Confessions of a water-patient : in a letter to W. Harrison Ainsworth, Esq. editor of "The New Monthly Magazine" / by E. Bulwer Lytton.

  • Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Confessions of a water-patient : in a letter to W. Harrison Ainsworth, Esq. editor of "The New Monthly Magazine" / by E. Bulwer Lytton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    ranks of life, and returning home to desk and counter, the amaze of the native doctor, and the example to his impatient patients. This is as important as it is unde- niable. If the water-cure has made progress within the last few years—if it has become a subject of general inte- rest and conversation—if it has forced its way into the favour of science, and the practice of the orthodox—if, where one bold and despairing man went, amidst the tears of his wife, and against the warning of his Galen, in for- lorn hope, to the holy well, fifty now may be seen calm and cheerful, well versed in the theoretic philosophy of the wet sheet and sparkling draught, taking their places in the train, and scaling the Worcestershire Beacon, it is not because a royal duke has set the fashion, or a court physician has written a treatise thereon, but because the actual, positive, concurrent testimony of numbers has carried hope to the sick and conviction to the timid. It has rested simply and wholly upon evidence; and its mis- sionaries, now happily found almost in every town, are those whose doubts it has removed—whose fears it has allayed —whose ailments it has redressed. These—men, women, and children—these are its true puffs—its recommendatory treatises—its walking advertisements! Since I first wrote this letter, has appeared, not only the charming and naive journal of Mr. Lane, which attests so well the pure enjoyments and high animal spirits which accompany the cure, and smile away all its hardships,—but the highly favourable testimony of the leading medical journal, edited by Dr. Forbes. Many of the most emi- nent of the faculty, with the true liberality which should belong to those embracing a profession whose object is human relief, now send patients to hydropathic esta-