The water-cure in chronic diseases : an exposition of the causes, progress, and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs, and skin; and of their treatment by water, and other hygenic means / Illustrated with an engraved view of the herbes of the lungs, heart, stomach and bowels, by James Manby Gully, M.D.

  • Gully, James Manby, 1808-1883.
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water-cure in chronic diseases : an exposition of the causes, progress, and terminations of various chronic diseases of the digestive organs, lungs, nerves, limbs, and skin; and of their treatment by water, and other hygenic means / Illustrated with an engraved view of the herbes of the lungs, heart, stomach and bowels, by James Manby Gully, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    the fev/er, the absence of a guest, or even wearing a morning in. stead of an evening dress, makes all the ditference in the happi- ness and appetite of this creature of habit. From such wretched slavery as this, he may be emancipated almost immediately by the applications of the water cure, and with little or no suffering to the nervous system. For a few days, he will feel a little queer, as if ^' somehow there was something somewhere wanting, but the withdrawal of internal irritations, and the stimulation of water applied to the extremities of his nerves, and conveyed to their centres, very shortly affords to the latter a sustaining action^, which fully compensates for that which the previous injurious habits had supplied. In this manner, the water cure becomes a means of eradicating unwholesome, and of planting healthful habits in those who sub- mit themselves to it. Nor is this confined to the body. How frequently have 1 seen persons, who were dying of ennui in the midst of the stimulating gaieties of London, find the day all too short in this quiet village of Malvern ! I have seen men, whose jaded and morbid minds could previously take no nutriment save the garbage of English and French novels, devour the strong meat of History and Biography with keen and large appetite. And I constantly remind my patients that the treatment is renovating their minds as well as bodies, ridding them of the silly wants and unmeaning necessities wiiich were in part the cause, in part the effect, of their physical disorder. Doubtlessly, much of this is owing to the removal of that disorder, which takes the weight off the mental function. But in all chronic disease, there is more or less loss of volition, which can only be roused by the necessity for acquiring some good habit ; therefore, although it were not directly essential to the body's health to impose certain rules of life which require exertion of the will, inasmuch as they differ from previous habits, it is well to insist upon them, for the sake of their indirect operation on the nervous system of the body ; I nm convinced that the mere necessity of undergoing some process three or four times a day, aids those processes in bringing about the general result of health. And so far from this derogating from the credit due to the water cure, I tliink it rather exhibits the philosophical character of that treatment which thus acts on mind and body simultaneously. With this general view of the operation of habits of life, and of the necessity of altering them, under the regime of the water cure,