Letters from Graefenberg, in the years 1843, 1844, 1845, & 1846 : with the report, and extracts from the correspondence, of the Enniscorthy Hydropathic Society / by John Gibbs.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters from Graefenberg, in the years 1843, 1844, 1845, & 1846 : with the report, and extracts from the correspondence, of the Enniscorthy Hydropathic Society / by John Gibbs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    has' only one remedy—a footbath and a head- bath, an enema and a half bath, a wet sheet pack- ing and a douche, and various other appliances, which produce diametrically opposite effects, can no more be said to be one remedy, than a mustard blister and a mustard emetic; and that practi- tioner who should delude himself into the belief that he had only one remedy, might be expected to order the douche in brain fever, or to seek to combat apoplexy with the sweating blanket, or Asiatic cholera with a footbath. Let us hear no more, then, of the oneness of a remedy. It may perhaps provoke a smile if I add to my other testimonies in favour of the hydropathic treatment, that of the tailors at Freiwaldau, which, nevertheless, seems to me to be not with- out its significance. They are unanimous in stating that they almost invariably find that, in a short time, the patients at Grsefenberg increase in muscular development. Having said so much to induce my readers to adopt the use of water internally as well as ex- ternally, it is but right that I should caution them against the use of impure water. Although pure water is always clear, soft, light, tasteless, and odourless, yet water may be all these, and still hold some deleterious substance in solution. There can be no doubt, I think, that this is often the case with water which has passed through