384 HEALTH. 



the curation of present ills, the water treatment is often singularly 

 prompt and apt; and as we said just now, experience alone can show 

 how wide, or how limited, its powers in this kind are. 



We incline to consider energizing as the formula under which its 

 effects come. Of course we are now speaking of the cold water 

 cure; for the formula of the hot is the very reverse. It is true 

 that the application of cold produces by reaction, glow and heat, 

 but this is an energetic glow, and its perspirations break out with 

 force. On the other hand, the warm bath leaves a sense of cold- 

 ness, and its sweats are languid and profuse; the chilliness that is 

 in them proves that they trickle out of the weakness of the contain- 

 ing parts. The energizing of the cold treatment proves itself in 

 two ways — firstly, by bracing the body itself; and secondly, by 

 bracing, that is to say, increasing in power and quantity, the secre- 

 tions. Both these effects depend upon reaction ; whence, if the 

 energies be not excited, depression is the result ; and^ of this latter 

 state, which is desirable where excitement already exists, the water- 

 cure doctors have made great use. The drinking of cold water in 

 considerable quantities, operates upon the internal organs somewhat 

 as douches and wet sheets upon the skin; but with this difference, 

 that the viscera are more constant in their reactions, and under the 

 direction of life, are more able to recover their tone than the skin. 



The water cure is invaluable for those persons who are the slaves 

 of long habits of ease and indulgence, and whose constitutions are 

 breaking down from the sheer repetition of these imprudent courses. 

 They go to Malvern, and the axe is laid to the root of their tree of 

 evils. Their impossibilities are made possible for them by the 

 rigorous physician, who endures no remonstrances in his house. In 

 an hour they throw down the accumulated baggage of years, and 

 determine to do penance for having carried it so long. Early 

 hours, long walks, long-forgotten beauties of nature, reacquaintance 

 with the crystal springs whose Naiads had been neglected for " old 

 port," sweet sleep hours before midnight, and the sense that they 

 are clean human beings, or on the way to such — all these means 

 carry health to the men who are jaded with business or pleasure, 

 but not yet struck for death. The cold water is the central morti- 

 fication of the flesh; it has caught them buried in care or luxu- 



