Hydrotherapia, or, The water cure : being a practical view of the cure in all its bearings, exhibiting the great utility of water as a preservative of health and remedy for disease, founded on observations and experience made at Grafenberg. To which is added a description of Grafenberg, and the system there, as practised by Vincent Priessnitz ... Together with a short sketch of the history of the water-cure from the remotest antiquity, and remarks on sea bathing / By Thomas Smethurst.

  • Smethurst, Thomas, 1804 or 1805-
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hydrotherapia, or, The water cure : being a practical view of the cure in all its bearings, exhibiting the great utility of water as a preservative of health and remedy for disease, founded on observations and experience made at Grafenberg. To which is added a description of Grafenberg, and the system there, as practised by Vincent Priessnitz ... Together with a short sketch of the history of the water-cure from the remotest antiquity, and remarks on sea bathing / By Thomas Smethurst. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and malignant part of the whole substance of the dis- ease that is eliminated from the body by the skin. Such periods may be termed crises. As a proof of this proposition, I need only mention the sudden disappear- ance of these eruptions—falling back upon the inner and nobler organs, as in scarlet fever, measles, small-pox, &c.—often becoming dangerous and of deadly conse- quence; and as a further corroboration, we may adduce the happy effects produced by the sloughing away and desquamation of skin in some pernicious maladies. At the same time, we observe, that the kidneys and the bowels take their part in getting rid of what is deleterious. But it is not always that such an important crisis takes place. A disease may sometimes take the direction to the intestines, or an outward structure, and here produce various local disorders which generally have some connexion with the original disease, but gradually assume a standing of their own. Many sorts of humours could be mentioned as forming the foundation for disease. Under the denomination of gastric humours might be comprehended the founda- tion for the so called gastric diseases, for nervous fevers, erysipelas, scarlet fever, measles, various sorts of pocks, gout, and other forms of disease. But, besides this, they are distinguished according to their nature ; rheu- matic, (often connected with acidity in the stomach, and which seem nearly allied to the gastric,) various other gouty, hoemorrhoidal, scrofulous, scorbutic, psoric, syphi- litic, cancerous, and drug diseases; among the latter,