But it does not limit itself to these agencies. It has "establishments;" that is to say, pleasant rural retreats, tastefully laid-out gardens; plain diet; often, no doubt, agreeable society; rational amusements; and, as we understand, good hours, with abstinence from alcohol. These are, indeed, powerful agencies in a vast variety of diseases. So that, if hydropathy be not very scientific, it is certainly a clever scheme; and as there are very many people who require nothing but good air, plain living, rest from their anxious occupations, with agreeable society,—it is very possible that many hydropathic patients get well, by just doing that which they could not be induced to do before.
But here comes the objection: The skin is, in the first place, only one of the organs of the body, and it is in very different conditions in different people, and in the same people at different periods.
It has, like other organs, its mode of dealing with powerful or with injurious influences; and if it deal with them in the full force of the natural law, it affects (and, in disease, almost uniformly) favourably the internal organs; but, on the other hand, if there be interfering influences opposed to the healthy exhibition of the natural law, so that the skin do not deal with the cold, or other agencies, to which it is subjected, as it naturally should do, then the cold, moisture, or other agent, increases the determination of the blood to the internal organs, and does mischief. This it may do in one of two ways: we have seen both. 1st. The blood driven from the surface, increases, pro tanto, the quantity in the internal organs: it must go somewhere; it can go nowhere else. Or, if cold and moisture produce not this effect, nor be attended with a reactive determination to the surface, there may be an imperfect reaction; that is, short of the surface of the body. In the first case, you dangerously increase the disorder of any materially affected organ; in the latter, you incur the risk of diseased depositions; as, for example, Tumours. We here speak from our own experience, having seen tumours of the most malignant and cancerous character developed under circumstances in which it appeared impossible to ascribe the immediate cause to anything but the violently depressing influence of hydropathic treatment on the skin, with a co-existing disordered condition of internal organs.
In one very frightful case indeed, the patient was told, when he first stated his alarm, that the tumour was a "crisis" or reaction; as sure enough it was; but it was the reaction of a cancerous disease, which destroyed the patient. But, as we have said, hydropathy has many features which obviously minister very agreeably and advantageously to various conditions of indisposition, whilst they favour the bonâ fide observance of something like a rational diet—a point of immense consequence, and too much neglected in regular practice. Here again we speak from actual observation. One man allows his patient to eat what he pleases. An eminent physician replied to a patient who, as he was leaving the room, asked what he should do about his diet, "Oh, I leave that to yourself;" showing, as we think, a better knowledge of human nature than of his profession. Another restricts his patient to "anything light." Others see no harm in patients eating three or four things at dinner, "provided they are wholesome;" thus rendering the solution of many a question in serious cases three or four times, of course, as difficult. Now we do not require the elaborate apparatus of a hydropathic establishment to cure disorders, after such loose practice as this; and we do protest against the assertion that any such treatment can be called, as we have sometimes heard it, "Abernethy's plan, attention to diet," and so forth.
So far from anything less than the beautifully simple views held out by Abernethy being necessary, we trust that we have, some of us, arrived, as we ought to do, at several improvements. But people will confound a plain diet, or a select diet, with a starving diet, and, hating restrictions altogether, naturally prefer a physician who is good-natured and assenting; still this assentation is being visited, we think, with a justly retributive reaction.
Hydropathy, in many points, no doubt, tends to excite attention to the real desiderata; but it is nevertheless imperfect and dangerous, because evidently charged with a capital error. It entirely fails in that comprehensive view of the relations which exists in all animals between the various organs; and on a sustained recollection and examination of which, rests the safe treatment of any one of them. It is, therefore, unsafe and unscientific. Again, it is illogical, because it proceeds, as regard the skin, on the suppressed premise, that it will obtain a natural reaction; a thing, in a very large number of cases, and those of the most serious kind, seldom to be calculated on.
It is quite clear, therefore, that, so far as hydropathy does good, it effects it by the institution of diet, abstinence from alcohol, country air, exercise, agreeable society, and, we will suppose, in some cases, appropriate care of the surface; all of which are, in a general sense, beneficial to the nervous system and the digestive organs—the points insisted on by Abernethy.
So long as the Public are not better informed, and until medicine is more strictly cultivated as a science, they will necessarily be governed by the first impression on their feelings; and so long as this is the case, fallacies can never be exposed, except by the severe lessons of experience. To hope to reason successfully with those whose feelings induce them to adopt that which they decline to examine with their intellect, is madness, and is just what Terence says of some other feelings:
"Nihilo plus agas
Quam si des operam ut cum ratione insanias."