386 HEALTH. 



this country; and what we have said applies rather to the public, 

 who require to know that this treatment, so often valuable, is 

 limited in its results ; and that in diseases proceeding from irregular 

 habits, the first cure is likely to be more satisfactory and innocent 

 than any subsequent one. As moral imbecility grows, from what- 

 ever cause, the physical benefits of the water cure will become less 

 and less. 



The system of Preissnitz belongs to a group of sciences which 

 include the whole of the four elements of the ancients, and apply 

 them to the healing art. Earth, air, fire and water are the basis of 

 outward hygiene, and are all represented in some sort under the 

 notion of climate. The acclimation of patients resembles the water 

 cure in many respects ; only that it produces the desired elevations 

 and depressions of the body by influences which are less visible, 

 though not less striking in their effects. To be bathed in the light 

 and heat of a new sun, and washed with the winds of a fresh sky ; 

 to feel the steam of an unwonted surface of earth, and the tension 

 of a different magnetism and electricity to that to which we are 

 accustomed, are important elements in the recovery of health, 

 particularly where moral circumstances also are favorable. The hy- 

 gienic map of countries, gathered, as it might be, from the physical 

 character of the inhabitants, or from susceptible temperaments on 

 the spot, would be a guide worth having in the direction of patients 

 to localities of specific benefit. In this respect we require some- 

 thing more precise than the guide books which have been written 

 by the climatic physicians. 



But medical systems, like the departments of public health (pp. 

 347 — 364), follow the organs and faculties of man, and in the 

 nature of things are as numerous as the latter. The intestinal 

 system of drugs or homoeopathy, is the basis (p. 382), and belongs 

 to the alimentary tube : hydropathy and its kindred appertain to 

 the general circumstantial system, and specifically to the skin as 

 the organ of tone and continence : we have now to turn our atten- 

 tion to the muscles of medicine, or to that method of cure which 

 only lately has appeared among us, under the designation of kinesi- 

 pathy, or the Swedish Medical Gymnastics, and which already 



