
come by the convulsive spasms, which  were wearing away her
strength, at once a cause and consequence of her illness.  On
a careful examination, I found the  uterus much diseased—much
prostration in the tone of the nervous system,  and strong ten-
dency to bilious derangement.
  Latterly  the hysterical  symptoms had been somewhat re-
lieved by magnetism.
  She was brought to me by the  advice of  her  physician, in a
very weak state, during the accession of the spasms.  She was
carried to her room by her husband and the physician, being
un?ble  to walk, and  dreading a  recurrence of spasms every 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
69
minute.  I found, by laying my hand  upon her, that I had
magnetic control over her,  quite equal to that exercised by the
magnetizer who had relieved her.   I could calm her when her
mind began  to reel.  I could induce a  sound magnetic sleep
in five minutes,  when she was  lying in convulsions, throwing
over bath  tubs, or tearing her clothes.   When the sleep was
established, she would obey my will by  going to bed,  and re-
maining perfectly still, and apparently sound asleep,  for two
hours.
   The treatment of  this case was complicated and  long  con-
tinued.  It consisted of the following processes administered at
different times, as the symptoms demanded :—
   Tonic wet sheet—wet bandages about the abdomen—the use
of the rectum and vagina syringe—sitz baths—the douche and
sweating blankets.  The first month of the treatment was greatly
beneficial.  All the bad symptoms were relieved.   The uterine
evils, such as a distressing  prolapsus, leucorrhcea, and sinking
faintness at the pit of the stomach, with occasional vomiting,
were all abated.  These symptoms  had  been so  severe as  to
be  almost intolerable.   But in one  month's treatment they
were all abated so as be quite endurable.
   The suffering at each succeeding menstrual illness decreased,
until she  was  able to pursue  her  ordinary  avocations at that
period with slight suffering.
   In a year her health was so far established,  that she might
much more properly have called herself well, than nine out of
ten who do so.   Still she continues portions  of  the treatment.
Her case is a constant surprise to those who  have known her
sufferings these many years; and the incredulous in water cure
amuse themselves by prophecying that it cannot last, and  that
she will sink back after a time into the miserable way in which
she formerly lived.   Those who  know what water cure  can
effect, have no such fears.

           SPINAL DISEASE AND PROLAPSUS  UTERI.

  The following notes were given me to prepare a notice of the
«*ase fi om them.  I think it better that the patient should speak
for herself.
               " Report of Myself by Myself
   " I  was twenty-seven years of age when I placed myself
under Mrs. Gove's care.  I had been  ill nearly six years with 
70
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
disease of the  spine.  My  medical treatment was cupping,
blistering, wearing plasters, liniments, &c, with the use of Sar-
atoga Water for two months.   I became better, but after some
months the  disease appeared  again, and extended the  whole
length of  the spine.  At first it had been confined to the region
of the shoulder.   I had also prolapsus uteri.   I suffered great
pain, could take no exercise without palpitation of the  heart.
I had a severe cough, pain in  the  chest and side, with  entire
loss of appetite.   I resided for three months under Dr. Brew-
ster's care in New York.  While there my disease was checked.
On its  reappearance, I tried homoeopathy  without effect.   In
the fall of 1846, I went to Mrs. Gove's water cure house, with
all my former symptoms in an  aggravated state.  The faithful
use of the wet sheet, douche, sitz bath, and plunge bath, with
vegetable  diet, and gymnastic exercises, for four months, so far
restored my health, that I was able to return home.  Since my
return I have  continued  to use the plunge, douche, and sitz
baths.   My health has steadily improved, and now (Aug. '47,)
I am entirely free from  pain, and call myself  well,  though still
obliged to be more careful of my health than before my illness.
I attribute my recovery to  the water cure  alone.  No other
course of  treatment is, in my opinion, so  worthy of confidence,
so certain  of  siuvess.
  " I am not suiv, dear Mrs.  Gove, that I have written all you
wish—I have made a plain statement of  facts and trust to you
to put  it  "ship shape."  Thanks  to you, dear friend,  I  am
quite well.  What a glorious mission is yours to relieve  so much
suffering.  You will have  the satisfaction of  a well spent life,
and the grateful love of many a sufferer relieved by your care.
  " To all invalids I recommend the Water Cure, and my father,
made a convert by my case, brings in people  to talk with me,
and the family laugh  at my eloquence.   I am rejoiced to hear
that you are doing so much good—I wish I could  walk in, and
breakfast with you.   The oatmeal would have a relish.  I am
a pretty good girl about my diet.  Whenever I transgress, I pay
the penalty,  and  under the  infliction make many resolves for
the future."

              ULCERATION OF  THE  WOMB, &C

  Mrs.----had been a very free liver—with every want min-
istered to.  Her health being  delicate, and her life monotonous,
having  a large fortune, and  no occasion for  exertion,  she be- 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
K-
 eame  depressed in  spirits.  This form of illness was met by
 her husband with excessive indulgence.   She was petted until
 she became like a sick and spoiled child.   Under  these condi-
 tions her husband died suddenly.  The blow fell on the weak and
 sickly wife with stunning power.  She was completely miserable.
   Her physician unfortunately saw fit to  meet her  difficulties
 with brandy and laudanum.   She  took them until  she felt
 unable to live but under their influence.  Meanwhile her health
 sank frightfully.  (Confirmed Leucorrhea, and ultimately ulcera-
 tion of the womb, with the most  offensive discharges, was her
 portion.)   She continually assuaged, and increased her misera-
 ble disease by taking brandy and  opium, and  finally morphine.
 She was reduced to the weakness of an infant, and her suffer-
 ing could hardly find a parallel in  the  regions below, or in any
 state,  or  place  that we  can imagine.  At this juncture she
 heard  of Water Cure.  It is very strange that one in such a con-
 dition  should have courage to rise from such a bed of torment,
 and at the same time stupefaction, and  go  to a Water Cure
 House.  But this patient's natural energy and understanding
 are seldom equalled.  At a time  when she was a little better,
 she resolutely made her preparations, and without taking even
 a servant, she came to me.  She told me her whole life, and
 all her sorrows, and temptations.   She renounced every hurt-
 ful thing at once, and went into forcible water treatment.  In
 a week the abdomen was  covered with a  purple efflorescence.
 In  a month she had forty biles on the back and abdomen.   Her
 strength increased  continually and there  seemed not even  a
 wish for  brandy or opium in  any form.   Her recovery was
 gradual, but sure.  Nearly two years elapsed before her health
 could be called really good, though  in a few  months she was
 quite as well as most people, who  tell us that  they enjoy good
 health.
  The recovery of the tone and elasticity of her spirits, and her
 moral freedom from  habits thai she abhorred, though she had
 seemed to herself to be hopelessly enslaved  by them, was to
 her  the most  important portion of  her cure.   Life  became a
 boon for which she could thank heaven, instead of being a bit-
 ter curse.

               INFLAMMATION OF  THE UTERUS.

  The  inflammation in this case  was very violent, and accom-
panied with spinal irritation.  There was  much general weak- 
72
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
ness and indigestion—pain in the back and abdominal region,
a sense of sinking at the stomach,  with inability to hold the
body upright.   Patient could walk very  little.   The treatment
consisted  of  wet sheet packing on alternate days,  and douche
intermediate  days—sitz  bath  and  abdominal  bandage, wet
often—and strict diet.  In three months she considered herself
well.  No perceptible crisis.

                     UTERINE DISEASE.

  Mrs.-------had disease of the womb.   Dr. Cheeseman had
pronounced it ulceration of the womb.  There was general de-
rangement of the  nervous system,  and  the head was affected
with a painful congestion and confusion.   The eyes were almost
useless.   She was not able to read or pay continuous attention
to anything.  The only kind of work she could do was knitting.
She  was so afflicted with general nervousness as to be unable
to see company, and sometimes  felt compelled to lock herself
into  her room and see no  one,  such was her extreme nervous
susceptibility.   She commenced treatment in the winter  of
1847.   In less than a year she was entirely well.

                         SYPHILIS.

  The following case must serve as a representative of a  class.
I cannot be willing to give such  cases.   It is very painful to
make such records, and  only my wish  to spread light, and
ameliorate suffering,  could induce me to do it.
  Mrs.-------had been for a considerable time separated from
her husband,  for what seemed good and sufficient reasons.  In
an evil hour she was persuaded again to  live  with him.  Not
long after she came  to me for advice, having as she supposed
the worst  form of leucorrhcea.   She watched  my countenance
as she told me her symptoms, and seeing me look very grave,
as I  could hardly avoid, she begged to  know if she had the
" bad disorder."  I evaded her question, telling her that what-
ever her disease was, I could cure it.  She said it was not pos-
sible for her  to  remain  with me—her home was at a distance,
and she must be there.  I then wrote for her careful directions.
Her  sufferings from the inflammation of  the uterus and vagina,
the  constant  and  excoriating discharge, were  intense.  I was
not able  to treat  the case as I wished,  but I gave the best
advice I could under the circumstances. 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
73
   In the first place I put her upon a diet of bread and fruit,
with a little milk, and only cold water for a drink.
   She slept on a hard bed, enveloped around the  abdomen in
four folds  of wet linen, with a dry covering over  these.  She
took a wet sheet pack an hour  in  the forenoon, and had pails
of water poured over her during the day.   She used the sitz
bath  twice a day, for  half an hour, and the vagina syringe
many times in the day.   She  wore also  wet bandages during
the day about the  abdomen.  In  six weeks the  disease was
conquered  and cast out.  The application of  the four folds of
wet 1-inen about  the abdomen and the inflamed portion during
the night, was probably as efficient  for the cure as any portion
of the means used, if hot more so.
   She had been told that she could not possibly recover with-
out the application of caustic, but  the event  proved that this
was not true.

                  DIABETES  AND PRURIGO.

   I have treated both these diseases most successfully by wa-
ter,  but the limits of this work will not allow of  any lengthy
notice  of cases.
   The last case  of  diabetes was relieved in  two  weeks; the
patient's strength restored, and the  quantity of water was natu-
ral in three months.
   Prurigo being a symptom of general depravation of the blood,
and the presence  of much morbid matter in the system,  is a
disease that  requires time, and generally a  large amount of
treatment.   I have found the time required for a cure  to vary
from one month to a year, or more.
                      CHAPTER  IX.

        WATER CURE IN  GESTATION AND  PARTURITK)N.

