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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    but it could scarcely render life—at least the external life —more unjoyous. Accordingly I examined, with such grave thought as a sick man brings to bear upon his case, all the grounds upon which to justify to myself an excursion to the snows of Silesia. But I own that in proportion as I found my faith in the system strengthen, I shrank from the terrors of this long journey to the rugged region in which the probable lodging would be a labourer's cottage,* and in which the Babel of a hundred languages (so agreeable to the healthful delight in novelty—so appalling to the sickly despondency of a hypochondriac) would murmur and growl over a public table spread with no tempting condi- ments. Could I hope to find healing in my own land, and not too far from my own doctors in case of failure, I might indeed solicit the watery gods—but the journey. I who scarcely lived through a day without leech or potion!— the long—gelid journey to Graafenberg—I should be sure to fall ill by the way—to be clutched and mismanaged by some German doctor—to deposit my bones in some dismal churchyard on the banks of the Father Rhine. While thus perplexed, I fell in with one of the pamphlets written by Doctor Wilson, of Malvern, and my doubts were solved. Here was an English doctor * Let me not disparage the fountain head of the water-cure, the parent institution of the great Priessnitz. I believe many of the earlier hardships complained of at Graafenberg have been removed or amended ; and such as remain, are no doubt well compensated by the vast experience and extraordinary tact of a man who will rank hereafter amongst the most illustrious discoverers who have ever benefited the human race.