A guide to domestic hydro-therapeia : the water cure in acute disease

Front matter

Presented hi/

ALFRED JONES

OF BATH + 1915 si

Preface

For several years past I have desired, in response to the wishes and suggestions of most of my patients, to undertake some writing which might be a guide to them when they had quitted my personal supervision. Having experienced what the hydro-therapeutic processes would do for the maladies against which they sought them at Malvern, and having thereby acquired faith in them, as well as distrust of thenprevious practices, they naturally enough wished to learn how to deal, through the same method, with the disorders which might assail them when they were at home. Multiplied occupations, however, never gave me the opportunity of putting their suggestion into practice, until a severe illness in

VI rEEFACE.

the early part of last winter obliged me to retire for several months from all practical avocations. Some part of this period of retirement I have given to the production of the present volume, which I trust may answer the purpose which my patients desired to satisfy.

It thus appears that I have written specially for non-professional persons. I have done this the more willingly, because I hold a strong opinion that all -'mysteries" in men's callings are absurd and out of date, and are too often but curtains behind which short-coming knowledge and want of tact hide themselves. Let it not bo supposed that it is an easy task to write without the ' mysteries : ' at least, it is easier to write with them. First of all, technicalities which, from habit, come ready to the professional writer, have to be translated into the vernacular. Then, in order that the practical reader may employ the measures recommended with an enlightened l'KEFACE.

Vll faith, some rationale of tlie symptoms to be treated, as well as some reasons for the treatment, require to be given. Finally, all this must be clone in as brief style as possible, for difTuseness perplexes, if it does not altogether deter, the reader ; whilst, on the other hand, the Horatian warning not to push brevity into obscurity, stares the writer in the face. I dare scarcely hope that these desiderata of a popular work have been met satisfactorily in the present one ; but I have striven conscientiously to meet them.

A much more voluminous work might have been sent forth, had I included in it all the maladies against which hydrotherapeia is capable of being successfully employed. But inasmuch as that method is proposed, in these pages, to be applied by non-professional persons in their own homes, at a distance from a special practitioner of it, I am very certain that I have put a prudent limitation on the number and

Vlll

PREFACE.

character of the disorders herein included. In complicated, variously phased, and very speedily grave or destroying diseases, no such responsibility should be undertaken by the kinsmen or friends of the sick man as is implied in the treatment by means of written instructions. In all such cases it is their bounclen duty to seek the personal inspection and advice of a medical practitioner, whatever his known opinions regarding treatment may be. I have therefore confined the list of disorders to those which I believe an usually educated and intelligent person may safely and efficiently venture to treat, according to the detailed instructions herein laid clown.

The necessity for such a book as this is based on the fact, that practitioners of hydro-therapeia are only to be found in a few localities of the land, and the question at once presents itself, "Why is this so!" Half a dozen words answer it — indolence, bigotry, moral cowardice, bad taste.

PREFACE .

Very many persons pass through a professional life without making any inquiry into its practical capabilities beyond those with which they commenced their career. Even with reference to their own adopted creed of treatment, their indolence refuses to keep pace with the modifications which the more enlightened followers of the same creed introduce; how then can it be expected that faineants of this kind should bestir themselves to travel so far as hyclrotherapeia %

Then comes bigotry so swollen with pride and self-sufficiency that it were vain to expect it to move one line beyond its own circle, however small, or its own groove, however narrow. This is the Genius which says, " I will not look into your facts ; and if you lay them before me, I will not believe them." And she rejoices in not a few votaries.

More pitiable even than this is the case of the moral coward, who refuses to inquire

X

PREFACE.

because it will not pay, because he fears to offend his seniors, because he dreads to be called hard names by the idle and bigoted aforesaid Is he likely to aid the extension of anything so out of the routine as hydrotherapeia ?