  One of the most important and wonderful uses  of water is
to promote health during gestation, and  to  diminish the pains
of parturition.   Many will not believe that  an immunity may
be obtained from a large portion of  the suffering of childbirth.
But why not ?   Gestation and parturition are as natural func-
tions as those  ol digestion,  and unless the nerves be diseased, 
74             EXPERIENCE IN  WATER  CURE.
we know we can digest our food without pain, and  we know
also  that we have intense suffering when they are diseased.
A luxurious civilization  increases all diseases,  and particularly
those of gestation and  parturition.  The common Irish, the
middle  classes  of the Scotch,  the  Indians, the slaves at the
south, and others who might be mentioned, have little suffering
in child-bearing.
  The Indian woman  bears her babe,  washes  herself and her
infant in the next running stream,  and the travelling party to
which she belongs seldom waits more  than half a day for her.
Why this  exemption from suffering ?   God has made  of one
blood all the people who dwell on the face of the  earth.   Then
why should one  class  be afflicted with  suffering a thousand
times bitterer than death, whilst  another class is entirely ex-
empt from such  misery ?  The Indian woman is subject to
many hardships,  but tight lacing and breathing impure air are
not among them; and the exhausting influence of the  undue
indulgence of amativeness, social and solitary, which a luxurious
and voluptuous civilization causes and perpetuates, is unknown
amongst the Indians, and all people who are exempt from the
sufferings of birth.   The great truth must be uttered in the
ear of the nations, that exhaustion of the nervous system, either
from  being  born of  weak and diseased parents,   from  undue
labor, or licentiousness, is the great one cause of suffering in
gestation and parturition.   And let it be known that marriage
does not change the kiws of  the human constitution.  Licen
tiousness is the same  with or  without  the marriage sanction
Women attempt to give life to children  when they have no*
half enough for themselves.  The consequences to the childrep
I have detailed in my chapter on Infant Mortality.   The conse-
quence to the mother is a suffering to which  the  rack or thf
fire could add little poignancy.
  The course to be pursued to obtain immunity from suffering'
in child-bearing, is, to restore the integrity of  the  nervous sys-
tem.  Give tone  or strength to the nerves,  and you take awaj
suffering just in proportion as  you  do this.
  The treatment  I have adopted, most generally, in pregnancy,
has been daily wet sheet packing,  which is a powerful tonic to
the nerves.   The patient has remained in this  pack till a warm
glow was  established over the whole body.  This is usually
accomplished in an hour and a half, and sometimes in half that
time.  They have sometimes  used  the  plunge  bath, and some-
times the dripping sheet after the  pack.  The sitz bath  once 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
15
or twice a day, cold water enemas to keep the bowels open,
if  inclined to costiveness,  and vaginal injections of cold water,
particular .attention to diet, pure air,  and  exercise, have  also
been carefully enjoined.   Peculiar cases have  needed peculiar
treatment, but the above treatment has been used in a majority
of cases.
   The consequence has  been, that the duration of labors under
my care has been from 20 minutes to 4£ hours.  With one ex-
ception I have had no labor over 4-^- hours.  Ladies who have
had long and severe labors before they came under water treat-
ment, have had their time of suffering reduced from 48 hours
to one hour, and in several instances the time of labor has been
reduced  to a few minutes.  These are facts that the world is
interested in knowing.
   A few days since I was called to a lady who had been treat-
ing herself according to the principles she had learned at my
Lectures.  Her labor was very light, and  was from 20 to 30
minutes in  duration, for the disagreeable feeling she had occa-
sionally had for an hour previous, could  not  be called labor.
She went immediately into a  cold bath, and  then was laid  in
bed.   She was told  to  take  a daily morning bath, and  two
sitz baths a day ;  to wear the cold abdominal  compress, and to
go about the house  on the third  day.   In  a large obstetric
practice for  years I have  known no ill effect  from this treat-
ment.  All my patients without one exception have been  able
to go into the cold bath,  and walk the  day after the birth,  to
be about the  house the first week, and all  with one exception
Dave  been able  to ride  out in a week or two.  I  have had a
patient who when her babe was one week old  spent an hour in
a  park at some distance from  her home,  walking  about  with
her other children.  I was recently called to a lady who had
been  many years married without children, and whose health
till she came  under water cure some  two years  since,  was
wretched in the extreme.   She was advanced in years so as to
justify us in supposing that she would suffer a good deal.   She
was faithful in treatment and became very strong. Her labor was
light.  She was bathed after the birth, wore the wet bandage,
and was  about the house in a week as if nothing had occurred.
   My practice  at the period of birth is as follows: when the
delivery is perfectly accomplished, which includes of course the
placenta, I allow  the woman to rest for ten minutes.  I  then
with a vagina syringe throw a quart of cold  wTater upon the
uterus.   This greatly facilitates its contraction, and gives im- 
76
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
munity from after pains, which are caused by the efforts of th«
uterus to contract; and  it is a law that diseased nerves give
pain in contracting.  This  ready contraction of the uterus se-
cures the woman against flooding and prolapsus.   As soon as
I have thus used the syringe I  put  a broad bandage wrung
from  cold water around the abdomen, and  pin it closely, com-
pressing  the abdomen. I then wash the woman thoroughly in
cold water with a sponge or wet towel and change her  clothes,
and  put  her in bed.  She  generally sleeps six  hours.   When
she wakes she rises and goes into a  sitz bath  and is bathed
over  the whole surface, and has a fresh bandage.   She is able
to walk and sit  up,  for a  time after  this bath, in ninety-nine
cases out of a  hundred.
   Several cases have been given in the last chapter, in which
pregnancy was attended by female diseases ;  and a few more
are here  added.   Where the results  are constantly the same,
there is little need of accumulating cases.

       WATER CURE DURING GESTATION.--CASE FIRST.

   Mrs.-------had been for a long time in delicate health, and
had borne one infant, which died soon after its birth.   She hac
passed through great suffering in  this confinement, and when
she again found herself pregnant, she  concluded to  try the
water cure.
   She came under treatment and remained two months, daily
improving.  At  the end  of this  time,  she  felt  so strong and
well,  that she  concluded to go into the country.  There she was
obliged entirely  to suspend her treatment.  When her  preg-
nancy was five months  advanced, she unfortunately  suffered
an injury which  was sufficiently violent to separate a portion of
the placenta from  the uterus.  The consequence was the death
of the child,  and violent  hemorrhage.  I was called, and by
sitz baths, bandages, and injections, I succeeded in arresting the
flooding  for the time.   But it soon returned  and labor com-
menced,  but the contractions of  the uterus were without pain.
The child was born, with  a very slight degree  of  suffering ;
flooding  was entirely prevented by the use of the vagina syringe,
with ice  water, and a close wet bandage.   The patient imme-
diately recovered,  and 'n a  few weeks  was able to go again into
the country. 
EXPERIENCE IN WATEA CURE.              77
                       CASE SECOND.

  Mrs.-----— came under treatment during pregnancy.  The
confinement was attended with very little suffering.  Some of
the family, including herself, had suffered from chills and fever.
She seemed after the birth of her child to be almost as well as
if nothing had occurred, but the third day she was seized with
fever  and ague.  The  fact that she had been in cold baths
daily  since the birth of her child, and had also been sitting up,
and walking about,  alarmed some of the  family.  However,
she remained firm, and the  unwelcome and intrusive company
of chills and fever,  met a very cold reception.  She was treat-
ed with a succession of  wet  sheet  sweatings and baths, and in
four days  the  enemy was  expelled, and the family convinced
that the disease came as it had come to the rest of the family,
and to Mrs.-------previously, and that it was not caused but
cured by the water treatment.

                        CASE THIRD.

  Mrs.-------had been the mother of one child, and had had
a miscarriage.   She was of a scrofulous family, and had suffer-
ed a good deal from scrofula.  She had also  nervous prostra-
tion and  a falling of the womb, and  was altogether  in a very
poor state of health, when she became convinced of the virtues
of water cure.   She was pregnant when she commenced treat-
ment.  She had been a great sufferer in  her previous confine-
ments, and of  course, felt very anxious to escape, if possible, a
portion at least of the suffering which she had hitherto suppos-
ed inevitable.   She began treatment  earnestly.  She  was daily
enveloped in the wet  sheet, till a thorough glow of  heat was
established over the system.   She had a pouring  bath,  or
dripping sheet when she came  out of the  pack.   She wore a
wet bandage constantly about the abdomen, and took sitz baths,
and used the vagina syringe.   She drank only water,  and lived
simply.
  The consequence of this  course  of treatment, continued up
to the time she was confined, was very marked.  Her  child was
born in the night, and the day previous  she had  been in the
wet sheet, and  taken  her other baths as usual.   She was ill
about twenty minutes, and the child, a fine boy, was born with
three  pains.  She rested for a time after delivery, and then was
thoroughly bathed and  dressed, an : went  to bed.  She slept 
•78
EXPERIENCE IN WATKtv CURE.
well.   The  next morning  she arose  and walked to the bath
with ease, took  a sitz and sponge bath, and went across the
room to look at her babe, then sat down in her  arm-chair for
some fifteen minutes.   She had no ill turn, but went rapidly up
to full health, and has since enjoyed very much better health
than at any former period

                       CASE  FOURTH.

   The last birth that I attended was really a very pleasant oc-
currence.   The mother of the babe  had been under her own
care during the period of  gestation.  She  had attended many
of my lectures, and was well informed.   Though by no means
a strong woman,  she manages so well,  that she enjoys a good
deal of health.  She iias been for years a vegetable eater, and
a hydropathist.   I  did not know of her pregnancy till I was
called to deliver her.   When I reached  her, she had been con-
scious that  her labor had  commenced for about  two  hours.
But she could only be said to suffer about twenty minutes, and
then very little.
   The babe was a fine boy, and the mother was bathed in cold
water about ten minutes after the birth,  and a wet bandage was
put about the abdomen.  She was directed  to take a cold bath
in the morning, and two sitz baths a day, and  to  go about  the
house as soon as she felt disposed to  do so.   Her knowledge,
and  simple  and natural  habits, made this  allowance perfectly
safe for her.   Where the uterus is made to  contract by throw-
ing cold water upon it, with  the syringe directly after birth,
and this contraction is secured by a :lose wet bandage ; where,
moreover, the tone of the whole  nervous system is high, from
good  habits  and tonic water treatment, a patient may safely,
and  even with advantage, take  an amount of  exercise, that
would be surely fatal to  a  patient suffering .from an exhausted
nervous system,  the consequence of the  uses and abuses of the
life usually lived by women.
   In most cases of birth, the uterus  is  so weakened that very
little contractile power is left in it.   The relaxed organ cannot
restore itself to  its natural and  true position,  owing to  the
weakness of  the nerves.  And its feeble efforts at  contraction
are attended  by intolerable pains, called " after pains,"  and
which are very common.  The organ sinks down,  and  if  the
patient stands upon her feet, the  open  blood vessels pour  out
the fcuntain of her life, and if she does  not flood to death,  she 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
79
is greatly weakened  by the  loss of blood, and permanent fall-
ing of  the womb is the consequence.
  I would have no one attempt to do the  works  of the water
cure patient, without having first strengthened and  qualified
the body for the undertaking.   A fatal failure  will  be very
likely the  result if  they make  the attempt.   But  I  would
earnestly ask all women to look at these facts,  and to ponder
them till they influence their lives.
  Any person who wishes information respecting this interest-
ing subject, can know the names and residences of the patients
whose cases I  have given, and can see  and converse  with
them.
                      CHAPTER X.

