Every Man His Own Doctor / The Cold Water, Tepid Water, and Friction-Cure, as Applicable to Every Disease to Which the Human Frame Is Subject, and Also to the Cure of Disease in Horses and Cattle

by R. T. Claridge

A child had a blow on the nose, which occasioned it to bleed frequently.

Bandage worn on the forehead for a week or two, and foot baths, completed a cure.

Spitting Blood, Sickness, etc.—This is sometimes occasioned by piles. Sitz-baths (tepid 62°) may be taken; bandages worn on the waist always, and on the chest at night. All irritation should be avoided, and repose of body and mind observed. Water ought to be drunk abundantly. Bleeding of the lungs, the effect of pulmonary consumption, is not curable. To distinguish the difference between cases requires the experience of such a genius as Priessnitz.

XLVI.—Small Pox, Measles, Hooping Cough, Croup, Scarlatina, Colds, Shivering, etc.

All these complaints form the easiest and surest part of Priessnitz’s practice. No child or adult ever died at Gräfenberg of any of them. This fact, attested as it is by all writers on Hydropathy, leads one to look on the incertitude of medical practice in diseases incidental to children, with wonder and dismay.

Priessnitz considers these complaints wholesome, being the medium chosen by Nature for relieving the system.

On their appearance, his great aim is to strengthen the patient, and eliminate the morbific matters by the pores of the skin. It is frequently asked, “But does not the hydropathic process drive the virus into the system?” No, on the contrary, the packing-sheet acts as a poultice to the whole body; and this, followed by a tepid bath, causes an outward action, and the system is cooled and relieved through miles of drainage (the pores), the true medium through which relief can with certainty be obtained.

A young man with measles, at Gräfenberg, had as many as 400 packing-sheets applied in about fourteen days.

Small-Pox.—Small-pox, of all diseases, is that which should be treated hydropathically; because by its operation the morbid matters are thrown out by the pores of the skin, upon which it rarely leaves any of those scars so detrimental to the beauty of the person.

In the Water-cure, judiciously treated, the small-pox is under no circumstances attended with danger, nor is the patient reduced in strength as under any other treatment. “Small pox,” Priessnitz says, “instead of being suppressed, ought to be encouraged, as it relieves the system of humours that ought to be carried out of it, and is a healthy process.” At one period the profession were as much at fault in the treatment of small-pox, as they now are in that of cholera. No means were left untried, but they failed in arresting its ravages. Jenner’s discovery was hailed as an intervention of Providence, and he was voted two grants in parliament. If Priessnitz is right, this discovery may be hailed as a curse rather than a blessing. He states that the insertion of poisonous matter into the blood of a healthy subject produces poisonous consequences, is repugnant to our feelings, and at variance with the laws of nature.