Add all these together-, and a tolerably extensive obstacle to the spread of water treatment among medical practitioners will be found. Yet it is a very certain and a very proud fact that the medical profession includes not a few minds of the highest order for the purposes of inquiry, and having the highest objects and aspirations in their noble occupation. If it be asked why these enlightened men have failed to inquire into and to practise water treatment, here is the answer of one of them : "Your system has not been presented to us in the form of a scientific treatment ; we see water-cure establishments advertised in very nearly the same puffing terms as a cheap clothier's or haberdasher's ; we

PREFACE.

see pamphlets published, some with a name, some anonymous, with the sole object of puffing some one practitioner and his establishment : we hear of catch-penny Turkish baths profusely and perseveringly made known in the advertising columns of the daily and weekly papers ; and we conclude that this is some new trade which may be conducted by an expert bath-man, but cannot include matter for inquiry by educated medical men." And thus it is that bad taste and vulgar devices have driven the best men of our profession from the experimental investigation of hydro-therapeia. The fact is so ; it cannot be denied, and can only be regretted.

Spite of all these impediments, however, the hydro-therapeutic treatment is stealing here and there into the practice of the ordinary style. We hear of compresses being recommended by the better orders of the profession ; we hear of sitz baths being ordered as an essential part of trc:itxii

PKEFACE.

ment ; latterly, we even hear of the learned professor of the Practice of Physic in my own loved and revered University of Edinburgh packing patients suffering from scarlet fever in cold wet sheets ; and it is fit and appropriate that such a renowned medical school should be the first to quit the circle of routine and cast off the slouo-h of prejudice.

But whilst exposing the causes which have impeded the reception of a most powerful list of remedies into the daily practice of all medical men, let it not be supposed that I hold with exclusiveness as regards any system of treatment, In the following pages I profess to set forth methods of treatment which experience, and comparative experience too, tells me are the most eligible for the morbid conditions therein mentioned ; but, as will be seen in some of these pages, I exclude neither the allopathic nor the homoeopathic aid , in fact, as the latter can be safely

TKEFACE.

Xlll applied by the light of some of the numerous and clever Guides which are attached to that plan of treatment, I would advise readers to add the remedies which they will find there to those which I have proposed, especially under the head of Diseases of the Womb. In time and place allopathy has its uses also ; although many of these have been beneficially superseded by the other plans of treatment. And when a physician knows experimentally all these methods ; when if one is not appropriate he is practically conversant with the others, and thus is better provided with weapons Lust disease than any other practitioner who only wields one ; yet, with all this advantage, in how many conflicts does he not stand without arms before the phalanx of symptoms which he can neither alleviate nor conquer ! Looking duty to his patient steadily in the face, is any medical man justified in saying that under no circumstances will he employ any means but xiv

PHEFACE.

those included in a certain list, when there exist other means in other lists ? That is scarcely the idea which the public have of the education and functions of those to whom they intrust their lives. They have the idea that the former is more liberal and the latter more extensive than the knowledge of only one method implies ; and thus the solitary knowledge looks very like an imposture. Before any sick man asks his medical attendant whether homoeopathy, allopathy, or hydro-therapeia will suit his case, let him put the preliminary question, "What do you practically know of the two other methods besides that which you have already employed ?" To ask a doctor whether water cure will agree, when the said doctor knows nothinowhatever about water treatment, is a superfluity and an absurdity.

With the expectation, px*obably, of propping a tottering bigotry, a word redolent of bigotry has been latterly borrowed from

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XV the ecclesiastical vocabulary, and applied to the art of curing disease — we have been lectured on Orthodox medicine ! Orthodox fiddlestick ! I wonder if the promulgators of this phrase are capable of seeing the ludicrous position in which they place their profession by such an application of such a word ! Where is the revelation on which to build the orthodoxy'? In the human body, with its endless temperaments, constitutions, and variations of morbid phenomena ? Where exists the Council' Convocation, General Assembly, Conference, whatever the thing may be called, to pronounce upon heterodoxy % And whence are its powers derived % and by whom acknowledged ? Are we to have a medical parallel to the ecclesiastical divisions in the High Dose Church and the Low Dose Church1? Truly it is impossible to speak of .such nonsense as a medical hierarchy in any but a nonsensical manner.