               WATER CURE  IN  CONSUMPTION.

  To me life seems valuable only when  we use  it for good—
when we make the world  better and  happier by living.   The
calm  of domestic life is the lovely and desirable  sphere of wo-
man—and  not less  desirable to me  than to others.  But its
calm, its peace, its  happiness is invaded by a fell destroyer;
a most insidious enemy is lurking in its midst, and the loveliest
flowers  fade and wither,  and drop into dust  daily,  before our
eyes—and those to whom they are fairest and dearest, can do
nothing to save them.  Shall I live for myself at such a time ?
Shall I ask for quiet, and the cool shade of domestic life, when
I have truth that can save many, if I will but bring  it  to the
people ?   Many will accept it—a few may criticise and  grieve
me,  and make me wish at times  that I  had no name, so  that
these could not speak it;  but the blessing of  one life saved for
years of happiness and usefulness,  will  repay me for  any mis-
understanding or criticism.
  I confess  that I would willingly have done and suffered much,
rather than appear in this manner before the public.  But the
belief that a great good is to  be  accomplished  by bringing this
subject before fathers, and mothers, and sisters,  has reconciled
me.   I do not wish to die  with one  duty  unfulfilled.   The
sweetest flowers of Paradise  would  be  less sweet to  me, ^ and
their beautiful hues would be darkened and stained in my sight,
if I could look back to earth and see one pang endured that 
80
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
 I might have removed, and replaced with a joy.  The balmiest
 bliss of Heaven would fall freezing on my heart, if I had made
 the earth more dark,  or even less bright,  by a life of selfish-
 ness.
   God help me to live for others, that I may truly live for
 myself.
   Let me commence this subject  by the statement of one ap-
 palling fact.  Every week, from thirty  to fifty persons die of
 Consumption in the city of New York.  In some sections of the
 country, the disease is still more fatal, and  the number  of
 deaths  in New York may be considered as a fair indication of
 its average mortality.
   The  characteristic symptoms  of Pulmonary  Consumption
 vary very considerably.   In some cases the cough is slight, and
 the quantity of matter expectorated is  very small.    In other
 cases the cough is violent, and the  expectoration of purulent
 matter is large.   Some cases are attended  by profuse bleeding
 from the lungs;  some have slight bleeding, and some none at
 all.  In some cases there is much pain and difficulty of breath-
 ing, and much fever.  All these symptoms are milder in many
 cases.
  The organ of Hope seems strangely stimulated in most cases
 i)f Consumption; and  the decay  is  so gradual, and the fever
 so simulates  the  hue of health,  that often,  very often, both
 patients and friends are deceived almost to the last hour.
  Oh, it is dreadful to see decline and death so beautiful—to
 see a beloved child, or  partner,  or brother,  or sister, surely
 sinking into the grave,  with the mind as clear and brilliant  as
 in  firmest health, and to know that no human power can save,
 or even bring  alleviation of the  suffering; and it is often the
 case,  that one after another in a family falls a victim until all
are gone, and the stricken parents are left alone and desolate.
It would seem cruel indeed to say to these parents, You have
destroyed your loved  ones,  if no good  were to be gained by
 the enlightenment.
  I sympathise with those who are  bereaved,  and yet I must
speak of the causes of sickness and death.  The people have
too long been  left in ignorance on this subject.  " Mysterious
Providence," and " Inscrutable Dispensation," have  too long
 headed obituaries, when their causes were as  palpable  to those
who could read them, as hanging,  or drowning.  These causes
must  clearly, plainly,  and fearlessly be  set befcre the people.
They must know wha  they do when they rear their  children 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
81
in the midst of wrong and  enervating habite.  They must not
be allowed ignorantly to plunge themselves  and their children
into  evil,  whilst  they pray  to be delivered  from it.  There is
such a thing as unpardonable sin.  It is the sin against  the
Divine Truth—the law that  God has given to govern our com-
plex nature.   If  we hate,  God cannot forgive us.  Whilst we
remain in the state, we must suffer its penalty;  and so  of  the
law that governs our material  nature ;  if we take poison,  we
must suffer the penalty—whether it be the poison of bad air,
or the poison of arsenic.

                  CAUSES OF CONSUMPTION.

