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

What organic matter can grow or live without water? We know that animals or plants excluded from its influence die. Observe the vivifying effects of water upon vegetation after a shower. Then what shall be said to vain, short-sighted man, who sets nature’s laws at defiance, by avoiding what they enjoin, and indulging in what they interdict? Why should he live without water more than all else that has life? It may be answered “He does not live his time;” for every day’s experience proves that more than half the inhabitants of the civilised world are tormented by one disease or another, which causes them to die before the natural term of life is completed. This, evidently, was not the intention of Divine Providence, since water, found every where, will prevent or cure disease, enable human beings to attain a good old age, and die without pain.

Stiffened joints, the dull eye, thickness of breathing, an unnatural tendency to corpulency, wrinkles, baldness, bad sight, and sallowness of complexion, are failings which clearly indicate an habitual distaste for water. It cannot be doubted, that in many of these cases, the mere drinking plentifully of water, and washing the body once a day, would afford relief. If they had always been accustomed to this they would not have been thus affected.

What numbers of weakly, crippled children we see? “Parents, do you wash their bodies; do you encourage them in the drinking of water? If not, you are instrumental to their future misery: you deprive them of the power of being healthy in life, or attaining to longevity.” In looking around on the organic world, we cannot but admire the perfection everything seems to attain—the noblest work of creation an exception; we exclaim, with Goldsmith, “Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.”

“Health is the natural state of man.

“The causes of bodily disease, not proceeding from external injury, are material, and consist of foreign matters introduced into the system.

“These foreign matters are divided into four parts:—

“I. Bodily substances which have not been eliminated in proper time.

“II. Substances not assimilated, and notwithstanding which, remain in the stomach, the skin, or the interior.

“Contagious ulcers.

“Corrupted elements; epidemical diseases.