The hydropathic encyclopedia : a system of hydropathy and hygiene in eight parts ... designed as a guide to families and students, and a text-book for physicians

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YALE MEDICAL LIBRARY

HISTORICAL LIBRARY

THE GIFT OF YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Chapter I. Philosophy Of Water-cure

Relations of Water to the Healthy Organism. — Beforo we can clearly comprehend the remedial relations of pure water to the morbid conditions of the body, we must understand its physiological or vital relations to the healthy organism. These may be stated most succinctly, and remembered most easily, in the form of distinct propositions.

1. Water constitutes the greater proportion of the entire bulk of the body.

2. Water composes more than three fourths of the whole mass of blood; more than seven eighths of the substance of the brain, and more than nine tenths of the various colorless fluids and secretions.

3. Water is the only vehicle by which nutrient matters are conveyed to the blood, and through the blood to all parts of the system for its growth and replenishment.

4. Water is the only medium through which waste or effete parti cles, or extraneous ingredients, are conveyed from all parts of the sys tern to the excretory organs to be expelled.

5. Water is the only solvent, diluent, and detergent in existence, for animal and vegetable alimentary and excreinentitious matters.

C. Water is the only material capable of circulating in all the tissues of the body, and penetrating their finest vessels, without vital irritat.ou or mechanical injury.

7. The only morbid effects of water result from improper tempera-

THEORV AND PRACTICE.

hire, and over-distension of the hollow viscera, or circulating vessels, from excess of quantity — effects never necessarily unavoidable.

Modus Operandi of Water. — Contrary to the teachings of the standard medical books of allopathic, homeopathic, and eclectic schco.s, we must ever bear in mind that disease is never a positive entity, but always a negative quality ; it is the absence of health, or of the state, circumstances, and actions which constitute that balance of functional duty we call health. By referring to the misuse or abuse of some one or more of the hygienic agencies, we find the cause or causes of those deviations from the normal state, which constitute the abnormal state, and which we call disease ; and now, by applying the above propositions to the causes which produce and the conditions which constitute disease, we will find the true grounds which indicate and demonstrate water to be a remedy of general, and even universal application.

In a general sense, diseases are produced by bad air, improper light, impure food and drink, excessive or defective alimentation, indolence or over-exertion, unregulated passions, in three words — unphysiological voluntary habits. The conditions of the body in disease — the proximate causes against which all remedial efforts are to be directed — are, in general terms, impure blood, unhealthy secretions, obstructions in the minute vascular structures, or capillary vessels, excessive action in some parts or organs, with deficient action in others, unequal temperature, etc., in other words, a loss of balance in the circulation and action of the various parts of the vital machinery, producing great discord in some portion of it, and more or less disorder in all. The general indications are, therefore, to remove obstructions, wash away impurities, supply healthful nutriment, regulate temperature, relax intensive and intensify torpid action, etc. ; and what like water, what but water, with its concomitants, air, light, food, temperature, etc., can answer to these indications ?

To say that medicinal drugs can answer these indications is sheer nonsense. They may respond to any other indications almost that can be named; but these, never.. They may change the issue, they may suppress a symptom, remove a pain, transfer an irritation, excite a new vital resistance, produce another obstruction, and so divide the organic struggle between two points, diminish vital power, or increase vital expenditure; but none of those impressions or effects are really remedial, none of them meet the indications ; and if physicians in General, and mankind in particular, are not satisfied with the experiments of three thousand years, which, by the way, have destroyed ten times as many of the human family as they have saved, let them by all means be satisfied, even if they have to go on in the same absurd, blundering, and senseless, though very learned and scientific business, of drugging and killing, marring and scarring, for three thousand years longer.

