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

1st. The more heat there is in the intestines the quicker the body bandages act.

2nd. Outward cold applications cause a fresh generation of heat.

3rd. By keeping the skin moist, these bandages cause the exudation of peccant humours and eliminate the excess of caloric.

4th. They equalise the temperature of the intestines, and keep up a healthy action in them.

5th. Wherever there is inflammation, their application and renewal lowers the temperature, and their moisture causes the healing of sores or wounds.

Those most in use, may be termed heating bandages. That for the waist, is worn day and night. It is 8½ feet long; eight or nine inches wide, with a double tape at the end to tie it with. To be put on with facility, it ought to be rolled up like a surgeon’s bandage, beginning at the tape end. Then as much should be wetted and wrung out as will go once round the body, which the remaining part will cover. The chest bandages are made of coarse linen, doubled, in the shape of a breast-plate, to fit the chest and the throat, tied with three pair of tapes, one round the neck, under the arms, and round the waist. There must be two breast-plates, one to button into the other: the smaller to be wetted, the larger to be dry.

In the water-cure the waist bandage is changed in the morning, at noon, in the afternoon, and on going to bed.

A clammy heat almost immediately succeeds the application of this bandage: a sensation which one soon becomes accustomed to. Large or small bandages of this nature are applied in an infinity of cases. Those afflicted with complaints of the throat or chest, wear the chest bandage at night. Bandages are also applied to the feet and legs as derivatives; and to all wounds, bruises, diseased parts, or wherever pain is felt.

The humid heat of these bandages has a stimulating and absorbent property; they relieve the body of superfluous heat, and extract vitiated matters from the parts to which they are applied, as is frequently seen by the water in which they are washed. Moreover, they regulate the bowels, kidnies, &c.

Mercury is constantly drawn from the pores in these bandages.—Prince Leichtenstein, who had rubbed a light green ointment into his leg twelve months previously to going to Gräfenberg, found that for a fortnight it came out of the flesh by means of these bandages. Some medical men are sceptical on this subject: to be convinced of the truth let such go to Gräfenberg, where they may have constant evidence of the fact.