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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    who had himself known more than my own sufferings, who, like myself, had found the pharmacopeia in vain— who had spent ten months at Graafenberg, and left all his complaints behind him—who, fraught with the experience he had acquired, not only in his own person, but from scientific examination of the cases under his eye, had transported the system to our native shores, and who proffered the proverbial salubrity of Malvern air and its holy springs, to those who, like me, had ranged in vain from simple to mineral, and who had become bold by despair—bold enough to try if health, like truth, lay at the bottom of a well. I was not then aware that other institutions had been established in England of more or less fame. I saw in Doctor Wilson the first transporter—at least as a physi- cian—of the Silesian system, and did not care to look out for other and later pupils of this innovating German school. I resolved, then, to betake myself to Malvern. On my way through town, I paused, in the innocence of my heart, to inquire of some of the faculty if they thought the water-cure would suit my case. With one excep- tion, they were unanimous in the vehemence of their denunciation. Granting even that in some cases, especially of rheu- matism, hydropathy had produced a cure, to my complaints it was worse than inapplicable—it was highly dangerous —it would probably be fatal. I had not stamina for the treatment—it would fix chronic ailments into organic disease—surely, it would be much better to try what I had not yet tried.