Sir Charles Scudamore, M.D., records his opinion as follows:—
“The principles of the water-cure treatment are founded in nature and truth. We have in our power a new and most efficacious agent for the alleviation and cure of disease in various forms, and in proper hands as safe as it is effectual. I should be no friend to humanity nor to medical science if I did not give my testimony in its recommendation.”
Dr. James Johnson, Editor of the Medical Quarterly, thus writes of hydropathy:—
“Its paramount virtue is that of preserving many a constitution from pulmonary consumption.”
These are no small recommendations for any system to possess. Let us, therefore, with the readers’ permission, proceed at once to examine the principles and mode of action of this novel system, and see how far it can prove the title it lays claim to, of being a true rational and natural mode of curing disease.
The most eminent physiologists of the present day agree in regarding disease in general, as an effort of nature to relieve [[11]]the system of matter injurious to its well-being. This being the case, the natural and common sense mode of curing disease, would obviously consist in assisting nature in its efforts to expel the morbid substance from the system, and thus relieve it from the danger which threatened it. Now, this is exactly the principle on which Hydropathy proceeds; it aids, encourages, and strengthens the efforts of nature to heal herself, instead of irritating, thwarting, and weakening those efforts, by the pernicious administration of drugs.
To render the foregoing position intelligible to our readers, it is necessary to premise, that the action of all active medicines depends upon the principle (admitted by all physiologists), that nature ever makes a continued effort to cure herself, never ceasing in her attempts to relieve the body from whatever injurious matter may be present in it. It is this effort of nature to expel the irritant matter from the system, which makes the drug produce its effect. Thus when a preparation of sulphur is administered as a medicine, nature, in her effort to get rid of the sulphur, opens her pores to expel it. This is proved by the resulting perspiration, and by the circumstance that everything in contact with the patient is found, on analysis, to be largely impregnated with the constituents of the medicine;—the well-known fact of all articles of silver about the person, being tarnished, being an illustration of this effect;—in addition to this the stomach is weakened and irritated by the medicine which has been poured into it; and further, if the dose is repeated, nature, getting gradually accustomed to the intruder, ceases from her inhospitable exertion to expel it, and, as a consequence, the medicine fails in producing its intended effect. We have here referred to the successful administration of a drug, but in many instances it entirely fails to produce the desired result, acting injuriously upon other organs of the system, quite contrary to the effect intended. We will now compare this treatment with the hydropathic mode of producing the effects aimed at by sudorifics. Instead of injuring the stomach by pouring deleterious drugs into it, the Hydropathist applies himself; at once, to the great organ he seeks to act on, viz., the skin; his usual appliances consisting of the lamp and Turkish baths, and the result is this, that by his method a most powerful effect is produced on the skin in the course of about half an hour, after which the patient feels lightened, strengthened, and invigorated, no deleterious substances are passed into the stomach to irritate its membranes, producing nausea and [[12]]other disagreeable results, and the process may be repeated as often as may be necessary with undiminished effect. Who ever saw a patient recovering from the perspiratory process under the orthodox allopathic mode of treatment, that was not weakened and dejected by it, whilst buoyancy of spirits and invigoration of the system, are the usual accompaniments of the hydropathic process. Take another example from the process of wet-sheet packing, and examine its effects in subduing inflammatory and febrile affections. By this simple process the pulse is often reduced from 120 pulsations per minute to sixty-five, in the short period of three-quarters of an hour, the circulation equalized throughout the body, and a soothing effect produced on the patient, which language fails to describe—a result which no drug or combination of drugs, in the whole of the pharmacopeia, is capable of producing—in this case, again, little lowering of strength is produced, and the stomach is again saved from the injurious and irritating effects of Tartar emetic and other drugs; instead of the fever raging for a period of three weeks, it is generally subdued in as many days, when the patient goes forth, but little reduced in strength, instead of weak, miserable, and emaciated with the prospect of some six weeks elapsing before he is restored to his wonted strength. Sir Bulwer Lytton thus describes, from personal experience, the process of wet-sheet packing:—
“The sheet, after being well saturated, is well wrung out—the patient quickly wrapped in it—several blankets bandaged round, a down coverlet tucked over all; thus, especially where there is the least fever, the first momentary chill is promptly succeeded by a gradual and vivifying warmth perfectly free from the irritation of dry heat—a delicious sense of ease is usually followed by a sleep more agreeable than anodyne ever produced. It seems a positive cruelty to be taken out of this magic girdle in which pain is lulled and fever cooled, and watchfulness lapped in slumber.”
In the effects of wet-sheet packing in cases of congestion of the liver and other internal viscera, we fear an unfavourable comparison must again be drawn between the effects of the allopathic and hydropathic modes of treatment. In these cases the object to be effected is to relieve the oppressed and congested organs from the superabundance of blood with which they are gorged; and it appears to us that this effect is produced more certainly, more quickly, and more permanently, without subsequent injurious effects, by the wet-sheet packing and other hydropathic appliances, sitz baths amongst the rest, than could possibly be effected by all the drugs in the Apothecary’s Hall. In fact, hydropathy appears to possess [[13]]greater power in controlling the circulation and regulating the currents of the blood than any other system of therapeutics yet revealed to us; it can stimulate the circulation when low, reduce it when excited and disordered, determine it from the head in cases of apoplexy and cold feet, and drive it to the surface of the body in cases of visceral congestion. An engine capable of producing these effects without weakening the constitution, and possessing, in addition, the power of bracing and stimulating the nervous system when weakened, and of soothing and allaying irritation wherever it may exist, more effectually than any opiate; such a system we say, must ever occupy a high, if not the foremost place amongst all existing systems of Hygiene. The physiological effects of wet-sheet packing are thus described by Dr. Wilson:—
“It fulfils many indications according to the various phases of disease; if you revert to what I have said of the specific actions and effects of the packing process, you will see sufficient ground for our using the invaluable aid of the wet sheet in chronic disease. We often want heat to be abstracted in these diseases, we want the nerves soothed, the circulation equalized, muscles rested, fatigue removed, a movement of the fluids to be determined to the surface, interior congestions to be disgorged, the equilibrium of the fluids established, secretions and exhalations to be promoted, ill-conditioned solids to be broken up and eliminated, the tissues of the skin to be soaked, its capillaries to be emptied and cleansed, its sentient extremities to be soothed, and through them the brain to be quieted on the one hand, and the ganglionic[3] system to be roused on the other.”