The rise and progress of hydropathy in England and Scotland / by Richard Metcalfe.

  • Metcalfe, R. (Richard)
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The rise and progress of hydropathy in England and Scotland / by Richard Metcalfe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    a single medical school in the three kingdoms where the students are taught the therapeutic value of the numerous remedies that form the hydropathic materia medica. Nineteen centuries ago, Epictetus, the bought slave, was telling men in his lectures, Are you ill of fever ? Stop eating and drink water. But to-day, though Priessnitz has Hved, and Father Kneipp, and others, the things they taught, having proved their use to the hilt, are still a dead letter in our hospitals and medical schools, and those who have benefited, who have added years to their life by the work and the pubhc spirit of these men, have held and still hold their tongues. So after all it comes to this : that all this slackness in the matter of institutions, dwellings, insanitary conditions of feeding, scant teaching of young men in the medical schools and hospitals without proper hygienic appliances, and in general a way of looking at natural medical science as from under a Quaker's bonnet, arises^^from the gross apathy of the pubUc. Some may ask, What could we do ? We tell our friends about hydropathy. What more would you have us do ? Possibly you do tell your friends. But when there is a question of supporting the hospitals, do you give your help on the condition of hydropathic treatment and teaching being introduced ? Do you raise the question in any form ? Never ! That is the simple truth. If but one-third of the million or more, or say 500,000 of those who have been benefited by hydropathy, had given but a sovereign each for the propagation of hygienic ideas, a hydropathic hospital might have been established. Or better still, one of the many hospitals that are alwa}'^ making