'25S 



HVDROPATHV. 



The same routine occurs between dinner and supper, whicli latter is 

 identical with the breakfast. Let us glance at some of the patients we find 

 around us. See the dyspeptic merchant or professional man. Inquire 

 jnto his previous habits of life. We see him shut up in counting-room 

 or office, taking no exercise, eating heartily and hastily, supping late, with 

 wines to assist impaired digestion, rising late in the morning with no ap- 

 petite, and going to his business with headache and lassitude. By this 

 course of life his nervous system becomes debilitated, and dyspepsia, 

 with its train of evils, marks him as its victim. Can we not account for 

 the restoration of such a one to health, under the mode of life and diet 

 of a hydropathic institute, without the miraculous agency of water ? 

 We should rather say he is cured, notwithstanding the barbarous mis-use 

 of one of our greatest blessings, and, if properly used, one of our most 

 efficacious remedies. Can we wonder that the intellectual voluptuary, 

 Bulwer, was greatly benefited by this change of life, and rather than ac- 

 knowledge, that his previous life had been in defiance of nature's laws, 

 attributed, in his mawkish and maudlin "confessions," the benefit he 

 received to water alone. 



There are many persons, with much pretension to learning, who 

 kindly advise the physician to make himself acquainted with all the dif- 

 ferent systems of empiricism, and practice each and all as occasion may 

 offer. To these self-constituted advisers, I would say, "your investiga- 

 tions are rarely of sufficient depth to give much weight to your opin- 

 ions, for had you examined the principles of the healing art, you would 

 have found that, so far as these systems are consistent with truth, ihey 

 belong to the legitimate profession." A grain of truth is filched from 

 the labors of some patient investigator, and so surrounded with error 

 as scarcely to be recognizable ; yet vvhen seen, and its restoration to the 

 owner attempted, we are gravely told our opinions have been modified 

 by their visionary theories. To such men Thomas Hood's sick duck 

 gives a sufficient answer. He went to a hydropathic dispensary, and 

 after helping himself to a sitz-bath, and finding it refreshing, took an all- 

 over-head-bath and came up to the surface. He raised himself, clapped 

 his wings, and was expected to shout "Priessnitz forever," but instead 

 of this he only cried, "quack ! quack ! quack !" 



However beautiful in theory the curing of diseases by a simple re- 

 medial agent may be, it does not appear to be in accordance with the 

 principles of bounteous nature, to have but one article by which we 

 may relieve the sufferings of humanity. The profession will continue 

 to pursue its path, gathering remedial agents from the animal, vegetable, 

 and mineral kingdoms, and applying these according to well established 