Notwithstanding all the bitterness and xvi

PREFACE.

bigotry with which the sectarians of the medical profession denounce each other, a certain amount of catholicity of view regarding medical treatment is gradually taking possession of the non-professional mind. The lay public is beginning to tire of being tossed from one bigot to another bigot, and is beginning to ask why it is, shice each quotes favourable statistics of cure, that each does not study, and in time and place apply, any plan of treatment which experience shows to be the most successful in given cases, and thus make himself master of all methods. That the public will persist in and increase the demand for this mastership, and not be content with the narrowness of one view and one plan in matters which involve life and life's comfort, is my hearty hope. Without deroo-atino; from the claims of usefulness put forward by the ordinary and the homoeopathic methods, with both of which I am practically acquainted, I place before that

PliEFACE.

xvii public some of the results of twenty years of hydro-therapeutic experience, having a conviction founded thereupon that that method is. upon the whole, the most efficient ao-ainst the maladies which are treated of in this volume.

J. M. G.

Malvern, June, 18G3.

Preface To The Second Edition

The exhaustion of a large edition of this work renders it necessary to issue the present one. In the preface to the first edition I stated, that no maladies were mentioned which were not safely to be treated by non-medical persons according to the directions laid down, and that all maladies which were not so treatable, and which required the actual supervision of a medical adviser, were purposely omitted. The consequence of this is that nothing new can be added to the present edition, save in minute particulars : the diseases and their treatment by hydro-therapeutic methods remain the same, because none others can be added with any prospect of utility or perhaps safety. The form of the

XX

PHEFACE.

book lias undergone some change in the type and page, whereby it is rendered more readable and more easily consulted. In the new foi-m it is an exact pair with my work on Chronic Disease.

Shortly after the publication of this work in 1S64, the application of water treatment to acute forms of disease beo-an to be much more frequent among the members of the medical profession who attend the public hospitals ; and it is to be hoped that the results of then- experience of its effects will be such as to encourao-e them to a more extensive use of it. Still, between the prejudices with which those members themselves were educated, and the ignorant antipathy of their patients, there remains much to be done towards the fair testing of one of the most wonderworking plans of treatment in acute disease which has ever been presented to the world. I apply this epithet advisedly, and with a perfect knowledge of other methods in oU

TEE FACE.

XXI and ordinary usage. But the longer I observe, the more I am convinced, that the avoidance of water treatment in acute disease is quite as much due to the timid and ignorant patient, as to the prejudiced practitioner. Horrified at what he calls cold water (though he knows it is applied at all temperatures), the patient swallows without a particle of dread the deadly calo- :mel, the poisonous iodine, and the irritating internal tonic.

Whilst this ignorance on the part of patients operates to make the practitioner of the old school leave things as they are, and to save himself trouble by palliating instead of learning to cure, I regret to state that since this work was first issued, the same squaring with the prejudices of the uninformed lias come to be practised by not a few of those who profess to treat diseases hydro-therapeutically, and who call themselves " hydropaths :" the title being a kind of not f" catch all lis!.. The net xxn

PREFACE.

is a house for the reception of invalids nominally, but in fact for any one who will enter it. Once in it, they who are ailing are treated just as they desire— old drug medication, alcoholic stimulation, hot baths if preferred to cold or tempered, anything to prolong the inmate's sojourn and avoid conflict with his prejudices. The doctor is the obsequious tradesman, instead of the conscientious teacher and treater.

At some of these establishments a regular excise license for the sale of vinous and spirituous liquors is taken out ; in short they are hotels for all comers, under the name of hydropathic establishments. At others the "hydropathy" consists in blistering the skin with hot water and mustard ; whilst some "hydropaths" do literally nothing but rub their patients with brandy and salt outside, and deluge them with the same brandy, sherry, and other intoxicating liquors inside. In a word, the trade of hydropathy is carried on, but the medical

PREFACE.

XXIU treatment by it is passed over as not paying, because not pleasant to the patient's fears and feelings. I believe that at this moment, of the so-styled practitioners of hydropathy, there are not more than four who take the smallest heed of the physiological action of the water cure in disease : possibly they are unable to understand it — an alternative infinitely more respectable than the tricky use of its name for sordid ends.

