The water cure in Scotland : five letters from Dunoon, originally published in the "Aberdeen herald," now reprinted / by J.S. Blackie.

  • Blackie, John Stuart, 1809-1895.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water cure in Scotland : five letters from Dunoon, originally published in the "Aberdeen herald," now reprinted / by J.S. Blackie. 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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    and see. Our doors are open, and you are perfectly welcome to enter, and safe to witness, or to make experiments. If we can do you no good, you may rely upon it we shall do you do no harm. There is nothing more safe than hydropathy. Under the discreet superintendence of Mr. East, the most cautious Aberdonian has no reason to shrink even from the douche. In my next letter I shall state more particularly the dif- ferent shapes of disease, in controlling which the water cure is most efficacious. And am, meanwhile, yours sincerely, T. T. Ddnoon, June 8j 1849. No. III. Dear Mb. Editor,—When an important discovery, ori^ ginating with an independent thinking layman, begins to make' head against the closely-banded prejudices of an ancient and I interested professional corporation, there are two grand methods i of talking which the members of the profession can adopt ini order to support their own dignity and to thrust the voluntary intruder back into contempt. They can say that the whole; discovery is a pretty bubble with which children will delight: to play for an hour till the wind puff it into inanity; or they- can allege that it is no discovery at all, but, in fact, only a mag-- nified and multiplied distortion of things already well knowni to the regular practice of the profession. These two methods5 of speaking, you will observe, are incompatible with one an-- other; if the one be true the other must be false; the absolute? rejection implied in the former cannot co-exist with the quali^- fied acceptance conveyed in the latter. Now, with regard to the water cure, a phenomenon so essentially laic and unprofes-- sional in its origin, the regular practitioner, who does not take> it under his patronage, has no course left—unless he be a pure? jmice—but to accept the system in its fundamental principles,, and deny stoutly that there is anything new in it, except the; exaggeration and caricature with which it is now for the firstt time exhibited. It shall be my object, in the present letter, to prove to you, Mr. Editor, and your shrewd northern readers,, that the principles of the hydropathic art of healing stand al- lowed and even lauded in the journals of the most reputable; drug doctors; and that the disciples of the Silesian peasantt