Water, according to the mode of application, can intensify or moderate any function; it can energize or abate any given action; it can be made to increase or diminish temperature, locally or generally, to any extent desired; hence, though not a universal cure — for diseases are not universally curable — it is a remedy universally applicable. But while water, judiciously managed, may be doing its appropriate work iu alleviating or curing disease, other causes may counteract, retard, or entirely prevent the consummation of any curative process. The patient may live badly in other respects ; something in his eating, or drinking, or sleeping, or exercising, or other voluntary habits, may be wrong, and constantly re-supply the causes of disease as fast or faster than the best remedial use of water can remove or overcome them ; therefore, though water is put prominently forward in the hydropathic system as in all cases the great panacea, it must ever be recollected that it is but one of several remedial agencies whose influence is equally to be regarded in preserving health or in curing diseases.

To illustrate : Of fifty or a hundred invalids at a hydropathic institution, while all may employ water in the way of bathing in the best possible manner, one half of them will pretty certainly hold on to some unhenlthful habit which retards or prevents the cure, or renders it imperfect. One will nibble on candies or fruits between meals; some in the cities will lunch on oysters or plum-pudding ; some will eat flesh immoderately : others will persist in the use of butter or greasy meats sufficiently to keep them constantly bilious ; others will take salt enough to keep the whole body pickled, as it wens ill an acrid brine; others will eat an undue proportion of fine flour, and keep the bowels all the while constipated ; others will endeavor to make up by the "stimulus of distension" for the lack of mustard, vinegar, and pepper; others will drink tea or coffee, chew tobacco, or smoke cigars occasionally; and yet others will indulge iu a dose or two of drugs now and then, stealthily, of course ; and so on to the end of the chapter of " errors in Water-Cure." It is true all these things are ruled out of the establishments, but they are, notwithstanding, very frequently practiced by many patients ; and what is particularly vexatious, ungrateful, and perverse, all the evil consequences of their bad habit are usually imputed to the Water-Cure !

It may be said that the physician ought to manage all these matters, and make all patients conform in all respects to a physiological regimen. This is not always possible, for with many invalids habit is much

THEORY AND PRACTICE.

stronger than reason, and with some dyspeptics tl.3 craving of the morbid appetite for its disease-producing aliments, and condiments, and narcotics, is not a whit more governable than is the drunkard's appetite for those intoxicating poisons which have produced his insatiate craving. Both kinds of appetite are controlled, and finally overcome by a few; but sad experience tells the story that the majority are conquered and destroyed by them.

In accounting for the therapeutic operation of particular processes of the water-treatment, we must never forget that Nature is the true physician. The restorative power is inherent in the living organism. All that the true healing art can do is to supply favorable conditions, remove extraneous materials, and regulate hygienic influences, and thus place the system as fully as possible under organic law.

The humoral pathologists impute all diseases to a lentor, or morbific matter in the blood; while the solidists and vitalists contend that the action of the solids — being too much increased or diminished — is the proximate cause of all diseases. The former bleed, leech, scarify, blister, sweat, puke, purge, stimulate, and anliphloglsticate ; and the latter bleed, leech, scarify, blister, sweat, puke, purge, stimulate, and antiphlogisticate loo! Here is diversity of cause producing identity of effect; a postulate not dreamed of in natural philosophy.

We may apply water to the treatment of disease, on either theory, much more rationally than the allopath can his drugs and depletives. Whichever theory we adopt — and both are correct to a certain extent — we can alter, depurate, change, increase, restrain, or modify the fluids and actions with water and regimen, as well as with lancets ami drugs, and with none of their necessary evils or ever-present dangers. Wo can even get minerals, chemicals, and other drug-medicines out of the body by means of water-treatment, whereas the nc plus ullut of druf medical science consists in getting the system full of them, and then al.andoning it to its fate, and "the efforts of nature."

It. is no uncommon circumstance for patients to become severely salivated during water-treatment. I have treated several cases wherein patients who had taken no mercury for several years, experienced all the symptoms of a " mercurial course," such us tender, fleecy gums, metallic taste, fetid breath, swelled tongue, and copious droolliug. Other mineral poisons also produce great constitutional or local disturbance during the process by which they are expelled from the body. These drugs, as already intimated, all the other drugs in creation have no power to remove from the body. They may, like acids and alkalies, silence each other's specific action, or combiue to produce a different action ; but they do not and cannot drive each other out of the system.

l'HILOSOPHV OF WATER-CURE.

