The principles and practice of hydrotherapy : a guide to the application of water in disease for students and practitioners of medicine / by Simon Baruch ... ; with numerous illustrations.

  • Baruch, Simon, 1840-1921.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of hydrotherapy : a guide to the application of water in disease for students and practitioners of medicine / by Simon Baruch ... ; with numerous illustrations. 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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    cause lie desires to disarm prejudice and to disseminate a more exact knowledge of the application of water in disease among medical men, many of whom appear to entertain vague ideas on the subject. That hydrotherapy is an effective agent in acute diseases is begin- ning to be recognized by reason of the success attending it in typhoid fever. But the fallacious idea still prevails that chronic diseases must be sent away from home in order to obtain good results from hydro- therapy. While it is true that the treatment in institutions offers the best prospect in chronic cases, the reason lies not so much in the facili- ties offered by them as in the experience and consequent skill acquired by physicians from the large clientele of such institutions. A consid- erable proportion of the most prevalent chronic diseases does not require institution treatment; nevertheless, they demand a careful adjustment of temperature, duration, and technique to each individual case. Such knowledge may be as readily acquired by the practitioner as is that of any other department of therapeutics. Having mastered the technique and mode of action of hydriatric pro- cedures, the educated physician will discover that he may often obtain as good results from the simplest methods as from those requiring more technical skill. To afford this information in a concise and practical form is the object of this work; the author, himself a general practitioner, believes that he appreciates the needs of his colleagues. The chapter on the hydriatric prescription is devoted to an exposi- tion of the prevalent fallacy that water is so simple and innocuous a remedy that it may be applied with less regard for precision than the physician is wont to exercise in prescribing medicinal remedies. The author has endeavored to inculcate by striking examples the importance of exactness in prescribing and executing hydriatric procedures. The concluding chapter points out the lessons derived from the his- tory of hydrotherapy. It aims to show the need of instruction in hydrotherapy in our medical schools, in order that this valuable rem- edy may be wrested from the laymen and empirics, who have stolen it from medical men, and who alienate the latter by perverting it for their mercenary ends. The addition of hydrotherapy to the curriculum of our medical schools, as is done in the universities of Vienna and Heidelberg, would arm the young practitioner with a much-neglected weapon, whose power is amply demonstrated in these pages. The author would ask the earnest attention of teachers of clinical medicine to the concluding chapter of the book. New York, 51 West Seventieth Street, July 10th, 1898.