This is a melancholy picture of the condition of a most valuable agent in the cure of disease, after an existence of twenty-six years in this realm. But I think that it should not be concealed ; I think that in all things sham and imposture should be laid open ; and although the sneer of the men of the antique school may follow, it will be totally unfelt by those whose "withers are unwrung/' and may possibly — not probably, I fear — make those "gulled jades wince" to whom and their doings L have alluded. Meantime, the genuine, physiological, appli-

Xxiv PREFACE.

cation of hydro-therapeia is gradually infiltrating into the practice of men of high standing and honour, and to them I look for its future prevalence.

J. M. G.

JIalvep.n, January, 1S69.

Part I

i

GENERAL REMARKS ON DISEASE AND CONVALES-

CENCE, 1

Part II. Diseases Of Different Membranes Of The

BODY.

Diseases of a Feverish Character, . . . . 18 Diseases of the Lining Membranes.

Catarrh of the Forehead, Nostrils, Eyes, and Throat, . • 2fc Influenza, .......... 82

Soreness of the Swallowing Throat, . . . 87

Swollen Sore Throat, ..... 88

Erythematous Sore Throat, ... . . . 41

Relaxed Sore Throat, ... 43

Soreness of the Vocal Throat. ... . . 4(i

Hoarseness, .......

•Hi

Spasmodic Croup,

Inflammation of tbe Air-tubes of the Lungs, . • • • So

Acute Indigestion, . ,r>'-'

Acute Bilious Disorder. 00

Sick and Bilious Headache, 00

XIV

CONTENTS.

Dry Colic and Flatulent Belly-ache, . Diarrhoea,

Catarrh of the Bladder,

Inflamed Piles,

Diseases of the Covering Membi

Rheumatism — Rheumatic Fever, Neuralgic Rheumatism,

Brain Fever, and Acute Inflammation of the Spine Fever without Eruption, Inflammatory Fever, Veraatile Fever, .

Typhoid Fever, .

Nervous Fever, .

Gastric Fever, .

Typhus Fever, .

Fever with Eruption, Measles, .

Scarlet Fever, .

Small-pox, Chicken Pox.

Erysipelas, Nettle Rash, Boils,

Part III. Diseases Of A Nervous Character

General Remarks, Neuralgia, Tic Douloureux, Asthma, .

Hay Asthma, .

Palpitation of the Heart, Hysterical states of Nerves, Alcoholic Treatment, .

Temporary Constipation of the Bowels,

PAGE.

66 71

83 86

CONTENTS.

XV

Part IV. Diseases Of The Womb

General Remarks, Speculum Treatment,

Retarded Menstrual Discharge at Puberty, . Retarded Menstrual Discharge with fullness of blood, Retarded Menstrual Discharge with bloodlessness, . Retarded Menstrual Discharge from distant irritation, Green-Sickness, .

Leucorrhcea — WMtes — Falling Womb, Painful Menstruation, Excessive Menstruation.

Change of Life, .

Hydro-therapeutic Processes,

Part First. General Remarks On Disease And Convalescence

As this work is specially intended for the guidance of non-professional persons, it will not be superfluous to offer some statements regarding disease in general, before dealing with the particular maladies the treatment of which it is the object of these pages to designate. It is reasonable to believe that, if the public were possessed of some clear and correct notions on this subject, they would be dispossessed of many prejudices, the existence of which leads to the employment, at an early stage of slight disorders, of a treatment which speedily transforms these into formidable diseases. Or, supposing those prejudices to be overcome, such notions would tend to abolish the fear of leaving slight disorders to natural processes of cure, and to obviate the tendency to "doctoring," and to meddling with those processes. If, from haviri" a knowledge of what constitutes disease, that condition could be recognized at its earliest stage, a very small amount of artistic aid

B to nature (frequently only a negative aid) would suffice to abolish its germs, and re-establish the healthy play of the organs. This desirable knowledge on the part of the laity has been recognized by several medical writers, and I am only repeating what has been previously urged. But it can be urged with much more reason and cogency when such natural methods as those included in hydrotherapeutic treatment, are to be employed in opposing the first demonstrations of disease ; for there is no fear that these will operate by setting up one kind of irritation for another, as is too often the case when any slight stomach or lung disorder is treated with mercurials, aperients, and emetics. The hydrotherapeutic method carefully avoids excitation of the interior vital organs by direct application, and the layman can see the organ upon which he is applying his remedies, and the sooner he begins to apply them the surer is their soothing action on the commencing tumult.

