“Count Mitrowski, an Austrian nobleman, aged fifty-four, who had long been afflicted with gout, and whose name we are permitted to use, was found insensible in his bed in an apoplectic fit. Some medical men were quickly in attendance and Priessnitz was sent for. The professional men considered the Count past recovery; and one of them said that he would throw his drugs away and become an hydropathist if this patient was restored. It was proposed by some to bleed the invalid, to which Priessnitz objected, if he was to bear any part of the responsibility. So far gone was the patient, and so nearly extinct did vitality appear, that a priest administered the extreme unction, and according to the custom of the country, a lighted candle was placed in each hand of the apparently dead man. By cold water treatment alone under the sagacious direction of Priessnitz, this gentleman recovered consciousness on the third day, drove out in a phaeton on the fourth, and gradually returned to his former habits.
“The only son of a Sovereign Prince, aged three years, suffered for fifteen months from chronic obstruction of the bowels, which baffled the skill of his medical attendants, and resulted in total atrophy. For twenty-seven days the child had had no relief, when, by the physician’s advice, Priessnitz was called in. He saw the child; and at his suggestion the Prince and his family came here, in order that Priessnitz might daily superintend the treatment. In a few days the disease yielded to the water-cure, and at the end of three months, the child returned quite well.
“A lady of rank suffered severely from frequent head-aches, cramp in the stomach, indigestion, and other maladies, which cannot here be particularised. She constantly threw up her food, even whilst in the act of eating, and could not have the slightest relief without medicine, and even then had great pain and difficulty. She had been under medical treatment for fourteen years, during which time she consulted fourteen eminent physicians. In little more than a year under the Water-cure, she was restored to perfect health.
“A gentleman had one of the worst attacks of small-pox, complicated with measles. From the fact of his vomiting blood any medical man will judge of the malignity of the disease.
“In a fortnight he was out of doors; and in four weeks all traces of the disease were rapidly disappearing.
“Here is one case of a gentleman advanced in life and long an invalid,—another of a tender infant,—a third of a lady,—a fourth of a person labouring under what is generally considered a fatal disease, and all restored.
“The undersigned trust you will kindly insert this statement, which they are impelled to offer from a desire to make known to others the benefit derivable from a system in the efficacy of which, as well as in the sagacity and skill of its founder Priessnitz they have the fullest confidence, and to which, humanly speaking, some of them owe their lives, and are,
“Sir,
“Your most obedient servants,