“May 26.—Packed, bathed, and out as usual, but instantly turned in again. It was raining after a fashion that, even to me, seemed to promise no interval or alleviation.
“We turned into the dining room, and, pushing the seats of the chairs under the table, we made a clear space for walking round the room. Our dining-room is forty feet long; and, after a minute’s discussion as to our intended route, it was settled that we should go (by the watch) to the spring beyond the Wyche. I opened the windows, and Ned arranged water bottle and tumblers on the table, undertaking to announce our arrival at the several springs. He had marked the distances by the time occupied, and so we started, and having walked from end to end of the room—and round the table ten minutes, Ned called that we were at the Turnpike, and we stopped to drink. We then passed on, doing all sorts of small talk with a friend who had joined us, until we got to the Wyche and to the Willow Spring; then we drank again, and just having started, we met, at the turn of the road, Mr Townley; who came suddenly upon us, and joined our party cheerfully. There were frequent over-takings of each other, and at the corners of the paths we contended for the sharp angles, and carried out the rules of the road by passing on the proper side.
“Mr Townley walked as well as the best of us, and was a delightful walking companion; full of anecdote, of solid information, and a quiet dry humour all his own; but we could not inoculate him with a love for Malvern. Enumerating the varied attractions of the place, I unluckily wound up with the charming drives; when he admitted that it is ‘a delightful place to get away from.’”
A rebel in the camp! What is to come next? Why, a revelation that the Water-Cure system at Malvern is so old that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
“May 27.—Packed, bathed, and out as usual. Surely the variable nature of our climate is a source of constant, never-failing interest. Here is a glorious morning, following a day that seemed to give no hope of a change. Walked with Sterling and Ned to the Holy Well at Malvern Wells, then mounting the hills to the Beacon.
“The work published by Dr Card tells of extraordinary cures effected by the water of the Holy Well. The monks of old used to wrap in cloths steeped in this water, persons afflicted with leprosy or other eruptions; and (as the Guide quotes) ‘make them lie in bed, and even sleep, with the wet cloths on the diseased parts.’
“Why, here was an instinctive use of the ‘Wet Sheet Packing’ of very ancient date; but not (as the monks perhaps deemed) miraculous.”
The monks have unexpectedly got Mr Lane into a scrape. Their treatment of their patients is in all respects the same as the hydropathic treatment. But what is science in hydropathy is instinct in the priesthood. It is the most singular instance of instinct ever recorded. A controversy has long raged as to the precise approximation of animal instinct to human reason. The line of demarcation between the instinct of the monk and the reason of the hydropathic doctor is so faint and slender that nobody, except a “packed” Malvern jury, with Mr Lane as foreman, could be audacious enough to hint its existence. So the worthy and intelligent monks not only knew how to select a charming residence, but practised the Water-Cure several hundred years ago! What becomes of the apt comparison between the “common fate of new revelations,” as illustrated in the hostility of doctors which nearly ruined the great Harvey, and the disbelief of sensible people in the virtue of hydropathy? Hydropathy, in our view of it, is nothing new; but when it is demonstrated that at Malvern itself it existed in former ages, its want of success cannot with consistency be attributed to its novelty. The originality of the system, altogether, is on a par with the following branch of it:—
May 31.—“At five o’clock in walked the executioner, who was to initiate me into the SWEATING process. There was nothing awful in the commencement. Two dry blankets were spread upon the mattress, and I was enveloped in them, as in the wet sheet, being well and closely tucked in round the neck, and the head raised on two pillows; then came my old friend, the down bed, and a counterpane, as before. I need not sketch this, as it is precisely like the wet sheet packing in appearance.
“Not so in luxury. At first I felt very comfortable, but in ten minutes the irritation of the blanket was disagreeable, and endurance was my only resource—thought upon other subjects out of the question. In half an hour, I wondered when it would begin to act. At six, in came Bardon, to give me water to drink. Another hour—and I was getting into a state. I had for ten minutes followed Bardon’s directions, by slightly moving my hands and legs, and the profuse perspiration was a relief; besides, I knew that I should be soon fit to be bathed, and what a tenfold treat! He gave me more water, and then it broke out! In a quarter of an hour more he returned, and I stepped, in that condition, into the cold bath, Bardon using more water on my head and shoulders than usual—more rubbing and sponging, and afterwards more vigorous dry rubbing. I was more than pink, and hastened to get out, and compare notes with Sterling. We went to the Wyche. This process is very startling. The drinking water is to keep quiet the action of the heart. To plunge into cold water after exercise has induced perspiration might be fatal, but this quiescent, passive state, involves no danger of any kind.”
To recur to the Roman bath is superfluous. The curious will find in Celsus all they have read in these extracts, and much more than is “dream’d of in your hydropathy, Horatio.” The ingenuous narrative of Mr Lane is useful. The preposterous pretensions of the Water-Cure are visible and palpable. There may be no harm in Malvern, so long as the patients with whom Mr Lane makes us acquainted resort to it; although, conscientiously, we coincide with Mr Townley in his opinion that it must be “a delightful place to get away from.” We do not at all impugn Dr Wilson’s medical skill, and we heartily admire his tact. There are numbers of people who, resisting and infringing the orders of their medical advisers at home, blindly obey the behests of the physician at a watering-place. There are many, also, blasés and out of sorts with the racket, the whirl, and the glare of London life—or of what is worse, a provincial burlesque of London life—to whom the gentle influences of the balmy country air waft back the health which their riot had almost frightened from its frail tenement. These people visit such places as Malvern, do what they are commanded to do, spend their hours in rational enjoyment, and go home—converts to the Water-Cure. It is not very just, but it is very common.