I. The action of external agents upon the tissues of the body, when not excessive in degree or poisonous in character, begets healthy life. So far as we know, life is a result — a series of processes— digestion, blood-making, blood-circulating, respiration, sensation, thinking, locomotion, &c. The sympathy between these organs which perioral these different processes is also an internal stimulus, which maintains their actions; and so lone as each organ sends its due quantity and

AND CONVALESCENCE.

quality of organic sympathy to all the other organs, the act of healthy life is complete. If, for instance, the stomach receives the exact amount of food which it can digest easily, the process of digestion in it becomes a stimulus to the brain and spinal marrow, and these organs take on an action which causes the sensation of refreshment and invi£?oration: the man thinks and moves with renewed alacrity. The " sensation " here mentioned is not in the brain or spine, but is produced over the whole frame by their agency : for in purely healthy life there is no " sensation " in one organ more than in another. A man in perfect health feels neither head, nor heart, nor lungs, nor stomach; these are all playing harmoniously into each other's hands, and in the midst the man •• lives and moves and has his being," but he does not feel any of them. Youth, and wonderful constitution in more advanced age, exhibits this state of immunity from sensations of the organs; but in civilized society, as it is called, such instances are rare among those who make up that society, during their pursuit of business or of pleasure. The healthy man uses all his organs, but ff.fj.a none of them in particular; he feels that he lives, but none of his organs remind him that it is by them that he lives.

II. Reverse this picture of harmonious action between, and no sensation from, the organs, and you have diseased life. From the first moment when one organ retains more blood and nervous

ii 2

GENEKAL REMARKS OX DISEASE circulation than is its due, from the moment, in fact, when the phenomena of living activity are greater in it than in the other organs, from that moment it becomes a source of disordered organic action to the other organs, and disease is present. For instance, when an excessive quantity of food has necessitated an excessive activity of the stomach to digest it, this excessive activity becomes a source of disorder to other organs, and you may have bad sleep the same night, and on the following morning bad urine, showing the interference of the stomach with the brain, spinal marrow, and kidneys. Or expose the organ called the skin for a long time to cold and damp, until it is no longer able to produce blood and heat to resist the external impression; you thereby overload some of the interior organs with blood which ought to be circulating on the skin. The result is excessive organic activity in the lungs, constituting: bronchitis or inflammation of the lun^s, or inflammation of the belly, or, finally, such a general distress and super-activity of the internal organs as to produce the general tumult to which the name of fever is applied. And it is a curious fact that, in all such cases of inflammatory and feverish disease arising from excessive cold to the skin, nature's effort is always made to re-establish the circulation and secretions of the skin; hence its feverish heat, and the ultimate perspiration which frequently terminates maladies of that kind. A gifted medical friend of mine, now no more.

AXD CONVALESCENCE.

used to call fever " a skin disease." To this I shall have to return hereafter.

Again, when the poison secreted by a patient in measles or scarlet fever has been absorbed into the blood bv the lungs or skin, the presence of it in the circulating mass becomes an excessive irritant, and, finally, a natural tumult is set up to rid the body of it ; not, however, until its presence has compromised the functional integrity of the internal organs which are the centres of vitality. And this is the reason why animal poisons of the kind alluded to will remain for many days, and several weeks even, without the tumultuous signs of infection.

