Two Hundred Years Ago, Dr. Vanderheyden of Ghent wrote a work in which he declared all fevers curable by cold water. Dr. Sir John Floyer, fifty years later, wrote his work, and then came Drs. Hahn, Smith and others, and finally, Dr. Currie of Liverpool, who by their works supported the same theory. It is true that though where medicine saved its hundreds, their practice saved thousands, the Modus Operandi was somewhat speculative. It was reserved until our own time to witness the application of water reduced to a science. Priessnitz by his packing-sheet has produced the great desideratum, which renders his treatment omnipotent over all febrile disorders; and if he had discovered nothing else, this would hand his name down to the latest posterity.
It is often asked what fevers are curable by the Hydropathic processes. To this it may be answered, except where by age or disease patients are not reduced to the last stage of existence, all are curable. I made constant inquiries when at Gräfenberg—witnessed the treatment of innumerable cases of fever, amongst others Typhus and Brain Fever, and I could not discover that Priessnitz during his long practice had ever lost a patient.
I have frequently treated cases of fever and inflammation myself with the most heartfelt satisfaction; as in every instance on the application of the sheet or the bath, the patient was relieved in the same manner that a plant dying for the want of water, is resuscitated on being supplied with it.
After the number of works published on this subject, all protesting the safety of this mode of treatment, and the total absence of danger, it may be fairly presumed, that the packing-sheet process will ere long take the lead in medical practice.
As almost all complaints trace their origin to fever or inflammation, if these can be allayed on their first symptoms, a host of evils to the human family will be avoided.
It does not require any great sagacity to perceive that when the body is surcharged with heat, if enveloped in a damp sheet, the sheet immediately becomes hot; take it away and you remove with it a certain amount of heat. The oftener this is repeated the more the calorie is diminished, and each sheet requires more time to heat; continue changing the sheet, and the body resumes a normal state. When once the heat is eliminated the patient is cured of the Fever.
The following modes of treatment and cases will enable the practitioner to judge how he should treat his patient as circumstances may arise.
As general rules:—
In the cold fit, use rubbing-sheets well wrung out, with a slight interim between each until the hot stage is produced. In the hot stage packing-sheets should be changed as often as necessary. In Typhus I have known them changed forty or fifty times in a day. The bath which ought at first to be a little tepid and cooled by degrees, should be resorted to at intervals twice or thrice a day, from a quarter of an hour to an hour. Should the heat action be prematurely violent, or likely to end in inflammation, resort to a sitz-bath with or without a foot-bath, instead of the tepid bath, particularly where either the brain, organs of sense, or those within the thorax are at all engaged.
Rubbing-sheets, in certain cases where the vital energies are weak or languid, will be sufficient to suppress a febrile paroxysm. Their renewal and time of application must entirely depend on the age, strength and idiosyncrasy of the case: water should be drunk in small quantities, and frequently.