PREFACE.
Since the announcement of the alleged discovery of Priessnitz, about fifty years ago, there has been no scarcity of books upon “Hydropathy,” “Water Cure,” and kindred topics. With rare exceptions, these works have been, in reality, little better than advertising mediums for some individual or institution. As might be expected in works prepared for such purposes, they have contained numerous and flagrant exaggerations of the effects of water as a remedial agent, often representing it as a specific for certain maladies and a sure preventive of others. These extravagant accounts, together with various absurd teachings relating to methods of application, have rendered just the popular verdict indicated by the fact that the dingy shelves of nearly every second-hand book store in New York and Philadelphia, as well as other large cities, are laden with these musty old volumes which rest beneath the accumulated dust of years.
The objects of this work may be briefly summarized as follows:—
1. To present a careful and candid account of the nature of water and its physiological effects.
2. To explain the effects of water when used as a remedy for disease, and to demonstrate its value as a remedial agent.
3. To show that the employment of water in the treatment of disease has been practiced by the most eminent physicians of all ages, and is not a modern discovery.
4. To expose those absurd and erroneous practices which have brought the use of water as a remedy into disrepute, and have thus deterred scientific physicians from adopting it.
5. To provide a convenient manual of the various methods of applying water.
The reader will observe that water is not presented as a panacea. Its use is not advocated as a specialty. It is only recommended as one of the many potent agencies which may be successfully employed in the treatment of the numerous ills to which humanity is subject—a remedy which has been abused by quacks and tyros and disgraced by fanatics, but which still urges a just claim to the attention and consideration of all candid persons.
J. H. K.
J. H. K.
J. H. K.
J. H. K.
Battle Creek, Mich., Sept., 1876.
[Fleuron]