Errors of physicians and others in the practice of the water-cure as a remedial agent in the prevention and cure of diseases : with instructions for its proper application / by J.H. Rausse ; translated by C.H. Meeker.

  • Rausse, J. H., 1805-1848.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Errors of physicians and others in the practice of the water-cure as a remedial agent in the prevention and cure of diseases : with instructions for its proper application / by J.H. Rausse ; translated by C.H. Meeker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    unless required by the thirst. The actual thirst however must be appeased, should it require even ten quarts and more per day, which very frequently occurs during crisis. When I before said, that water taken in the form of drink penetrates all the blood and capillary vessels, and by virtue of the laws of endosmose, partially all the plastic structure of the body, I am, according to the pre- sent position of physiological science, perfectly justified in the assertion, for the assumption of secret urinary ducts, to which Muller, and Strahl, and earlier physiolo- gists resorted, to explain the rapid urination of many of those substances taken as drink into the stomach, which was at that time a blind riddle to them, is at the present day acknowledged as a decided error, and even banished from the territory of physiological hypotheses. I must in addition make an observation upon organic defects. Until the discovery of the water-cure system, organic defects were considered always to be absolutely incurable, and in fact they are so by medicinal means. Even the smallest indurations and disorganizations within the body, resist every medicinal treatment. If we call organic defects those disorganizations only which affect organs that control life, which have at the same time reached a very high degree, then indeed these organic defects or diseases are also but rarely curable by water. But the slighter disorganizations, which develop them- selves in the course of every chronic disease, are curable by water, and are absolutely incurable by medicine. It need indeed scarcely be observed, that the innate faults of structure are not curable by water; only those or- ganic defects are curable, which have developed them- selves in the course of life, and these latter are without all comparison more numerous than the former.