Bulwer and Forbes on the water-treatment : a compilation of papers on the subject of hygiene and rational hydropathy; edited with additional matters.

  • Houghton, Roland S.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bulwer and Forbes on the water-treatment : a compilation of papers on the subject of hygiene and rational hydropathy; edited with additional matters. 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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    cians of our age. I had consulted half the faculty. I had every reason to be grateful for the attention, and to be confident in the skill, of those whose prescriptions had, from time to time, flattered my hopes and enriched the chemist. But the truth must be spoken—far from being better, I was sinking fast. Little remained to me to try in the great volume of the herbal. Seek what I would next, even if a quackery, it certainly might expedite my grave, but it could scarcely render life—at least the external life—more unjoyous. Ac- cordingly I examined, with such grave thought as a sick man brings to bear upon his case, all the grounds upon which to justify to myself—an excursion to the snows of Silesia. But I own that in proportion as I found my faith in the system strengthen, I shrunk from the terrors of this long journey to the rugged region in which the probable lodging would be a laborer's cot- tage,* and in which the Babel of a hundred languages (so agreeable to the healthful delight in novelty—so appalling to the sickly despondency of a hypochondriac) would murmur and growl over a public table spread with no tempting condiments. Could I hope to find healing in my own land, and not too far from my own doctors in case of failure, I might indeed solicit the * Let me not disparage the fountain-head of the Water-Cure, the parent institution of the great Priessnitz. I believe many of the earlier hardships complained of at Graefenberg have been removed or amended; and such as remain are no doubt well compensated by the vast experience and extraordinary tact of a man who will rank hereafter among the most illustrious discoverers who have ever benefited the human race.