The manner in which water purifies the body from mercury and oilier mineral poisons, alias medicines, affords an explanation of its mode of action in a great variety of morbid conditions. Referring to the laws of endosmose and exosmose, as explained in the physiological part of this work, we find that when animal membranes, living or dead, and whether connected to or separated from the body, have their opposite surfaces in contact with dissimilar duids, an interchange takes place, which is continued until the constituents of both fluids become exactly similar, when all action between them ceases. Dr. E. Johnson (Domestic Hydropathy) has constructed the following diagrams, which very well illustrate this subject:

In fig. 162 a is a glass tube, the diameter of whose caliber is four tenths of an inch. Close one of its ends accurately with a piece of bladder, and til! the tube with brine. Now take a much larger tube (b) — a common tumbler will do — and fill it three quarters full with pure water. Then immerse the bladder-end of the small tube just under the surface of the water of the larger tube or tumbler, giving it an inclination of about 45". In a short time a current of liquid will be seen rising from the bottom of the water in the tumbler, upward along its side, in the direction indicated by the arrows, through the bladder, and up along one side of the small tube to the surface of the brine; then it descends along the endosmose and exosmose. other side of the small tube, in the direction of the arrows on that side, down through the brine, and through the bladder, down to the bottom of the water. The downward current is a current of brine descending into the water in the tumbler. The upward current is a current of pure water ascending into the tube to supply the place of the lost brine ; and this current will continue until the two fluids have become similar, that is, until the fluid in the basin has become as salt as that contained in the tube.

"If now the tumbler be emptied, and refilled with pure water, the current will be re-established, and in this way the brine in the tube may be completely purified of its salt.

"The currents will be seen with beautiful distinctness if some very

THEORY AND PRACTICE.

AND EXOSMOSE.

fine particles of indigo be suspended in both fluids — that in the tumbler, and that in the lube.

"If the tube a, in fig. 163, which contains the brine, have a caliber whose diametet is four fifths of an inch, and if it be supported vertically, so that the bladder-end be immersed just below the surface of the water in the tumbler (4), two currents will be seen to ascend, in the direction of the arrows, through the bladder, one on either side of the tube, to near the surface of the brine.

They now turn, and descend together in a double current through the middle of the brine in the tube, down through the bladder into the water, where they diverge, turn again, and again ascend.

The double current descending through the. middle of the tube is a current of brine coming down into the water in the tumbler. The two separate outer currents ascending from near the bottom of the water in the tumbler, are two currents of water going up through the bladder into the tube, to supply the place of the brine which has descended into the water.

" Now when pure water is held in contact with the external surface of the skin of the body, by means of the wet sheet, or any other means, precisely the same conditions are established with regard to the fluids within the body, that is, on the inside of the skin, and the water which is in contact with its outer surface, as are established in fig. 163, between the fluid (brine) contained in the tube, that is, on the inside of the bladder, and the water in the tumbler, which is in contact with the bladder's outer surface. About eighty per cent, of the blood is water, and it is this water which holds in solution whatever soluble substances, whether poisonous or otherwise, happen to be present in the blood; and it is this water, holding in solution fibrin, albumen, and the variovis salts proper to the blood, which alone circulates in those myriad* of millions of millions of capillary vessels which arc too small to admit the red particles. When an}' poisonous matters are present in the blood, it is in this water of the blood that they are held in solution, as t1>e salt is held in solution in the water of the brine.

" Now when by means of the wet sheet, pure water is held in contact with the outer surface of the si in, an J supposing that the water

PHILOSOPHY OF WATER-CURE.

of the blood, which is on the inside of it, is poise «ed, say with bichloride of mercury, what happens is this : An interchange takes place between the fluid on the outside (pure water) and the fluid on the inside, viz., the water of the blood holding bichloride of mercury in solution. The mercury-and-water passes through the skin into the water of the wet sheet, while the pure water of the wet sheet passes through the skin into the blood to supply the place of the mercury-and-water. As in figures 162 and 163, a double current is established ; a current of pure water into the body, and a current of mercury-and-water out of the body; and in this way, by frequently renewing the external contact of pure water with the skin, the blood is purified of whatever poisonous or otherwise morbid matters it may happen to contain.

