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

From the most remote ages, water was known and resorted to as a curative agent by the unsophisticated children of nature. In the wilds of America, the savage is put into a close hut, built of stones, which hut is heated to produce intense perspiration on the invalid, in which state he is immersed in the river, near to which the hut is generally placed; and by Pallme’s travels in Kordofan, we find that, in the very depths of Africa, fevers are cured by cold water. It appears our traveller lay several days in bed with burning fever, when, at length, his attendants lifted him out of bed, placed him with his back against the door, and poured a large volume of cold water on his head and body. After the shock he was put to bed, covered with sacks and sheepskins: this produced relief and sleep. A second application of this treatment effected a cure.

Some writers err in supposing mankind to have arrived at an age of decrepitude, from its not occurring to them that the deterioration of health arises from art, and not nature. If you wish to be convinced of this, leave civilised and go to savage life. There you will see the man of nature as young and strong as the first created; the generation cannot grow old, except by art, poison, or vice. Prescribe simple water, and it is rejected with scorn; but let any quack recommend his drugs, however poisonous, and they are swallowed regardless of results. It must have been the enemy of all good who first persuaded mankind that poison could produce health.

The evils that arise from pernicious drugs, which have swept away millions, and which will destroy the whole species if no reform takes place, originate in misunderstanding the first or acute attack, which is but an attempt of nature to heal. Men take acute attacks for disease, whilst in reality they are the means by which the system is relieved of disease. Bleeding, blistering, cupping, and drugging, subdue these efforts,—not by emancipating the system, but by so reducing it that it can no longer contend with its enemy. Men praised the unlucky discovery, and hence a host of deadly diseases took their origin, such as destructions and suppurations of the inner organs, dropsy, etc.: complaints which were hardly known in times of yore, and which, but for these causes, would never have reared their heads. However, as the lamentable consequences in some cases do not appear until years after the suppression of the acute conflict, no one thinks of attributing them to drugs. This drug-plague is the most dreadful malady mankind has to contend with; dug by themselves from the black abysses of the earth, it has been cherished as the effect of deep science for centuries; how frequently has the last shilling been offered up at its altar! Upon it as many millions have been spent as would pay off the National Debt: to the study of these dangerous errors, millions of men have applied the whole of their lives and their ability: backed by this so-called science, they contend against nature; but how does Nature punish those who wish to master her? Oh, great unspeakable Nature! how dreadfully beautiful art thou, in thy inexorable and destroying severity!

Mankind may still turn back, and regenerate health; but it is not sufficient for them to renounce physic: they must abandon wine, spirits, and poison, in every shape. For the curing of disease, we must not look into the grey mysteries of the future, but far behind us, on the green plain of Nature, and of the times which are past.

XXIX.—Assimilation.

The preservation of life requires not only that its consumption should be reduced, but its restoration rendered more easy. For this purpose two things are necessary, the perfect assimilation of that which is beneficial, the separation from that which is injurious. Life, as will be seen from the following definition, depends upon the identification, the assimilation, and the animalisation of external matter by the vital power, in its passage from the chemical to the organic world.

The power of assimilating other substances into itself is the fundamental principle of nature. This impulse and power is not only prevalent in all organic matter, but also in elemental bodies, that is to say, water, earth, and fire. The globe in the beginning was a rigid rock, upon which air and water effected their power of assimilation.

Assimilation is only possible by dissolving. For the purpose of assimilation, air and water dissolved the earth’s crust; by the agency of those powers that surface originated which produces and nourishes all organic bodies. As these exist in the same world in which the elements continually exercise their power of dissolving and assimilating, it follows, that from the beginning there must have been developed in all organic elements the same power, as a protection to themselves.

Air dissolves water into vapours, in order to assimilate gases from it. Water extracts from air the oxygen gas.