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

The more the human body has been saturated with drugs, alcohols, and other foreign matters, the greater is the necessity for a free action of the pores and perspiration, because by these agents it seeks to relieve itself of diseased matter. When the skin is relaxed or incumbered by that oily exhalation which is constantly exuding from the pores, and too often suffered to remain on the surface, fluids collect beneath the skin and cause inflammation—this is called dropsy.

One of the greatest promoters of dropsy, as every medical man knows, is the lancet, by which the good blood is extracted and a watery fluid substituted. Strong poisons of whatever nature they may be, either mercury, blue pill, calomel, bark, iodine, or any other of the ten thousand drugs from which relief is sought, and for which alcohols or other stimulants are persevered in, tend to vitiate the juices, and produce gout, dropsy, and numberless complaints from which the habitual water-drinker is exempt.

No modern writer on dropsy attributes it to drinking water, nor, observes Dr. Johnson, is there anything in the physiology of the capillary system of vessels which can warrant such an opinion; on the contrary, drinking largely of diluting liquids is always recommended as an important part of the cure of dropsy. Dr. Gregory, author of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, states that “no diuretic medicines are likely to be of service, without very copious dilution;” and adds, “there cannot be a greater error than to imagine that dropsical accumulations may be lessened by withholding liquid.”

From the returns of 1841, within the city of London and bills of mortality, amongst a people opposed to the use of cold water in any way, we find that from dropsy alone the deaths amounted to 584.

Is not this fact alone sufficient to carry conviction to our minds, that dropsy is not the effect of water drinking? It may be safely affirmed that those who never take physic and who adhere to a water diet, will never be attacked with dropsy.

This complaint, except when of long standing, or under very extraordinary circumstances, is generally curable.

XXXII.—Smoking.

“Though smoking is decidedly prejudicial to health, it is not so bad as drinking to excess.”

“Smoking irritates the nerves and promotes the secretion of saliva, which is withdrawn from digestion.”[5]