" If a glass tube be partially filled with a saturated solution of salt (brine), one end of the tube having been first carefully tied over with bladder, and if the tube be suspended in the air, in a short time that side of the bladder which is exposed to the air becomes covered with salt. The brine passes through the bladder from the inner to the outer surface. When it reaches the outer surface the water evaporates, leaving the salt adhering to the bladder.

" When a person has taken the nitrate of silver for a considerable length of time, it is well known that the skin becomes colored permanently blue, from the lodgment of oxide of silver in the tissue of the skin, the nitrate being converted into a simple oxide.

"It would seem that something similar happens here with regard to the salt of silver (nitrate of silver) and the skin, as happens with regard to the salt of the brine and the bladder, in the experiment just described above. The watewof the blood, holding the nitrate of silver in solution, passes through the under layers of the skin until it reaches the rete mucosum, which lies immediately under the scarf-skin, not traveling •dong the perspiratory spiracles, but permeating the tissues. Having reached this locality, the water of the blood evaporates, while the silver, unable to penetrate the dry and horny cuticle, is left fixed in thr rete mucosum."

Similar experiments may be tried, with similar results, with any of the soluble metallic, mineral, or earthy salts, as of arsenic, iodine, sulphate of potassa, etc. I have known mercurial ulcers take place during water-treatment, on the lower extremities of patients whose bodies had, years previously, been thoroughly mercurialized, and which it was impossible to heal until after the body had become entirely cleansed of the mineral by several months' treatment.

Water-Treatment and Drco-Tpfatment Contrasted.— The above facts amply demonstrate the superiority as well as, the more rational philosophy of the water-treatment over the drug treatment oa the humoral theory. But the vita!ists have much to say about " dynamic forces." With them every thing goes by impression, or stimuli. Disease is produced by morbid impressions on the brain, or nervous system, which impressions are conveyed to the various organs or parts of the body by nervous distribution, or functional sympathy; and remedies operate by electric, magnetic, stimulant, alterant, or some other forceful property which makes impressions on the nervous centers, and these impressions are thence radiated through the system, and counteract, overcome, subdue, or in some other most mysterious and utterly inexplicable manner, cure disease, or, perchance, by some unfortunate and unaccountable circumstance or accident, render it worse.

But there is something of matter-of-fact in this theory, as, indeed, there is in nearly all the vagaries which have eve.r possessed men's minds. We know that mental impressions do disturb or modify, arrest or energize either and all of the functions of the body, and these impressions may be morbid or sanatory ; they may produce disease or remove it. But on this principle of physiological impressibility, is there not a better way of exciting counteracting morbid impressions than by drawing off the vital current, or poisoning the bodj through and through with pernicious drugs? Common sense replies in the affirmative, and all rational minds, unbiased by a miseducation, would respond, " there must be a better way." And here our "-universal panacea," pure soft water, supplies the desideratum. On the theory of impressibility it is just what is desirable, and all that is requisite, if suitably aided by the other hygienic adjuvants. J(ll the impressions made on the living body can only affect its functions as they produce or arrest action or motion, which action or motion is muscular contrac tion. Cold water and ice are assuredly the most powerful constringing agents that can be applied to the living structures without destmction or injury; and hot water, or steam, is the most efficient relaxant that can be safely employed. For producing moderate contraction or relaxation, we have all degrees of temperatu:^ between the freezing and the boiling points.