   It is the business of this  age, more perhaps, than any that
has preceded  it, to unfold the  causes of things.  The  causes
of consumption often commence with the ancestors of a patient.
We  say such  a  one was born of  consumptive parents, or he
belongs to a consumptive family.  Parents are little aware how
many wrongs they inflict on their children  by wronging them-
selves.  We cannot give away what we  do  not possess.  We
can no more give health to our  children if we have it not4 than
we can give them a fortune  out of poverty.
   As I remarked in  a former chapter,  there  are causes that
determine the  specific character of diseases, that seem to lie
beyond our  ken.  The causes that determine pulmonary con-
sumption seem more obvious than  the causes  that  determine
some other diseases.   We  know  that the  lungs constitute a
very large deterging or cleansing organ.  You all can perceive
that  the lungs act largely in cleansing the system,  by observ-
ing the breath.  If a person is  ill, and especially if the  skin is
in a bad state, there  is  a bad  odor in the  breath, and many
kinds of  poisons  are plainly thrown off through  the  lungs.
The drunkard's breath is proverbial.  The lungs labor to throw
off the poison of  alcohol, and we are made sensible of the fact
by the pungent odor.   Other  poisons are  doubtless exhaled
from the lungs, but being inodorous, we  do  not readily detect
the process.   The lungs then, being a great deterging or clean-
sing  organ, large quantities of morbid matter are conveyed  out
of the system by means of  the lungs.   After  they have thus
labored for a  time, often doing their own work and a large
amount of labor  for the skin, they fail, and  become  diseased.
The  millions of pores in the skin  are the orifices of exhalent
vessels, whose  bushes*  it is to convey away effete, cr hurtful 
82
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
matter from the  system.   If these pores become closed by
diminution of the  vital  power, caused  by excesses and by an
unpardonable neglect of bathing,  and thus cleansing and  vi.i-
fying the skin, the morbid matter  that  should  be thrown off
from the skin is thrown upon the lungs, and especially is this
the case, where there is tendency  to disease of the lungs.   As
I before remarked, the lungs go on laboring for themselves and
the sick skin, till they can no  longer carry off all the morbid
matter.   The consequence is, that it  begins to be deposited in
the parenchyma of the lungs,  at first, in very minute  quanti-
ties.  The first deposition  of matter  in  the lungs, is called
tubercles.  They  are of different  sizes, some of them being of
considerable size,  and others no larger than a pea, or even the
point of a pin.  They go on enlarging for a time, and almost
as if endowed with intelligence, they suppurate, become pus or
matter, as it is termed, and then this  matter can be coughed up
through the trachea.  This process goes on till the lungs are
partially destroyed, and then the blood is of course improperly
formed, as the lungs are not in a  state to perform their func-
tion in vitalizing the  blood, and then the decay of the patient
is rapid, for the system has  to sustain  the  diseased  action in
the lungs  and the  diseasing consequence of half formed blood.
  The first cause  of  consumption is  deficiency of vital energy
from  birth,  or  the  waste of  this energy from  excesses and
abuses.   Whatever  excess  or abuse  weakens or lessens the
amount of vital power, lessens consequently,  the ability of the
human economy to maintain itself in a state of health.  There
are a thousand  bad habits and deteriorating influences in our
common and daily life, aside from the great and acknowledged
causes of  disease  and death, intemperance  and licentiousness.
   Often one of the first causes of consumption has been lacing
the female form—compressing the lungs  till the blood  could
not circulate, and could not therefore come in contact with the
air, and consequently, could not be  vitalized by its union with
oxygen, and could not  throw  off those impurities with which
the blood always  becomes loaded in its passage over the sys-
tem.  By this compression the blood becomes a poison instead
of a healthful and nourishing  fluid.  The  vessels of the lungs
by this pressure, are collapsed and inflamed, and often the pro-
cess of ulceration  is  thus begun.
   When the muscles that support the chest  and  enable  us to
hold ourselves in  an  upright position, are weakened, either  by
compression, or excesses and abuses,  the consequence is a weak- 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
83
ness of  the spine and all the support of the body.  When the
abdominal and dorsal support gives  way from weakness, there
is  a sinking and consequent cramping  in the  position  of the
lungs.   When this occurs,  we  do not  fully innate the  lungs
when we breathe.  Many persons do not inhale more than two-
thirds as much air as their  lungs would contain in an erect or
uncompressed state.   If they  inhale onl)   three-quarters  or
two-thirds  the quantity of air their lungs are capable of re-
ceiving, it is plain they thus defraud themselves of one-quarter
or one-third their vital breath, their very life ;  and this fraud
of  air will produce disease  that  often destroys life in a  com-
paratively short space of time.
   Then when this weakness  in  the  support  of the lungs and
chest is induced, the effort to speak  is made wrong.  There is
no sinking of the voice—there is no strength in it—and speak-
ing, which should be a healthful and invigorating exercise, be-
comes painful, fatiguing, and  diseasing  to the lungs, and often
congestion and bleeding of the lungs is  caused by the cramped
position of the chest, and the wrong effort made in speaking.
There is no ease to ourselves or others when  the effort to speak
is made in  the  chest and throat.   A low abdominal effort in
speaking is healthful and invigorating.
   The  silvery voice so much  praised in women, has often its
origin  in tight  dressing  and consequent weakness, though at
times, it comes from habit and imitation, and affectation becomes
a disease.
   Of  the causes that induce consumption, there is first, weak-
ness from birth; second, all  the diseasing influences of civic
life.  Though their name is legion, we must still attempt to
particularize some of them.
   The  ignorance of the  public on  the subject of health and
disease, is nowhere  more clearly seen  or  more  mischievously
felt, than in the bad treatment of babies.  People do not know
how to treat them, they  do  not  deserve them, and in multi-
tudes  of instances,  they are taken away from their ignorant
 care-takers who have killed them with kindnoss, and the parents
wonder at  the  mysterious  Providence.   During  three months
of last year, 2,586 children in  this city, died under  five years
 of age, and doubtless  many of their  parents  wondered why
 Providence saw fit to afflict them by taking their children.  The
 true wonder is  n:>t why so many children die, but why so many
 live.
    The first food of  an infant is the  milk of a sick mother, more 
84             EXPERIENCE  IN  WATER CURE.
suited  to the production  of  disease than the sustentation of
life.   The first air it breathes is the pent up  and impure air of
the sick room; the first clothes  it wears  are much more re-
markable for prettiness than  comfort, and perhaps it is bound
as tightly at the mother has  been before it, and many people
are as much afraid of putting a baby in a  bath, as if it were
made of sugar  and  were sure to melt under the operation.
With all these evil and diseasing influences, if the baby com-
plains or gets sick, it is silenced  with a dose of paregoric or
laudanum,  or other poison.  If the child is  not carried off by
disease or medication at an early age, the foundation of future
disease is laid in the constitution.  Then come  the diseases of
childhood,—measles, chicken pox, scarlatina, whooping cough,
dll of which are perfectly shorn  of  their  terrors, to children
reared with the  diet  and  regimen of water  cure.  With these
disorders there comes a course of  drugging,  domestic or other-
wise, and the child comes forth from  the sick chamber, if alive,
often like a withered  or blasted flower.  I exempt homoeopathy
from all censure of  this  kind. The homceopathist poisons no
child,—he allows his patients to get  well, if  they can, with ra-
tional diet  and kindly care.   As to  his medicine, it seems to
me about like the little end of nothing whittled to a point, and
then split  and  sharpened.  But  for one, I say a blessing on
homoeopathy.
   With allopathic medication  I have so  often heard  mothers
say  of their pale,  sickly children, " My child had the measles,
or the scarlet fever, or something else, and the disorder did not
leave him  well,  and  he has never been well since."   Neither
disease nor drugs have left the child, but both remain,  perhaps
to lay the  foundation of consumption in mature life, or perhaps
to swell the overwhelming mortality  among  children.
   If children escape the nursery and its medication, they must
be vaccinated and sent to school.   Vaccination  is considered
a great  blessing,  and so it may be with  the present habits of
society,  if  pure vaccine virus  can be procured;  but I  hesitate
not  to say, that the virus of  the most deadly diseases is intro-
duced into  the veins  of  children by impure vaccine matter.
This is a terrible subject.   It would take more than one chapter
to do it justice.   I do not know how the matter of vaccination
is managed here,  but I do know that in Boston a physician is
paid for vaccinating all the children.   They are brought to him,
and he vaccinates them, and says to  all, whatever taint of scro-
fula or  other horror may be in the blood, " Come again when 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
85
the pustule  is  full;" and he takes the matter and inoculates
fresh victims with  it, and this work of diseasing the public goes
on at the public expanse, from month to month, and from year
to year.
   It may  be asked  whether I vaccinate.  I do, but I do not
use vaccine matter from persons with scrofulous or still worse
diseases.
   With the school comes often crowding and bad air, although
I believe the school-houses in New-York are better ventilated
than almost  any others.  Great improvements are being made
in this respect, but a vast  deal  remains to be done.   I went
some years since into a school-house in Baltimore,  built on an
improved plan, with  a great numbei of ventilators in the ceiling
over head.   It was winter, and every one of the ventilators was
carefully closed, by  fastening sheets of pasteboard over them.
With true Yankee economy they were  saving the  heat.  But
what are we to expect of  people who  do not know the consti-
tuents  of air,  or the relation it bears to the lungs ?  Many do
not know that the air we breathe is deprived of its  oxygen for
the support of the blood by every breath we inhale,  and that no
air is fit for respiration a second time.   We render several gal-
lons of air unfit for respiration every  minute; and ventilation
must be in proportion to  this depravation, and no one is safe
unless  it is.  But bad  air is found everywhere.   It is in  our
homes,  in our schools, it is constant at church; thus churches,
no less than steamboats, railroad cars,  all public conveyances,
theatres, concerts,  &c. &c. are almost all manufactories of disease
and death,  by their want of proper ventilation.
   At school, children very generally sit in a cramped position.
This impedes free inhalation of  air, and becomes a source of
disease and often consumption.
   There are abuses and excesses  in youth  and maturer year*
of which I cannot now speak,  but  which it has been a portion
of the mission which God has given me to fulfil, to bring before
mothers.  The numbers of ignorantly  and wilfully licentious
have glutted the  ranks of lunacy, idiocy, consumption, and
death.   But day has dawned upon  the nations, and those who
dare to speak truth are  neither stoned,   sawn  asunder,  or slain
with the edge of the sword.  The good and the true form an
impenetrable phalanx about them, and if any wish to speak evil
of them for their labor of love,  they are awed into silence by a
public sentiment as honorable as it is pure and truthful. ^
  There, are  a  thousand errors  that I might particularize if I 
86
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
had time.   I might spaak of the health-destroyir/g trades and
occupations of  men and women who labor for their bread,  at
once preserving and destroying life ;  and I might speak of the
hurried, anxious life of our men of business—men who live by
steam, every moment dreading the boiler's collapse, but time
fails to number evils in civilization;  they are countless as the
sands of the sea shore.
   I must speak, however, of the evil of a neglect of  bathing—
of  proper attention to  the  skin.   The skin is an immense de-
terging or cleansing organ;  its myriads of pores are the mouths
of  exhalent vessels which should convey morbid and worn-out
matter continually from the system.   If the skin does  not per-
form  its functions, some other organ  or  organs  has to  do its
work—just as many a hard-working man works himself  to death
to support an idle family, or a lot of loafers who have got con-
trol of his  labor.
   It is often true of  patients who come under my care, that
when once their pores are opened by  bathing,  the exhalations
in this first action of the skin are so very offensive,  that it is
almost impossible for  me to  remain near them during the  appli-
cations of the treatment;  and when the skin is excited by the
treatment to throw off the diseasing matter that has been afflict-
ing the lungs  or other viscera,  the patient has at times very
bad boils  and  even abscesses;  though with careful treatment
we avoid this sort of crisis much more  than in the first  days of
water  cure, when the patient ate everything,  and was treated
sometimes  at randon, the only condition being that the  treat-
ment should be severe  enough.   Still there are cases where
we cannot avoid producing these  boils and abscesses.   It must
be seen from this, that the regular and due performance  of the
functions of the skin is all important in the preservation of health
and in recovery from disease.
   The constant and daily practice of bathing ourselves  and oui
children, should be considered a religious duty.  A bath  is not
only a comfort  and decency,  but it is indispensable to health.
We would  not  appear  in company  with unwashed face and
hands;  we ought to feel quite as much ashamed of neglecting
a thorough bath as of neglecting to wash the face.   I know that
there are now a great many more  decent people in this  parti-
cular than there were twenty years ago.   We are daily gaining
converts from the ranks of " the great unwashed," but we want
them all.   The  world  must  be baptized daily,  before it can be
saved.   People say, "0  it  is too difficult; we have not time— 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
87
we  have not conveniences."  Begging your pardon, this, is a
miserable untruth.  Anybody with life above a snail can get
a pail or bowl  of Avater and two  towels, or one towel and a
sponge, and ten minutes are all sufficient  for a thorough bath-
ing.   Will  you  say that you cannot  afford such a domestic
bathing  establishment as this, and that  you cannot rise ten
minutes earlier,  and thus earn health enough to perform twice
the work that  you would get through without the bath, be-
sides having the comfortable consciousness that you are a clean
Christian ?
  Persons who sleep  on a feather bed are not as willing to get
up in season and take a bath, as those who sleep on a mattress,
but they need the bath much more.   Feathers are exceedingly
unhealthy from  various causes.   Feather beds constantly ab-
sorb the exhalations from the body, and unless frequently aired
and  cleansed, they  become poisonous from this cause;  and
when well cleansed, they still induce a feverish state of the body.
Besides, they are kept for a long time, and very nice ones are
handed down in families ;  and from their  facility  of  absorbing
exhalations from the body, they  become  " heirlooms"  of filth
and  disease.   It was once  said of a certain paper in this city,
that it was " a paltry concentration of nastiness."  This would
have been very just if it had been said of feather beds.
  A good mattress made of hair, husks, straw, palm-leaf, moss,
hard wood shavings,  or even wool, and a thorough cold bath
every morning,  are among the best preventives of consumption.
  Every house  should be built with a bath—but if we have  no