And now let us state distinctly what we would really consider, and gladly dignify, as “The Water-Cure.” For although unable to recognise in water an universal and infallible panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir to, we can yet bear a large testimony in its favour, and send it out to service with the highest character. It is our deliberate and mature conviction that the inhabitants of the Cumbraes and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland may, to their own infinite advantage, fishify their flesh a great deal more than they do at present. Our language does not embrace the full scope of our recommendation; because the minnow and the whale, along with all the intermediate gradations of the finny family, may probably disclaim the reputation of water-drinkers. Internally and externally, according to the rational views which we are about to explain, we advocate the application of the pellucid fountain and the crystal stream. This is to touch, we are quite aware, some of the most important questions which can engage the attention of the philanthropy and of the legislature of this country. It is to do so; and we hope to evince in our remarks at once the fearlessness and the moderation which become the honest and the practical investigation of matters affecting the moral and the physical welfare of thousands of human beings.
In lauding water as a beverage, it is impossible to evade an expression of opinion regarding the great movement which is represented and embodied in the existence and diffusion of temperance societies over the length and breadth of the land. Whatever words can be selected of most emphatic significance, we are willing to adopt in general approbation of that movement. We single out here no individuals for encomium, and refuse to decorate with a preference any particular fraternity or society. Taking, as our limits necessarily oblige us to take, a broad survey of the principle, and the results of the principle disclosed by experience, we cheerfully pronounce both to be positively and undeniably good. Observe, we say temperance. Total abstinence is a different thing altogether—an extreme which may warrant and cover abuses as bad as drunkenness itself. No spectacle is more ludicrous than a procession of Tee-totallers. If total abstinence is a virtue hard to win, and accessible only to an inconsiderable minority, the pharisaical ostentation of its vain-glory is not calculated to attract or conciliate the overwhelming majority who feel unable to soar to its sublimity. If, on the other hand, total abstinence is a virtue of such easy acquisition as to imply no sacrifice either in grasping or holding it, surely banners need not wave, nor bagpipes grunt, to celebrate such humble and ordinary merits. The Stoics, in declaring pain to be no evil, unconsciously proclaimed that there was no fortitude in suffering. The citizens of Edinburgh who live guiltless of larceny do not perambulate the streets once a-year in holiday attire to the cadence of martial music, for the purpose of being pointed out to the marvelling on-looker as men who never picked a pocket or broke into a larder. Total abstinence is not an end which common sense acknowledges to be attainable. In peculiar circumstances it may be that a sagacious and strong mind, determined to rescue masses of his countrymen from a degrading and destructive bondage, may begin by tearing them violently and completely asunder from their former pernicious habits. His ultimate hopes, however, do not rest on the permanency of this revulsion, but on the foundation which even its temporary supremacy enables him to plant in the understanding and in the heart, for finally establishing better inclinations, wiser purposes, a detestation of excess, and a love of moderation. National temperance will be the triumphant realisation of his aspirations; and as we believe national temperance to be practicable, so we believe it to be desirable, on the lowest and most selfish, as well as on the loftiest and purest grounds. As politicians, we are satisfied that the temperance of the people is an auxiliary in securing, assisting, and facilitating good government, little inferior to many of those invaluable institutions for which Britons are ready to shed their life-blood. The national tranquillity, energy, industry, and affluence, ought to be the aggregate of the contentment, enterprise, diligence, and wealth of each individual. Any thing, therefore, which will convince a man that sobriety makes a happier fireside than heretofore, gives to him at all hours of the day a cooler head and a steadier hand than he used to have, and leaves at sunset a shilling in the purse which he could never find there during the reckless season of his dissipation, is not merely a direct benefit to the individual, but a substantive addition to the resources and strength of the community. We wish to preach no ascetic doctrines, nor to curtail the enjoyment of life of any the least of its fair proportions. Over-fasting and over-feasting are alike repugnant to our ideas. What we delight to see is, that hundreds and tens of hundreds, voluntarily turning off from a road which leads invariably to misery, poverty, and crime, are now treading a more salubrious path, where, as they proceed, an unreproving conscience and domestic happiness must cheer them with their blessings, and, in all probability, worldly prosperity will reward them with its comforts. The first part, then, of our “Water-Cure” is temperance—by which we do not mean either that water is the only fluid which mortals shall imbibe, or that water, even if so exclusively imbibed, is the elixir of life. We mean a general recognition in the conduct of life, that while intemperance is senseless, brutish, dangerous, and guilty, temperance on the contrary—without stinting enjoyment, or balking mirth, or fettering the freest exhilaration of his nature—secures to man at all times, whether of relaxation or of toil, the healthful development of his faculties, and would, in this our own country, prodigious as its industry is, and magnificent as its achievements have been, redeem a quantity of time and means wasted, which, rightly employed and exerted, might elevate the social security and harmony, the political and commercial ascendancy, the public and the private affluence, of the British empire above the visionary splendours of an Utopian commonwealth. Thus far we
“Fetch our precepts from the Cynick tub,”
without fear of being accused of