The remedial effects of water, thus far considered, are a complete substitute for all the depletory processes of the regular system, as • bleeding, leeching, antimonializing and refrigerating, and all the classes of medicines called emetics, cathartics, diaphoretics, diuretics, alteratives, tonics, and stimulants. But there are other classes which are called narcotics, nervines, and sedatives, to which opium, camphor, ether, musk, castor, henbane, ratsbane, djgsbane, wolfsbane, and divers

PHILOSOPHY IT WATER-CURE. 11

other bares belong, which at first view seem more difficult to dispense with. There is something like a charm in the idea of sending down the the sick person's throat a dose which silences his pains and quiets his distress with magical celerity. But the charm is at once dispelled when we look to ultimate consequences. The very pain which the potent and ill-advised dose of the doctor has subdued is generally the warning voice of the organic instincts that something is wrong, or the effort of the organism to rid itself of an enemy. When the organic instincts proclaim to the whole domain of life, through the medium of the brain, that an enemy is present, that proclamation is felt, not heard, and its language is pain. It is one thing to silence the outcry of nature for help, but it is quite another thing to relieve her by dislodging the enemy. The first may often be done bj narcotics and stimulants ; the second can be accomplished by the use of water. In fact, water will often succeed in promptly removing pain which the most powerful narcotics fail to mitigate. There may be inflammation, obstruction, engorgement, distension or contraction, the pain of which all the opium that can be taken short of deathful doses will not alleviate, and yet water of some temperature and in some form of application will relieve at once.

There are also classes of medicines called acids, alkalies, anthelmintics, lithontriptics, demulcents, etc. How, it may be asked, is water to substitute them ? Simply by obviating the occasion for them. A patient has a sour stomach, and the doctor gives him soda ; another is afflicted with worms, and the doctor administers something to poison them to death ; another has gravelly concretions, and the doctor advises chemical solvents; another has acrid bile which corrodes his throat, and the doctor prescribes lubricating mucilages, and so on to the end of life. But who cannot perceive that all this practice, as a part of the healing art, is absurd and ridiculous ? Who so stupidly blind as not to see that it is a mere patch-work, tinkering at effects without removing causes ? The water-treatment corrects the condition upon which the existence of these abnormal symptoms depend, when of necessity they all disappear.

In the works of the popular system we read much about "accelerating the change of matter," in order to renovate the tissues and reinvigorate the functions. To do this it is recommended to bleed, purge, and mercurialize the patient down, and then, presto! wine, tonics, and " generous diet," to stimulate him up again as fast as possible, thus doing and undoing interchangeably. Bathing, with appropriate air and exercise, and plain simple food, will effect a change of matter incomparably more rapid, and without the destruction of healthful materials, or the injurious " dynamic force" nf alcoholic poison. If there is surplus matter about or within the body, water will wash it away, and if there is a deficiency of organic material, pure food and good digestion are the natural moans to supply it.

Again, the water-treatment, by regarding the skin as the leading depurating function of the body, follows out the indications of nature herself, which expels the greatest amount of morbific agents, whether miasms, effete organic matters, or drugs and medicines, from the body, through the cutaneous channels. Instead of wearing out the alimentary canal, where but a small quantity, comparatively, of waste or offensive matter is ever found, with horridly |»oisonous emetics and bowel-scraping cathartics, the principal detergent process is directed to the skin, where naturally five or six times the amount of excrementitious matters are got rid of, that is, thrown off by the bowels.

There is a principle recognized in the allopathic school, called counter-irritation or antagonism. Indeed, some late authors have gone so far as to consider it the fundamental principle of the whole drug and depleting system. It is based on the supposed law of the animal economy, that nature, or the vital powers, cannot maintain two different kinds of morbid action in different parts of the body at the same time. Thus, if a man has an inflammation of the stomach and bowels, and you produce a severer inflammation of the mouth and salivary glands with calomel, tke stronger mercurial excitement will absorb, as it were, the lesser inflammatory action; the latter will then get well, after which the doctor may cure the drug-disease he has produced — the salivation — if he can. Such practice has no claim to the title of healing art ; it is doing an irreparable injury, with the ulterior possibility of a greater good. Blisters, issues, escharotics, and the end- Jess compounds in the shape of irritating ointments and stimulating Animents are predicated on no better philosophy than that of removing one evil by producing another.

But admitting the fact, that one disease does antagonize, or neutralize, or supercede another, the usual explanation is, I think, unsound. This vaguely-conceived "law of the animal economy" is really no law at all. It is the resistance that the vital powers make to morbific agents, which pathologists have misnamed a law of the animal economy. Two diseased actions, or diseases in two different parts of the body, or obstructing or offending materials in two or more parts or organs, wili manifest different phenomena from what are observed when one part or organ only is affected, because vital resistance is then distributed to several points instead of being concentrated at one.