bath, we can bathe.   We have seen that it is not indispensable
to a thorough ablution, to have*a bath-tub, or a pond to bathe
in.   A pail  or  a bowl, and a sponge  or  towel, with a hearty
" good will"  to be washed, are excellent substitutes.
  Purity is the great law of life.  Internal and external puri-
ty—a pure love and  pure  thoughts—lead us to  purify all the
details of life.   To bathe our bodies in pure Avater is a  corres-
pondence of truth received  in the  soul.   One of the surest
signs to me of  mental illumination,  is the fact, that  baths and
bathing-houses  are multiplying  everywhere.   People  ask  for
air and water as for daily bread.
  It is a good rule to distrust dogmas in religion or philosophy
that are promulgated from year to year in an impure and sti-
fling atmosphere.  It is reasonable to suppose, that  if  people
know just  what is good for the  soul, they will at least know
something of what is  good for the body. 
88
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  CURE.
  With regard to diet, one great rule to be observed in order
to the preservation  and recovery of health is  this : avoid re-
pletion.  America is a land of plenty. Our street beggars often
throw away food because it is not good  enough to suit  them.
Every body eats too  much—-too  much animal food, and too
much of all kinds of food.   Some people seem to think that if
they avoid eating  flesh, they may eat anything  else and any
quantity.   This is a great mistake.  With regard  to the ques-
tion, Whether  man is anatomically  constituted to eat flesh ?
anatomists have decided  that he is not.   Still every one will
settle the question for  himself.  I have no doubt that, other
things  being  equal, human life is lengthened by a vegetarian
diet.  It is now nearly eleven years  since  I have tasted flesh.
I attribute the ready removal of my consumptive symptoms, in
a measure,  to my  bland and unstimulating diet.  My great
power of  endurance now, I attribute partly to  the same cause,
and my mental powers,  I am sure, have been improved by this
diet, and as farther  improvement is  very desirable, I intend to
persevere in this mode of  living.  A diet  of fruit, vegetables,
and farinacea, is especially suited to the  consumptive.   Persons
with consumptive  tendency  should  be sparing in the use of
animal food, and it would be  better if they would resign its
use altogether.
  But people seem to think there  is nothing left  in the world
to eat,  if they give  up animal food.  But upon careful exami-
nation they will find that the world is  filled with good things.
  The  great errors in diet,  however,  are not alone in the use
of animal  food.  Made dishes, high seasoned, with admixture
of oils, are particularly unhealthy.  Oily food should be espe-
cially avoided by children and consumptives.  Pork is one of
the worst forms of food in the world, and the lard is even more
unhealthy than  the flesh.    Hogs are  almost always afflicted
with scrofula,  the  very word,  scrofula, being derived from a
Greek  word that means  " swine  evil," or morbid tumor, to
which swine are subject.  Scrofula is often the basis of con-
sumption.  Scrofulous swine's flesh and lard are very danger-
ous food.
  If we would preserve our health and that of our children,
we should first avoid eating too much; second, eating oily food
and condiments.  Plain, simple food, in  which vegetables, fruit,
and farinacea predominate, is most conducive to health.   As I
before  remarked, tea  and coffee are poisonous, and should be
avoided altogether.   Few  people give  their children tea and 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
89
coffee, even though they still indulge themselves in their use.
They are wise for their children, if not for themselves.
  Thorough mastication of food is important to good digestion
and good  health.   Americans bargain for dyspepsia and dis-
ease at every meal, by half chewing their food.  And they get
what they bargain for.  About half of the people in this coun-
try are literally hurried to death.
  With regard  to  the treatment of  consumption by water, I
can only say, it must be adapted to the vital, or reactive power
of the patient.  A water cure physician must know  his busi-
ness, or he is liable to do serious mischief.  The treatment of
my own case  was by constant  stimulation of the skin, by th°
application of the different processes of water cure.
  Many persons knowing the consumptive  symptoms  in  my
case, and knowing also that I have been successful thus far in
preserving my life, a large number have been  induced to come
to me.  Thus I have had the opportunity of seeing all kinds of
cases, from the incipient to the worst  stage of consumption.
  It is idle to pretend that consumption is curable by any kind
of medication, after a certain point of  decay is reached.  There
is a period when no earthly means can  save.  But this is not
the period that many suppose.   The  amount  of local disease,
ulceration of the lungs, does not always determine the fatality
of the case.   The amount of nervous energy, and the tendency
of the lungs to decay, does in reality  determine  the fatality of
the case.
  A large amount of ulceration may be present in  the lungs,
and yet the patient may  be cured.   The  ulcerated lungs may
be healed even when  large portions of the air-cells are obliterat-
ed,  and their places may  be supplied with cartilage.
  I  have  spoken  of  my own case in a former chapter; but it
may be well to describe it more  particularly, in this connection.
  I  was born under circumstances  peculiarly unfavorable to
producing a firm constitution.   Soon after my birth, my mother
had  " spotted fever"  of  a very malignant character, which was
sufficient evidence that her  system was full of morbid matter.
She could not nurse me,  and I was delivered over to the wise
ignorance of an  old nurse,  who  fed  me  in a very unhealthy
manner.  I was also dreadfully poisoned with opium in the first
months of my life.
  During all my early years I was feeble, and often ill, having
scarlatina, and all the disorders incident to childhood, in a very
severe form.   At thirteen, in obedience to fashion,  I dressed 
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EXPERIENCE IN WATER CI RE.
 eery improperly,  lacing my form in the  closest way, till my
 (ungs gave signs of being diseased.   In 1839, I began to bleed
 at the lungs.  Prior to this  time I had  thrown off  my tight
 dress,  but I was feeble and much bent.  I had been lecturing,
 and had been subjected  to  very laborious exertion and  much
 mental suffering.   Both these causes continued actively opera-
 ting during the  several succeeding years.   I, however, lived
 very simply, and  bathed much  in  cold water, and drank only
 water.  But labor and  anxiety obtained  the  mastery over my
 feeble  frame and injured lungs,  and in the autumn of 1843, I
 was attacked,  while giving a course  of lectures,  with severe
 bleeding.   I attempted to go on, but was prostrated,  and bled
 from my lungs, in one  week, nearly three quarts.  I was re-
 duced to infantile weakness.
   As  soon  as possible, I commenced exercise in the  open air,
 and very active  treatment with water.   I used  sponge and
 pouring baths, and wore constantly my whole chest and abdo-
 men enveloped in wet bandages.  I had my lungs examined
 with a stethescope.  The physician  decided that there  was con-
 siderable disease of the upper portion of the left lung.   During
 the winter,  I used  the water  very freely as above.  In the
 meantime, I exercised  much  in  the open air, and lived  very
 simply, taking no animal food, except a very little butter  and a
 little milk.   In the spring, I again had  my lungs examined.
 All traces of disease had disappeared.
   I have continued the use of the water since.  I have had
 some slight attacks of hemorrhage since, on occasions of much
 mental suffering and much labor.  I find myself perfectly able
 to control the bleeding,  by  the use of  water.   The cough,
 which  1  had  at  first,  disappeared  entirely under the water
 treatment.   It returns now if I go into crowded  assemblies, or
 in the impure  air of a steamboat, or if I am unable to get pro-
 per daily baths.   I can now live in a state of comfortable health,
with one bath a day, and a  wet bandage about the abdomen.
I am able to  walk ten  miles without fatigue.  My lungs give
 me no pain or uneasiness.   If I can maintain tolerable health
conditions,  I have  no  fear of  further  hemorrhage from the
lungs.
   I have  had  three patients under my care  who  had pulmc
nary consumption, whose cases were hopeless  when they com-
menced treatment.  They however  had confidence that they
might be relieved, and I took charge of the cases with the un-
 derstanding  that they wsore not  to expect  cure, but only relief. 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
92
In all these cases the symptoms were much alleviated.  In one
case the effect of the treatment was so marked, that I thought
then, and still think, if the patient had remained under water
treatment, she would have added years to her life.
  When she  came to my water cure house, she had a violent
cough, and raised large quantities of matter.   The cough Avas
almost  incessant during  the  night, and she consequently had
very little rest.  This had reduced her strength very consider-
ably.  I commenced  treating  her with careful  reference to the
reactive power of her system    She was enveloped in so much
of the  wet sheet as would  allow of reaction and consequent
heat readily.
  She  had also wet bandages over the lungs and abdomen.
She took, in short, just as much of the treatment as she could
take, Avithout inducing hurtful chills.  I would here remark that,
the first end to be attained in  the treatment of consumption is,
to restore  the action of the  skin.   If water cure treatment is
not adapted to the  reactive power, it may be made to diminish
still farther the  already  enfeebled  action of  the skin.  This
would be most disastrous to the patient, as it would hasten the
catastrophe of the disease.   Those  who suppose that water
cure consists of throwing cold water hap-hazard over a patient
are much mistaken  in their  supposition, and if they undertake
the  business,  they will  be likely to  be as  successful as igno-
rance deserves to be.
  (A man came  to  me  sometime  since, to know  how long he
would need to study to set up a water cure house.  I told him
three years.   He was indignant.   He considered three weeks
long enough.   I might have told him that his life would not be
long enough to qualify him.)
  The first  effect of the water in this case  was exhilaration of
spirits.   The  patient  became  very hopeful.   The next effect
was a violent diarrhoea.   If the skin  and system had not been
carefully guarded from chill, I should have set  the diarrhoea to
the account of the chill,  and should  not  have considered it
critical.  As it was, I considered it a salutary crisis, and such it
proved.
  The diarrhoea was  treated  with warm fomentations to the
bowels, injections, fasting, and water-drinking.   She was great-
ly relieved by it.   The next appearance was  an eruption over
the  entire portion of the chest and abdomen, which was cover-
ed bv the  Avet bandages.  This  eruption resembled a half drawn
blister, and  large quantities of thick, yellow matter constantly 
92
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
exuded from the abraded surface.  This matter seemed identi-
cal with that raised from  the  lungs, and  the  cough now be-
came much less.  As the  exudations went on, the cough con-
tinued  to decrease, and in four weeks  from the time that she
commenced  treatment, she coughed not at all in the night, but
rested  quietly.  The cough  came on in the morning only ; at
this time she raised a moderate quantity of the yellow matter.
During the day and night  she hardly coughed  enough to con-
sider ft an inconvenience.  Her strength was  much improved.
She now decided to go South to a warmer climate.   I remon-
strated, for thus far the beneficial effect of  the  water treatment
had exceeded my expectation.   But she felt greatly better, and
very hopeful.   She had  relatives in the  South on whom she
was  dependent.  She left—subsequently  went South, came
under drug treatment, and died within a year.
   Two other cases have been fatal that have resorted to water
cure under  my direction, though  in  both  these  cases,  the
patients died under drug treatment, and  some months after
they left my care, and in both instances I  gave them no hope
of ultimate  recovery.  I  only promised relief, and this they
obtained.  But the persuasions of friends,  and the promises of
doctors, who either believed they could cure  them, or wished
to make them believe it, perhaps to try the good effects of hope
on the  disease of the patient, or the  purse of  the practitioner,
induced the  sufferers to give up the soothing and relieving pro-
cesses of the water treatment, and submit to great suffering
from the use of drugs.
   Cases of prolongation of life for an indefinite period,  and of
ultimate cure of consumption,  by water treatment, have come
under my own observation, and are well authenticated in many
instances that  I have not seen.   I have  seen a case where
vomica  (encysted tumor)  was formed in  the substance of the
lungs,  and burst, and threw off half a  pint of ulcerous matter
at a time; and this process  was repeated,  and the substance
of the  lungs so broken as to cause hemorrhage, and yet the
patient, under careful water treatment, has recovered.  He was
a teacher  in a public  school in this  city,  and is now enjoying
rugged health in California.
   I have now a case of consumption in my mind, where there
was violent cough and raising of matter for some years, and the
general symptoms were very discouraging,  and yet the patient
was cured by gentle and long-continued water  treatment.
   There is now resiling in this city, in  good health, a gentle- 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.             93
man who  commenced water treatment under my care last au-
tumn.   He  had then well-developed symptoms of consump-
tion—a hard cough, which had been upon him for months, lan-
guor, general weakness and weakness of the spine,  and that
stimulation of the organ of Hope which is the almost unfailing
attendant  of consumption.  Owing to this  hopefulness it was
difficult to persuade him to enter upon the treatment.  He was
however persuaded before it was too late.  He began  treat-
ment in autumn, and now calls himself  well with  more  truth
than two-thirds the people I meet.  He  has still the tendency
to consumption,  and through the winter will have to continue
as much treatment as is consistent with  a constant  attention to
a laborious business.
   The economy of getting well under a treatment that allows
the patient in very many cases to attend to  business, should be
taken into account.   This gentleman was treated at home, and
it cost him just five dollars to cure himself of consumption.
   The facts that I give you in this chapter have occurred here
in our  midst, and I can give you reliable references to confirm
their truth.
   A  case  of neglected  dyspepsia and  spinal  disease, which
finally induced chills and fever, and then a severe attack of
fever,  with an amount of lung disease which promised pulmo-
nary consumption, and that of a rapid kind, recently came un-
der my care.  This complication of diseases has  been  cured
by water; and the diseased lungs, from which a considerable
quantity of  matter was  constantly raised  by a severe cough,
have been cured by a determination to the surface.   I counted
ninety-five boils upon this patient when the  lungs were entirely
relieved—some of them very  large,  and all filled  with yellow
pus.
   A lady  at Albany, who has  been a patient of mine, furnishes
one of the most remarkable instances of  the prolongation of life
in consumption by water treatment that I have ever seen.  She
has been  several years under water treatment.   About two
years since I examined her lungs, and found cavities—in one of
them,  a cavity larger than a dollar.   The air rushed  through
these cavities in the  most frightful manner.   By a  persevering
tonic treatment by water, she has thus far preserved her life and
improved  her general health.   The last  letter  I received from
her,  she was comfortable, and able to go out  and walk  some
distance.  Those who know her, know how valuable her life is, 
94
EXPERIENCE IN WATER  CURE.
and rejoice  in  every day  added to it by her pei severance in
water treatment.
  I could go on enumerating cases, but there is no use in accu-
mulating evidence of a similar character.
                      CHAPTER XI

