The water cure in Scotland: five letters from Dunoon / originally published in the 'Aberdeen Herald'.

  • John Stuart Blackie
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water cure in Scotland: five letters from Dunoon / originally published in the 'Aberdeen Herald'. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that persons should come to the hydropathist as to other medi¬ cal men, prepared for disappointment. A skilful leech will cure, when circumstances are fair, nine cases out of ten, but he will lose the tenth—Death only, the great destroyer, knows why. So the rude October blast will lay flat, perhaps, every tenth tree in your forest, sparing the nine. Why the tenth fell you can indeed say, generally, either it was less firmly rooted, or more exposed, or more stifflly buffeted by the breezes ; but the most sharp-eyed forester would have failed to mark, with prophetic glance, yesterday, every trunk that lies flat by the gale of to-day. The general principles of the difference are in¬ telligible ; but their operation in every particular case depends upon influences that are invisible, intangible, and to every hu¬ man gauge incalculable. Medical men, like other people, in this talking world, are apt to get a great deal more both of praise and blame than they are at all entitled to; for it is at bottom nature, or, to speak more philosophically, God, in all cases, and not man, that, with the doctor’s help, or in the doc¬ tor’s spite, cures sometimes and sometimes kills. With my best thanks for your kind insertion of these somewhat lengthy letters, I am, dear Mr. Editor, Yours sincerely, T. T. Dunoon, 10th July, 1849. Printed at the Aberdeen Herald Office, by John Finlayson.
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