The cold-water system: an essay : exhibiting the real merits, and most safe and effectual employment, of this excellent system in indigestion, costiveness, asthma, cough, consumption, rheumatism, gout, &c; with cautionary remarks, addressed to people of extreme opinions, and some new cases / by Thos. J. Graham.

  • Graham, Thomas John, 1795?-1876.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cold-water system: an essay : exhibiting the real merits, and most safe and effectual employment, of this excellent system in indigestion, costiveness, asthma, cough, consumption, rheumatism, gout, &c; with cautionary remarks, addressed to people of extreme opinions, and some new cases / by Thos. J. Graham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    169/200 (page 145)
    WATER DRINKING. Water affords a very beautiful illustration of that inde- structibility with which the Creator invested matter for the preservation of the world. He formed it from elementary masses, and it appears to have existed unchangeable from the commencement of the universe. Its constituent parts are not broken into by any atmospheric revolution; they continue the same, whether in the solid ice, the fluid state of a liquid, or the gaseous form of a vapour. Its powers are undiminished, whether in the wave or the stream,—the most effective agent in the hands of man to procure that welfare and happiness which his own errors deprive him of, frequently bringing on those cala- mities that his perversity attributes to the will of the Omnipotent. Water is the same in the atmosphere as on the earth, and falls in the verv same nature as it ascends; electricity has no other influence upon it than that of hastening its precipitation. Chemical agents, however powerful, can only decompose its elementary principles upon the most limited scale. The heteroge- neous substances with which water may occasionally be alloyed, must be considered as purely accidental. The homogeneous character of this fluid admits of no alteration ; and, like atmospheric air, its elements are still obtained as pure, most probably as when they first emerged from chaotic matter. The same principles are found in the L