                         CHOLERA.

   Cholera has been considered the rock on which all medical
professions  were destined to split.   There is no doubt that in
many cases  of cholera no effort  can save the patient.  The
disease is simply death.  It is the final convulsion of the wrong-
ed  and  outraged  vital economy.   Majendie  has Avell  said,
" Cholera begins where all other diseases end—in death."  This
is true in many cases.
   I have seen nothing of  the disease except this season and in
this city.  My theory of the cause of cholera is this:—Miasmata
and deathly exhalations are  constantly arising from the badly
cultivated earth, cursed with war and famine  and disease over
much of its surface.   This miasma moves in veins and  parcels
around the  globe,  and Avhen it passes  over  a city or country
which  is enveloped Avith its kindred evil, it is attracted toward
it.  Like seeks like.  Those who come Avithin this evil influence
must be  strong enough to resist it, or they fall before it.  The
joint effect of death-causes within man, and this deadly miasm
without him, is the disease knoAvn  as  cholera.
   Persons  suffering  from nervous  exhaustion,   delicate and
badly organized children,  old people, and the  ignorant and
vicious poor, are known to be the  classes which  furnish most
of the victims of cholera.
   Camphor, opium,  and  calomel  have been  principally relied
on by the allopathic profession for the cure of cholera.  When
we reflect on the large number that have recovered, in spite of
twenty grain doses of calomel, and opium and camphor in pro-
portion,  we may easily believe that few, comparatively, would
have died with  proper water cure  treatment.   For myself,  I
am convinced that cholera is much easier to cure than dysen-
tery.   I  have not had half the difficulty in curing cholera, as
with bilious  diarrhoea and  dysentery.
   Before I had  seen and become acquainted  with the  disease, 
EXPERIENCE  IN WATER CURE.
95
 I was much terrified at the thought of it.  My first case alarm-
 ed me  much.  I feared  that the water might  not  control it.
 The patient was a young lady, very nervous and delicate.   She
 had been for some years  ill of uterine disease.
   She  Avas violently seized at two o'clock in the morning, hav-
 ing had no premonitory symptoms.  She A'omited the rice-wa-
 ter fluid copiously, and purged violently a substance resembling
 coffee-grounds.  She cramped terribly, and  had a burning at
 the pit  of the stomach like fire.  There was pain in the head,
 and cold extremities.
   She was first put into  a tub of cold water,  and rubbed until
 the vomiting ceased, and the cramps also.  She had water to
 drink,  and injections of cold water.  As soon  as she came out
 of the tub, four folds of Avet linen wrung from cold water  were
 put over the abdomen—two on the back.  She Avas rubbed
 wich the hands wet in cold water till the Avarmth of the  body
 was restored.
   At nine o'clock, A. M. all the symptoms remitted,  but at
 eleven,  A. M. vomiting again came on;  but this time the eject-
 ed fluid was tinged Avith  bile.
   After this vomiting she was seized with shivering.  She was
 wrapped in the cold, wet bandages, and enveloped in blankets,
 and soon became Avarm.
   After the subsidence of the urgent symptoms, she was pack-
 ed in the wet sheet.   The third day she went to the door, and
 about the house.
   My first thought when I saw her Avas,  " She is so sick that
 she must recover;" that is, I  saw the system  making  such
 violent efforts to relieve itself, that I felt sure, that with proper
 assistance, relief would be obtained ; and the event proved that
 I was right.
   My second  case  was of a lady who was afflicted  with the
 premonitory symptoms for a week.  She took  laudanum,  and
 kept about till about the  seventh day,  when she sunk at once,
 fainting nearly.   A cold,  deathly state came on, Avith no vomit-
 ing.  She was put into a tub of tepid  water, and rubbed for
 nearly half an hour;  then taken out;  the abdomen bound in
 bandages wrung from cold water, and she wrapped in blankets,
when she became Avarm and revived.  Purging came on again,
 and she had injections.
  This treatment was repeated  as often as she sunk, and  be-
 came cold.  In three days she was out  of danger, and suffered
only from the opium she had taken. 
96
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
  These were my first two cases.  In one  of  these I used the
wet sheet after the vomiting and purging were subdued.   In
the ether I did not use it;  but in my later cases I used it ear-
lier, and with great advantage.
  I had  many cases  where  the premonitory symptoms were
severe;  but the cold or tepid half bath, and a half-hour's smart
friction in this bath, with  constant use of cold water  enemas,
and cold, wet bandages to the abdomen,  with fasting, cured all
these cases  in twelve hours.   When diarrhoea was not premo-
nitory of cholera, but  was bilious in its character, or tending to
dysentery, the cure was nearly as rapid.
  I did not realize the  deadly nature of the disease,  so rapid
was the relief afforded  by water treatment, till it was my for-
tune to  see a patient  treated with  mustard  plasters,  and the
congestive or heating treatment.  At early morning I was call-
ed to a young lady who was violently attacked with  cholera.
The case was most alarming to me, because the lady was suffer-
ing from severe spinal disease.   The rice-water discharges were
so profuse,  that  I  ventured upon no preliminary treatment,
fearing greatly the consequence of congestion in her  case.  I
had her enveloped at  once in a full wet sheet,  and  many blan-
kets.  I left her to see some other patients, and found at a place
where I was attending an infant Avith  diarrhoea,  that  an older
child  had been attacked  with  cholera.   The child,  a boy of
five years, was born of a mother who has been for years in ill
health, and his organization must have been very frail and deli-
cate.  He had always seemed  to belong more to the  spiritual
world than to this,  such was the strange wisdom  and beauty
of his character.  The evacuations had ceased when I saw him.
A physician had been called, and had left him some time pre-
vious.   He  had given homoeopathic doses of camphor,  with
some other medicines,  and he  had been enveloped in a multi-
tude of  blankets, with bottles of hot water, and a mustard-plas-
ter to the stomach.   He  had been  forcibly held in this appa-
ratus for producing congestion,  till he was exceedingly heated
and sweating.
  The father said that they had sent for me, but I had not
seen the messenger, and was told  at home  that  no  one  had
been for me.  He said that the doctor, did not wish the heat-
ing treatment continued after reaction had taken place.   The
child begged most piteously  to  be relieved, and I  removed the
bottles and the clothing, and the mustard plaster was also taken
off.   I put a wet bandage about the stomach, and covered the 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
97
child comfortably.  I did not think he  could die, he  seemed
so bright,  and the heat of the skin and  the pulse so natural,
but the nurse of the babe told me that the doctor said he would
die.  I staid as long as possible,  doing nothing more than to
advise  the family to  give  the  medicine  faithfully.  I did this
because the medicine was homoeopathic,  and I was sure  could
do no harm, and because they spoke of a willingness to com-
bine water treatment with the medicine, and I hoped the doctor
would  extend the same courtesy to me.
   I left at nine, A. M.,  and returned  to my cholera patient.
There  had been but partial reaction in the sheet, but the most
alarming symptoms had subsided.   She was put under a pour-
ing bath,  and had enemas of  cold water and cold bandages,
and then was  put again into the wet sheet;  and I returned to
the other,  hoping that  if any danger appeared, I  should  get
liberty to  do something.  The doctor came  shortly,  and  the
parents did not introduce me to him,  or ask my opinion,  but
told me that the doctor feared collapse,  and had again ordered
the  congestive  treatment.  This seemed very bad to me,  but
I did not think the child would die even now.  I turned to my
husband with great sadness, but I said,  " They can't kill him,"
and I  fully believed  that he would live  through the treatment.
If I had not thus thought, I should have spoken my mind of
this dreadful  mode  of  treatment,  which I do not consider ho-
moeopathic or hum^n.   I do not object  to homoeopathic medi-
cine ;  I believe the genuine article is harmless;  but I felt that
I could not stay to see that frail body heated and held by force
in the  hell the doctor had ordered.  I had a solemn and tender
love for the child that I could never explain, and I felt wound-
ed professionally that my opinion had not been asked, nor  any
mention made to the doctor that I was then ready to administer
water  cure, although the parents  had said in the morning that
they were willing to combine the two modes of treatment.  I
left the house in great sadness,  but comforted with the feeling
that the child had been so carefully reared, that  he would have
strength to outlive the disease and the  treatment.  It was the
greatest professional mistake that  I ever made.  He doubtless
beo"an  to  die from the moment that he was again enveloped- in
mustard, hot bottles, and piles of blankets.  His last little life
was extinguished in  the struggle against these appliances,  and
the outward force that held him in them.   His pure,  heavenly
instinct cried  for water and a bath, and rebelled, as long as he
was capable of effort, against the treatment.  I am very thank-
                          5 
98
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
ful that I did not see this treatment administered, or the death
of the child, which took place before five, P. M.  He was seized
at two, A. M.   I again saw my patient about two, P. M.  The
second wet sheet pack, of little  more than an hour's duration,
had established full reaction;  and just after the news of the
child's death had reached me, I  found her sitting up.   Now
I do not say that these cases were  identical, but they seemed
to me to be so at the time.  I  have since learned facts that
make me think that no  treatment  could  have saved the child
for any length of time.   His organization was most  frail and
delicate.   He had an unearthly beauty and wisdom, that point-
ed unmistakeably to early death.  And there doubtless  was a
deadly miasm surrounding the  place where  the family lived,
at the time of his death.  I have reason to think that the dis-
charges were more copious than  in the case I have given, and
that even the most  judicious water treatment could  not have
given back  the  life  he had lost; although I think if he had
been packed in  a wet sheet when I first  saw  him, he  might
have lived longer,  and died in a different manner.   I wish  to
be understood with regard to the use  of water and the wet
sheet in exhaustion, from whatever  cause.   I believe the effect
is a positive augmentation of life.   Water is the material cor-
respondence of the Divine Truth.   Heat is the material corres-
pondence of the Divine Love.  Truth and Love constitute Life
in the higher degrees, and the  living element  of the  water
unites with the heat of the system, aud gives life in the lower
degrees to the patient.   If the patient has no heat in the body,
the water is of no use.  If he have no love in the soul,  truth
is of no use.   This I believe is the true  philosophy of water
cure.  Those who believe in a New Heaven and a  New Earth,
will understand this philosophy,  and will  know by  whom  its
first principles were revealed.   No  bereavement of my life has
ever so strongly affected me as the death  of this child, and yet
I believe it was  a Providence by  which good must be effected.
It teaches first,  the lesson,  that when life and health are not
given from birth, they can be but partially attained  even with
the greatest care.   Probably no child was ever more carefully
reared than this.   Again, it teaches  the  lesson,  that deadly
miasma arising from the  boiling  of dead  animals,  putrid and
diseased, cannot be resisted by all those  who  live in their vi-
cinity, even though their personal habits be as good as possible.
Then again it teaches the lesson, that wars and famines, oppres-
sion and misery, ignorance and vice, on one side the globe, send 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
99
their baneful miasma everywhere; that the human race is but
one Man;  and that congestion, 01 famine, or cancer of any one
part of this great Human Body, affects the whole ;  that not one
man on the earth can be healthy,  holy, and happy, until all are.
  In  the  treatment  of cholera,  I have  relied upon cold and
tepid rubbing baths at  first; the  wet sheet pack, after vomiting
has subsided.  Injections of cold water, drinking of cold water
in small quantities,  or large quantities  when I wished to pro-
mote vomiting, and wet bandages  and abundant  friction,  with
fasting at  first, and small quantities of the simplest food when
the danger was past.
  I have known several instances  where judicious water cure
treatment was administered by the friends of  the  patient, with
eminent success.   In one instance, the lady who was attacked
was cramped so that the intestines were drawn up  under the
ribs.  She was put into a warm bath and rubbed till the cramps
gave way.  She  said,  the sensation of  relief was like that of
the birth of  a child.   Hot flannel  fomentations were put upon
the abdomen, and she  was in this manner entirely relieved, and
in a few days was well again.
   Another  instance was the case  of  a child.  This child was
eight years of age, and had been some three years under water
cure  treatment whenever he was ill.   He was  taken very ill
with cholera, and his  mother feared the delay of sending six
miles for me, and her  distress and alarm were met by her boy.
The little  sufferer said,  " Mother,  I will tell you what to do—
what Mrs.  Gove  did  once for me when I was sick:  she put
me in a bath that was  not cold nor warm, and rubbed me, and
then wrapped me  in  a  blanket  without drying me."   His
mother immediately had a tepid bath  got ready, and  he was
rubbed in it for  some  time,  and  then  wrapped, dripping, in
blankets.   He soon sweat, and then had a cold bath,  cold wet
bandages,  injections of cold water, and water to drink.   This
treatment  cured  the  disease.   The boy very likely  saved his
own life.
   I might multiply instances of  the domestic treatment of cho-
lera by water,  but will only mention  one other.   A poor Irish
woman was taken with cholera  in the street.   She fell, and
broke out several of her teeth,  but after a time  succeeded in
reaching the house of a lady whose benevolence is  only equalled
by her skill in water cure.   She took the woman in,  applied
proper water treatment, and cured her.
   The latest cases of  cholera which I have treated, were com- 
.00
EXPERIENCE IN WATER-CURE.
plicated with bilious symptoms.  One of these cases presented
some symptoms which I have seen in no other case.   The purg-
ing was almost entirely without pain, and there were extensive
painless cramps.  From this state of things the patient thought
herself in very little danger, whilst I apprehended much.  The
we1>sheet packing, rubbing-baths, and injections of cold water,
soon overcame the disease.
  I have had many cases of  an -attack of diarrhoea, and of
vomiting and purging, which, if the cholera had not been in the
city, would have suggested no  thought of danger to my mind,
and which were just as readily cured as if there had been no
epidemic.  From the progress of exactly this class of symptoms,
under ordinary medication, to collapse and death, I was always
alarmed, and careful to do everything in my power.
  My experience has convinced me, that with people of ordi-
nary good health, with good habits, and with a resolute refusal
to take medicine of any kind, preventive or remedial, cholera
is by no means a disease difficult of cure.   In its premonitory
symptoms it is perfectly controllable, and with rubbing baths,
cold water enemas, cold bandages, and fasting, I have seen no
premonitory symptoms that could not be cured in twelve hours.
Cases complicated with dysentery or bilious symptoms, are
much more  difficult, and take a much longer time.
  With persons of low vitality, or who have been poisoned by
living in unhealthy localities  and on bad  food, by drinking
ardent spirits, with the general  bad habits of the ignorant, and
with persons who have lived in luxury and who have been long
under the dominion of drugs and doctors, cholera becomes the
most terrible disease that I have ever looked upon.  Death is
sure to many of these, under whatever treatment they may be
placed.   I have no words to describe my horror and detestation
of the system of drugging resorted to by the people, almost
universally, for the prevention and cure of cholera.  It has done
its work, and  those who have escaped  death, have  laid the
foundation of much sickness and suffering, and have prepared
themselves to be more ready  victims to the  cholera when it
shall come again to scourge us, and force us to  learn wisdom
by  the things we suffer.
  My small experience in cholera has been inexpressibly pain-
ful, and yet  I cannot regret it.   It is one of the  many lessons
of my life, and I trust it will not be in vain to myself or others.
I now feel that I know the disease, and that I have the means
in my power to cure all  nrable  cases.   I thank  God more 
EXPERISNCE IN WATER CI RE.
101
than ever far water cure, and  I  shall pursue my profession
more reverently and earnestly than before I looked on this
pestilence.
                     CHAPTER XII.

