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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    thropists, and do not love every knife-grinder as much as if he were mj brother—I confess, nevertheless, that I am filled with an earnest pitj; and an anxious desire seizes me to communicate to others that simple process of heal- ing and well-being which has passed under my own experience, and to which I gratefully owe days no longer weary of the sun, and nights which no longer yearn for and yet dread the morrow. And now, Mr. Editor, I may be pardoned, I trust, if I illustrate by my own case the system I commend to others. I have been a workman in my day. I began to write and to toil, and to win some kind of a name, which I had the ambition to improve, while yet little more than a boy. With strong love for study of books—with yet greater desire to accomplish myself in the knowledge of men, for sixteen years I conceive no life to have been more filled by occupation than mine. What time was not given to action was given to study; what time not given to study, to action—labour in both! To a constitution naturally far from strong, I allowed no pause or respite. The wear and tear went on without intermission—the whirl of the wheel never ceased. Sometimes, indeed, thoroughly overpowered and ex- hausted, I sought for escape. The physicians said, Travel, and I travelled. Go into the country, and I went. But in such attempts at repose all my ailments gathered round me—made themselves far more palpable and felt. I had no resource but to fly from myself—to fly into the other world of books, or thought or reverie— to live in some state of being less painful than my own. c2