The water cure in chronic disease.

  • Gully, James Manby, 1808-1883.
Date:
1859
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water cure in chronic disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    treated by us at Malvern, who have had the crisis of boils, will assert that any one, or all of these symptoms of car- buncle, usually so called, accompanied such crisis in then- persons, we are ready to give up the point, and allow that the water-cure boil is of the genuine carbuncle species, and of a dangerous character. In the meantime, as the like cause generally produces the like effect, and as the boil induced by our treatment does not produce the same symptoms as the “ carbuncle” of authors, we are justified in denouncing the dishonest motive displayed in attaching that much-feared name to it. Further, it so happens that the water-cure boil, so far from being connected with “high, rich, and gross living, with insufficient exercise, with gross habit of body, or with neglect of personal cleanliness,” as is the case with the “ carbuncle” of authors, appears, after strict but nutritious dieting, abundant exercise, diminution of morbid fulness of habit, and most assuredly, after no neglect of personal cleanliness, if water applied in all manners can clean the human skin, or purify the human frame. The identity of true carbuncle with the water boil thus fails in the com- parison of causes, as well as of symptomatic effects; neither being traceable to the like causes, nor marked by the like results. Where, then, is the honest motive in maintaining their identity 1 The only point in which they agree is the formation of more than one opening, in which case they also agree in the more extended base and less conical shape than in an ordinary boil. But as we said, this is an occasional occur- rence only; in very many instances, none but single boils are produced, to which it would be as fair to attach the name and attributes of “ carbuncle,” as to the larger species alluded to. What then is the genuine water bod, about which such a hubbub is made 1 It is a conglomera tion of several simple boils, and in so far, according to Dueuytren’s and Bayer’s definition, a carbuncle; but inasmuch as these are generated in, and are indeed the signals of, a body cleansed of its grossness and impurities after weeks or months of wholesome diet, exercise, and watery applications, and not of a body in all the flush of dietetic iniquities, these congregated boils have neither the carbunculur discharge, nor are accompanied by the severe and dangerous constitutional symptoms attendant on the genuine carbuncular inflammation. Inasmuch, too,