Jf a person is laboring under a fever, that con.: -notion of the organism which we denominate the febrile paroxysm is the manifestation of the vital struggle to defend the organic domain against some morbific cause, or to expel some injurious matter. If the ^ital powers are making the principal effort to the surface, 'the introduction of a cathartic dose of epsom salts would divert some part of this vital effort to the bowels to meet, defend against, and expel the new enemy which is committing its ravages there, and thus purgation would result, while the depurating or remedial effect to the skin would be materially diminished. The seat of war would be changed, or the battle-field divided, but so far from being "a friend in need," the saline purgation, by drawing off and wasting a portion of vital power, would only prove a " foe indeed."

The water-treatment does not operate on the principle of antagonism or counter-irritation, according to the popular theory, for it does not produce a train of morbid actions constituting a new specific disease ; nor does it put foreign, acrid, irritating, and deleterious ingredients into the blood, to produce some powerful impression at a dash, and then leave the vital powers to war against and waste themselves in counteracting or removing them for months and years afterward. It has been objected, that a cold bath was a morbid impression, as much as a hot blister, because it is an artificial instead of a natural method of applying water. But this argument is short-sighted. A cold hip-bath, for example, produces exactly the same vital phenomena, action and reaction, that our bodies are subjected to every day, and hour, and moment of our lives, differing only in degree. The first impression of the cold water causes the blood to recede from the canillaries ; but the vital powers soon meet the impression by an increased determination of blood to the part, to balance the temperature of the body, and soon the capillaries become distended with blood, the part red, turgid, and in a warm glow. If this process is frequently repeated, the general result is to develop the superficial or capillary circulation of the part, and to that extent unload the vessels elsewhere, remove internal congestion, etc. If the impression is too strong for successful vital resistance, if the water is too cold for the ability of the patient to react, of course the opposite effect results; internal congestion is increased, and we have the abuse of the hygienic or remedial agent.

This determination to the surface in consequence of the impression of cold water, cannot be called a morbid action in any sense. If we go out of a comfortably warm room into a very cold atmosphere, our hands and face may at first become pale, cold, the vessels contracted and bloodless ; but on returning to the room, and often under the continued application of the cold, reaction takes place, nnd they soon

14 THEO.tr AND PRACTICE.

appear more red and turgid, and fee! warmer than before their exposure, for a few minutes, and then return to their usual appearance and feeling. So the slight distu/bances of the circulation produced by ordinary bathing is merely an intensified contraction and relaxation, amounting to temporarily increased action, and followed by the same harmony of circulation as existed before. Atmospheric influences, vicissitudes of temperature, variations of exercise, etc., when not extreme or violent, produce temporary disturbances of the circulation, which, so far from being morbid, are really sanatory, nay, indispensable to full health and vigor. Nature allows us a liberal range of immunity in the employment and enjoyment of agencies naturally harmonious with our structures and functions.

But how different is the case if we take into the domain of life a substance chemically incompatible with its structures, or an agent physiologically incompatible with its functions. Although they are met with the same vital resistance as a cold bath, or a hot bath, their temporary impression is never succeeded by absolute equilibrium and quietude. They leave either a mark or a void in their track. When chemically incompatible, as are all the metallic and mineral preparations, they act upon, corrode, decompose, and destroy some part or portion of some constituent of some solid or fluid, of some organ or structure. Familiar and melancholy examples of chemical incompatibility am found in the ulcerations of the mucous membrane of the mouth, throat, stomach, and bowels, produced by the ordinary employment of saleratus in cooking, and the rotting of the teeth and bones in consequence of a mercurial course. When they are physiologically incompatible, like alcohol, tobacco, opium, etc., they exhaust, irrecoverably, some portion of the vitality itself. The impressions of drug-agents of all kinds are constantly destructive or exhausting so long as they are kept up ; but the impressions from cold bathing may be continued during a whole lifetime without injury.