7th. By forwarding the elimination of morbific matter; or, in other words, as a sedative, alterative, tonic, stimulant, derivative, and counter-irritant.
And taken internally, it acts—
1st. As a solvent, and contributes to the greater part of the transformations.
2nd. Gives tone to the stomach.
3rd. Promotes the secretions and excretions, particularly from the skin, bowels, and kidneys.
4th. It is a most important and indispensable element in the blood; and “its partial application,” says Dr. Johnson, “acts by determining the force of oxygen from one part to another; it produces all the effects of bleeding and blistering—except the pain,” and he might have added, the debility.
The hydropathic treatment causes the elimination of all foreign matters from the body, and thereby promotes contraction, without which there can be no health, which Dr. Billing has shewn to demonstration; he states “that the proximate cause of all disease is relaxation and enlargement of the capillaries: the indication of a cure, therefore, is to constringe the capillaries, and cause them to contract, and resume their healthy state.”
“As all organic action is contraction, all organic or animal strength depends upon the power of the different parts of the body to contract.” If it be true, that the effect to be brought about in the treatment of all disease is to unload and constringe the capillaries, how can this be better achieved than by the sweating or wet-sheet process, and the cold bath; Dr. Johnson says—“The hydropathic treatment, which unloads the capillaries by sweating, and constringes them by cold, is clearly an efficient substitute for bleeding, purging, vomiting, uva ursi, digitalis, antimony, mercury, arsenic, nitrate of silver, sulphate of copper, iodine, iron, and multitudes of other remedies, enumerated by Dr. Billing, merely by their power of unloading and constringing the capillaries.”
Priessnitz’s theory:—
1st. That by the hydropathic treatment, the bad juices are brought to, and discharged by, the skin.