BILIOUS DIARRHOEA--COLIC--COMMON COLDS--PNEUMONIA--
   INFLAMMATORY RHEUMATISM AND GOUT--NEURALGIC  AFFEC-
   TIONS--CUTANEOUS ERUPTIONS--APOPLEXY AND LIGHTNING--
   CRISIS.

   Having a few words to say upon  each  of  the  above-men-
tioned subjects,  I  have reserved them all for  this concluding
chapter.

                     BILIOUS DIARRHOEA.

   Numerous cases of bilious  diarrhoea have come under my
care.   I have observed, that in most  cases the patients who
suffered from this form of diarrhoea,  had taken a great  deal of
medicine.
   I  recently treated  a case,  which I give as an example of
many cases, and which was cured after a large quantity of slimy
membrane had passed off.   This membrane  had doubtless fined
the stomach and intestinal canal, and was probably first  formed
to protect the delicate mucous lining of those  organs from the
acrid and  poisonous medicines which the patient had taken for
years.  For some time previous to this illness, no medicine had
been taken; and so much water treatment had been used, that
I had no doubt that the diarrhoea  was a crisis intended to
throw off this membrane;  and I predicted, that when the mem-
brane had passed off, the diarrhoea would cease, and that the
patient would recover at once.  The result was exactly what
I had expected—and had known in previous cases.
   The reader will find much very valuable matter on the  for-
mation of false  membrane, in order to  protect  the mucous
membrane of  the  stomach and intestines,  in  Francke's, alias
Rause's, works on  Water Cure.
   The "sliming up"  of medicines, as the  German calls it, is
no doubt often resorted to in the stomach, when there is not
sufficient  vital power to carry the poison out  of the system. 
«
102             EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.

As this kind of protection from poisonous medicines betokens
low vitality, so those patients whose stomachs are thus lined,
are amongst the most difficult to cure.  Diarrhoea is a hopeful
symptom in the progress of their cure.  But patients who have
enough vitality to  carry poisonous matters to the surface, in
boils, or even to the mucous membrane, in salivation, recover
much more rapidly than those  who have no particular trouble,
but a  general weakness and want of  tone.  These last have
not strength enough to be sick, and consequently to get well—
for nature's mode of curing us,  is to cast bad matters out of
the system by a painful effort, which we call sickness.
   In bilious diarrhoea, as in all relaxed conditions of the bowels,
the skin should be stimulated by constant packing.  If the
patient cannot react against a full wet sheet, partial wet sheet
packing should be  resorted to,  or a dry blanket pack should
be given with as much wet linen over the chest and  abdomen
as can be borne,  without a chill so excessive  that it cannot be
overcome.
   The treatment of dysentery, diarrhoea, and  cholera, are sub-
stantially the same, with variations to suit different conditions,
for which no directions can be given,  for they must depend on
the tact and judgment of the physican or person administering
the cure.   To be successful  in water cure, people must know
why  they do things.  The physician can no longer say to intel-
ligent believers in water cure,  " It is for you  to do what I tell
you."   He must give a reason—and if  he cannot,  they -will
find one for themselves, and dispense with his service.
   In all cases of disease, and  particularly in  disorders of the
stomach and digestive organs, very little food should be taken.
This cannot be too forcibly impressed on the mind.  Diarrhoea
and dysentery and cholera, I am never weary of assuring you,
may be prevented  in a very great proportion of cases simply
by fasting and bathing.  It is  astonishing how  difficult it is to
make people believe  this.   I recollect asking a lady of much
intelligence if she had given her brother any food when he was
suffering in a terrible congestive fever, under which I feared he
might sink in a few hours.   She named several articles that she
had  given him to eat during the day, and amongst  the rest an
ear of boiled, green corn.   "You know,  ' said she,  "that he
must have something to eat."  This is the general idea, and it
is very hard to dispossess people of it.   It is difficult to  con-
vince even the intelligent of the fact, that fasting is one of th«
most potent remedies for disease. 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
103
                          COLIC.

  When the pain is about the diaphragm, an emetic of warm
water should be given.  The throat should be tickled with the
finger, or with a little skewer around Avhich a piece of linen has
been wrapped, to make the vomiting easy and effectual.  The
stomach should be thoroughly cleansed.   If  the pain is below
the diaphragm, enemas of cold, or tepid water should be given
until the bowels are perfectly cleansed.   If  any pain remains
after these processes, put  the patient in a wet sheet pack, par-
tial or entire, according to the heat of the system.

                      COMMON  COLDS.

  It is often the case in a cold that the  patient is very chilly,
and unable to react against a wet sheet pack, and hardly any
practice could be more injurious than to put such a patient in
the wet  sheet.   A blanket pack, warm and  close, with a wet
towel about the head and lungs is the proper treatment, and
the patient should be made to perspire.  If the patient is full
of life and heat, and can react quickly, a wet sheet pack is the
proper  remedy for a cold.  After the pack a thorough cold
bath should be had, and wet bandages put about the lungs.

                        PNEUMONIA.

  The treatment of pneumonia  is substantially  the same as
that of  a common cold, only it must be longer continued to be
effectual.  Fasting entirely for a time, and then very little food
until  the complaint is removed, is an important part of the
treatment.

           INFLAMMATORY RHEUMATISM AND  GOUT.