III. These instances will sullice to show that disease is a violent reaction upon excessive or morbid agents, the evil results of which it seeks to redress; and that during such reaction and effort the organic sympathy, whose equilibrium constitutes health, is lost. If the organs have not been deprived of much of their organic power by ill usage of them, or by age, and are not much meddled with during this effort, they will, for the most part, come triumphant out of it, the organic sympathy will be again well balanced as between the different organs, and health will be by that very fact re-es'ablished.

J\. It will be observed that I have employed the term "organic sympathy." The lay reader must understand by that, as regards disease, an interchange of action between the organs, which is carried on without the animal sensation of pain,

G GENERAL REMARKS ON DISEASE

and by the intermedium of nerves which do not possess the faculty of producing that species of sensation. Accordingly, a morbid sympathy of the organs may be going on without any strong exhibition of animal distress. This is the stage of disease which has been called the "incubating;" the state of things allowing the patient to walk and follow his usual occupation. But although no vehement exhibition of distress may be present, close observation may always detect some animal uneasiness: increased languor and decreased alacrity, depression or irritability of mind, more or less shivering, broken or dreamy sleep, contraction of the face by the muscles spread over it, &c. If it were possible for those interested always to observe these smaller signals of disease, the negative treatment, by repose of stomach, brain, and limbs, would very often suffice to bring the organs back to their natural sympathy with each other. There is little doubt now that a diseased sympathy of the kind alluded to had been going on in the frame of the late Prince Consort for many weeks before it was exhibited in the last three weeks of his illness, and that, in consequence, the organs were unable to relieve themselves; their complications had become too numerous and intense, and their vital powers too much exhausted thereby, to make that effort at self-curing which is the only one that is effectual. In like manner, if a healthy and naturally good-tempered child exhibits a disobedient and quarrelsome state of mind, and wakes

AND CONVALESCENCE.

once or twice in the night, having habitually made but one sleep of it, you may reasonably suspect that some derangement of the organic sympathy is somewhere existent, notwithstanding that he runs and plays and even eats as usual ; in due time he will do none of these, in consequence of the spread of the morbid organic sympathy to the brain and spinal marrow. I hold that this stage of disease ought to be accurately watched and promptly dealt with; a world of time and trouble and anxiety will be thereby saAred. But the majority think that all must be right if eating goes on.

V. This brings on the consideration of the spread of disease from one organ to another, and from one set of nerves to another. An irritation of the stomach may be a simple matter to manage, but it becomes more tedious and grave if it has contracted a morbid sympathy with the kidneys, so as to cause calculus or saccharine or albuminous matter there. Still more formidable is it when the same kind of irritation involves the brain and spinal marrow. In all feverish complaints this is the complication to be most dreaded; the reaction of the brain and spine upon the stomach, or other organ affected, intensifying the state of the latter, and rendering it less and less able to re-establish its natural action. Hence the Wisdom of as early repose as possible of all the body, and the strict abstinence from all irritants applied to the organ first disordered. Let an acutely irritated stomach rest from strong food, but let the muscles of the limbs and trunk also rest, since their activity involves the brain and spinal marrow. As this opuscule professes to deal with minor maladies, or with the beginning of graver maladies, only, I think it necessary to lay the strongest stress on this point. One of the capital blunders of warfare is to "despise your enemy;" so in the warfare of disease you should act as if the slight shiver, or cough, or nausea, or giddiness might become a serious disease, and might involve one organ after another until, reaching the great nervous centre, the brain, the army of symptoms becomes unconquerable. This neglect of rest to the frame is the great mistake in the process of treatment. Is it rest to a disordered stomach to have calomel put into it? Is it rest to the brain and spinal marrow, oppressed and distressed as they are by such a stomach, to exert their powers over the limbs in the exercise ol volition In walking or thinking? Be sure that you will always do well at the commencement of "disease to cease all exertion of limbs and mind; the brain will thus more ably resist the encroachments of morbid organs upon it.

VI. Let it always be remembered that a disease, that is, a series of disordered signs in the various functions of the body, is an effort of that body to throw oft' some irritation which external or internal causes have produced in its more noble organs. All that a physician can do is to place the body m the circumstances which tend to render the effort