“To promote a crisis, dress lightly; warm clothing relaxes the skin. The stronger and harder the skin, the better will a crisis be developed. Every sore and boil cannot be considered a crisis, some degenerate into disease, and have an inward tendency. In a proper crisis of boils, they rise, burst, and heal.”
“For itching rash in the arm, do not wear the bandage, unless great pain ensues, and in that case only at night.”
“Chopping or sawing wood is better exercise for the stomach and bowels than walking.”
To a lady who complained of want of sleep, and much pain from an eruption on her body, Priessnitz said “Take a tepid bath for some days, eat lean meat without salt, and indulge freely in butter, you will get well as soon as the rash has expended itself: there can be no repose for the nerves until the humours that fret them are expelled.”
“Nervous temperaments are the strongest, but most irritable when excited by acid humours.”
“Fingers being white after cold bathing denote weak nerves; the fingers having lost their vitality, the blood ceases to circulate.”
“Constipation and relaxation of the bowels proceed from the same causes, weakness and impurities; hydropathy corrects both.”
“It is impossible to warm, for any length of time, by hot viands and warm water, their constant application only chills the more; by relaxing and dilating they produce the opposite effects to those which are so essential to health, namely Contraction. Cold water determines the Caloric currents outwards from the vital centre, and promotes decomposition.”
“I cannot understand how drugs can reach any destined point; it appears to me that all drugs are inimical to the human subject.”