  Inflammatory rheumatism is thought by many to depend on
cold.   There is no doubt that cold is a proximate cause, but the
primary cause is the exhaustion of nervous energy by hard la-
bor, undue license of the passions, luxury,  care, anxiety, &c.  I
have  cured  several very severe cases of inflammatory rheuma-
tism.   I have had cases where the patients were  not able to
rise, or to step,  and in  a few weeks' treatment they were able
to walk about and attend  to  the  duties of life, and  complete
their cure at home and under  their own care.  In some cases 
104
EXPERIENCE IN AVATER CURE.
relief and a cure maj  be obtained  in a week;  other cases re-
quire weeks or months to complete  the cure.
   The reliance for cure in this disease, and also in that of its
first cousin, gout, is on constant wet bandages to the afflicted
portions, made thicker as the inflammation is more violent, and
wet sheet packings.  In  some cases the douche is very useful,
in others it cannot be borne.   In gout and rheumatism, fasting,
packing, and wet bandaging are the most rapid  and reliable
means of cure, and the patient must have the same will as his
physician, or  he may undo  a week's work, or make it  of no
avail  by one  "good"  dinner or other  excess, such  as has
caused his disease.

                        NEURALGIA.

   Neuralgia, ear-ache and tooth-ache, are often comprehended
under the head of colds, cold being a proximate cause of these
affections.  To ease all neuralgic affections, let the pain be ever
so severe, I have found the wet  sheet  effectual.  The pain is
not always  cured (except for the time) by one application of
the sheet, but repeated applications not only ease, but cure the
tooth-ache, the horrible pain of  tic  doloreux, ear-ache, and all
pains comprehended under the general term,  Neuralgia.

                   CUTANEOUS ERUPTIONS.

   There is  no class of diseases in which Avater cure is more
efficacious than in skin diseases.
   I had some time since a case of  salt rheum which had in-
vaded  the whole system, but which principally made its ap-
pearance on the head and face.  The ears ulcerated externally
and internally, the lungs were  badly affected.  The patient,
naturally a very pretty and  pleasant woman, was reduced to  a
deplorable state of stupe r mentally, and was much disfigured
by the eruption.  When she began treatment, one could  hardly
have seen a more discouraging case.  The head was bald and
smooth as the face, from  the eruption, except where there were
large scabs.  The face was partially, and the ears wholly covered
with the foul eruption,  and the hearing was entirely lost in one
ear.  The body  had no sores, but the skin was rough and
grating to the touch.  In three weeks after she began  treat-
ment, her whole body was  covered with a raw efflorescence
that looked like flame, and constantly exuded matter, and the 
EXPERIENCE IN WATER CURE.
105
 head and face began to get better.  You could not put down
 a pin's head on the body that was not covered with the erup-
 tion.  After a time it disappeared, and  then reappeared  par-
 tially.  There was  several times  crisis in the  head.   After
 months of treatment  the evil was expelled from the system, the
 patient became healthy, pretty and cheerful, and her hearing
 was restored.
   The skin was fair and smooth, and plenty of soft hair like a
 baby's, came out qn her bald head.  This was an extreme case.
 Many less severe cases  have come under my care, reports of
 which I would give, if the limits of this work  would permit.
   I have treated salt rheum, St.  Anthony's fire, prurigo, at-
 tended with diabetes, tetter, leprosy, and  many other  psoric
 eruptions with entire success.
   Sore and inflamed  eyes, blindness and deafness often depend
 on scrofula in the system.   Where this is the cause of such af-
 fections, relief always, and often an entire cure  is obtained from
 water treatment.

                 APOPLEXY AND LIGHTNING.

   The treatment for a patient  who is attacked by  apoplexy
 and  one who is struck by lightning, is identical.  In both cases
 water should  be poured on the head, and then over the whole
 body; and the patient should  be rubbed with the bare hands
 of as many persons  as can properly assist.  Life has been re-
 stored in this way,  after many hours of unconsciousness.   The
 after treatment should be tonic, with particular care to equalize
 the circulation as fast as possible, and prevent the catastrophe
 of congestion, which is almost always more dangerous at each
 succeeding attack.

                           CRISIS.

   Crisis is mostly of three kinds—fever, eruption, or boils,  and
diarrhoea.  In the earlier days of water cure, perceptible crisis,
in the shape of boils, fever,  or diarrhoea, was thought much
more needful to a cure,  than it is now.  A  great many boils
were made by eating greasy,  bad food, and submitting  to a
treatment more forcible than wise or prudent.   Diarrhoeas were
brought on by chilling the  weakened  skin  continually in cold
water—for both patients and practitioners had become hastily
convinced that they could not have too much of a good thing; 
106
EXPERIENCE ..V WATER CURE.
then the food of most water cure patients was very improper,
and  the general  notion  that they must get sick before  they
could get  well, and the immense quantities of water drank
indiscriminately by all sorts of patients,  made thc^i sick, com-
forted them with crisis, but did not cure them.  Much of this
is  changed now.  Patients,  as  well  as physicians, have got
clearer  ideas of what is needed in water cure.  There is more
care with  regard to diet; greasy food is less used:  there is
more judgment in adapting treatment to reactive power; the
treatment is milder ;  water.,drinking is practised with more dis-
cretion.   People  have learned that " the  longest way round
is  the  shortest way home:"  hence we have  more cures, and
less crisis,  than formerly.
   About a tenth  part  of my patients have  crisis—not more.
Formerly,  if one in ten escaped crisis,  it was considered  very
bad practice.  People are wiser now,  and  more patient under
treatment,  especially as they find that with proper direction,
they can cure themselves at home.  Some of the best cures I
have known, have been made at home, with careful and long-con-
tinued treatment.  Some of them were made by persons whom
I have never seen, but who have consulted me by letter frem
time to  time, and others I have seen once.   The cost  of these
cures, which does not  average  more than ten  dollars,  is no
trifling consideration to those who are in moderate circumstan-
ces, or who have  spent all their living on physicians.
   Many persons do not know how to  manage when they have
crisis.   Boils should be kept  constantly covered with several
folds of wet linen, and  wet sheet packing should be used, and
very little food taken.
   Critical diarrhoeas and fever should  be  treated in the same
way  as if they were not crisis, for, after all,  crisis is,  like all
diseases, only the action of the nervous  energy,  to expel mor-
bid matter; and when caused by a skilful application of water
cure, is  indeed a blessing.
THE  END. 
INDEX.
Acute  Diseases....................32
Allopathy, credit due to................25
Apoplexy and Lightning..............i05
Author's Medical Studies..............21
    "    Practice and Success.........29
    "        "       Change in.......v
 \fter Pains, cause and prevention of... .78

Baths, their temperature, &c...........14
Blanket pack..........................16
Blood-letting..........................27
Brain Fever...........................4i
Bilious Diarrhoea.....................101
Blindness and Deafness...............105

Causes of Disease..................8—27
Case of the Author....................20
Cholera.............................94
    "    Cases of.....................95
    "    Domestic treatment of........99
Cholera Infantum.....................52
Children, rules for management of......54
    V    diseases of...................49
Childbirth, speedy and painless........75
     "     water cure in..............76
     "     diseased...................5i
Chicken Pox..........................60
Chronic Diseases....................44
Colds................................103
CoUc................................103
Consumption.........................79
      "       symptoms of.............80
      ''       causes of................81
      '       cure in Author's case.50-89
      '•       alleviated...............90
      "       cases cured..............92
Consultations..........................v
Crisis...............................105
Croup.................................33
Cutaneous Eruptions.................104

Delirium Tremens.....................42
Diet..................................88
Diabetes and Prurigo..................73
Diseases curable by water............11
Diseases  of Infancy..................49
Domestic practice of water cure........45
Douche...............................15
Drugs, effects of.....................8-28
Dripping Sheet........................15
Dyspepsia............................47
    "    with great coldness...........46
Dysentery..........................42-43

Early experience of the Author........19
Earache.............................104

Female Diseases.................10-60
Female  Physicians....................;7
Female  Medical Education.............vl
Fever and Ague.......................40
Food for Infants.......................55

GESTATrON AND PARTURITION.........73
Gout and Rheumatism................103

Health and Disease defined..............7
Homoeopathy..........................26

Infant mortality....................49-83
      " •     causes of............50-84
Infants,  medication and treatment of__52
Idiot Child, case of.....................56
Inflammation of the Lungs............39
      "       ofuterus..............67-71

Labor, treatment in....................75
Lungs, lunctions of the................81
   "  inflammation of............39-103

Malignant Typhus.................... .36
Malpractice........................43-66
Marriage, unfitness for.................50
Measles...............................59
Medical Practice...................24
Medical  Studies of the Author..........21
Menstruation, interrupted..............6J

Nervous and Uterine disease...........63
Neuralgia.............................48

Obstetrics.......................10-54-75

Principles and Processes of  Wa-
  ter Cure...........................7
Pathology, Theories of.................25
Parturition painless in health..........74
Pneumonia..........................103
Pork, effects of.....................53-88
Pregnancy, treatment in...............74
Prolapsus Uteri and Spinal Disease.....69

Rheumatism, inflammatory............42
             andGout...............103
Rupture and Premature  Delivery.......65

Salt-rheum...........................194
Scarlatina.......................37-57-58
Scrofula...........................38-4G
Sitz Bath.............................15
Shallow or half Bath..................15
Ship-fever.............................36
Skin, functions of......................86
  " Diseases of......................104
Sleeping..............................87
Small-pox............................34 
108                             INDEX.
Spinal Disease and Distortion..........46
Syphilis..............................72

Tic-doloreux..........................49
Typhus Fever......................36-40
Toothache...........................104

Ulceration of the Womb...............71
Uterine Disease....................62-68
Uterus, inflammation of.............67-71

Varioloid......................... .37-60
Vaccination, perils of.............-  — 84
Ventilation...........................83

Water cure defined....................8
     "     true  philosophy of..........98
     "     authorities.................28
     "     effects of....................9
     "    economy of.................12
Water, qualities of.....................13
Wet Sheet Pack.......................16
Woman's sufferings...................18
Women, particular  directions to........61
Whooping Cough......................60 
" Books sent, Prepaid, by Mail, to ant Post-offictj in the United States."
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, Constuu

 Siiulimi
 1
    igennity.iM-iimnl skill.  I"1™''
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I'Wmii,--liimf, Hive "i urni'iJi ,...,.. j , ...... -
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 Co paris>n — Aualvsls, inferring, disci imlnatii1"
 Human Nati-rk.—Perception ofotiaiacter.moli\ ••
, Suavity.—I'lmsnntness, blaudness, pemuasivuiC
n. time of day. dates, how tor*!"1*
isic, singing and playing tV-f- j.
sioa bv words, acts, tones.loof".; J
in;,, tiilnkiiiB, reasoning, ad*"' *■
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