Bulwer and Forbes on the water-treatment : a compilation of papers on the subject of hygiene and rational hydropathy; edited with additional matters.

  • Houghton, Roland S.
Date:
1851
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bulwer and Forbes on the water-treatment : a compilation of papers on the subject of hygiene and rational hydropathy; edited with additional matters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    to heat ourselves bj fire, and cool our overheated bodies by water. Cold baths were older than Hippo- crates's art, not the product of any hypotheses, but established by the experience of all mankind in the colder climates. I may add, in this connection, that Hippocrates was perhaps the earliest promulgator of the idea set forth in the term vis medicatrix natura. He advanced, says Hooper, an opinion which has since very gener- ally prevailed, that there is a principle or power in the system, which he called Nature, tending to the preser- vation of health and the removal of disease. He there- fore advised practitioners carefully to observe and pro- mote the efforts of nature, at the same time correcting morbid states by their opposites, and endeavoring to bring back the fluids into their proper channels. He seems to have deprecated the rash and undue use of medicinal poisons, and to have relied very greatly upon what is now termed the expectant treatment. In point of fact, Hippocrates was, to the extent of his knowledge, a very skilful hygienic and hydropathic practitioner. Galen, who lived in the second century, and whose chief object in his writings appears to have been (ac- cording to Hooper) to illustrate those of Hippocrates, cured fevers with cold baths; and perhaps it was in this way that his fortune was made, he having succeeded in curing of some such affections the two sons of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Celsus, also, recommended the use of water in the cure of certain