[Letters to the Water Cure Journal, and other papers, by John Gibbs : being the sequel to "Letters from Graefenberg" / by the same author].

  • Gibbs, John, of Camberwell.
Date:
1847-1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Letters to the Water Cure Journal, and other papers, by John Gibbs : being the sequel to "Letters from Graefenberg" / by the same author]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/250 (page 8)
    when-the heat of the surface is less than, or even only equal to the natural heat, or where there is general or profuse sensible per- spiration. The inventive genius of Priessnitz has supplied the aeficiencies which the sagacity of Currie detected and which he amented; and in the wet sheet friction we have a safe and effica- cions remedy suitable to all those stages of fever in which Currie /condemns the employment of affusion. Besides; that part of Pnessnitz’s .system-for his is a system providing a different remedy for each different; stage of fever-that part of his system, the wet-sheet packing, is decidedly superior to Currie’s practice, inasmuch as the temperature can be gradually lowered to the desired point in the wet sheet; and thus the regulation of it is more completely m the hands of the practitioner than it is when eat is suddenly and viohntly abstracted by that haphazard appli- cation—affusion. r As dysentery is also a disease unhappily prevalent at this season, a tew words of advice relative to it may not be considered out of place. Enemata of pure water and cold sitz baths are to be freely employed. The primary action of the sitz bath is that of a purga- tive. Two or three, or at most four, sitz baths, during each period of twenty-four hours, will generally be sufficient. For gripino friction should-be employed in the sitz bath, or with wet hands! -the body compress, already described, should be constantly worn except when the patient is in the sitz bath, or undergoing friction! For the treatment when febrile symptoms are present, the reader is re erred to what has been said above on the subject of fever. In ' this disease, as in fever, the-patient may be allowed to drink water according to his own inclination. If the treatment here set forth were generally adopted in fever and dysentery, I am firmly persuaded that we should not have to mourn over the frightful mortality which is now desolating the land; and, if I shall learn that the publication of this letter shall prove the means of rescuing but even one of the humblest of my countrymen from an untimely grave, I shall feel far more than rewarded for the time and labour bestowed upon its composition ; and I am satisfied that you, too, will feel fully compensated for the space which it will consume in the columns of your Independent Journal. I am, my dear Sir, Yours very faithfully, ' Camberwell, June 18, 1847. JOHN GIBBS.