Human Physiology. 387 



this cold bath is simply delightful. Sheets and blankets are 

 filled with the effluvia cast out by the skin, and must be taken 

 away to be washed and aired. The effects are very sensible 

 and remarkable. The pack relieves pain better than any 

 opiate by a soothing action on so large a nervous surface. 

 Fever is cooled at once, and a dry, harsh skin made moist and 

 supple. The capillaries become full and active. Every one 

 of the myriad glands of the skin sets to work to relieve the 

 blood of its waste and morbid matter. Poisons laid up in 

 the system, oppressing the nerves, are cast out, and may be 

 detected on the packing sheet, always by the smell, often by 

 the colour. Opium, tobacco, mercury in minute globules, bile 

 and other substances, can be distinguished. Here is a wonder- 

 ful purification. Each pack draws a certain quantity of morbific 

 matter from the body, and a certain number gives it a thorough 

 cleansing. The first slight shock acts as a tonic to nerves, blood- 

 vessels, absorbents, and glands. Water is absorbed and after- 

 wards expelled. There are actions of endosmose and exosmose 

 through the sieve-like skin. The final bath and vigorous rub- 

 bing are tonic and invigorating in a high degree. It is certain 

 that the wet sheet pack has more power and efficacy in carrying 

 out the two great processes of cure, purification and invigora- 

 tion, than all the medicines of all the pharmacopoeas from 

 Hippocrates to Hahnemann. I know of no disease, and no 

 condition of disease, in which it may not be used by a judicious 

 adaptation to the reactive power of the patient. I have seen a 

 wet sheet pack save the life of a child, by covering its body 

 with the rash of suppressed measles, and a succession of them 

 cure one given up to die of lung disease. Scarlet fever, small- 

 pox, typhoid and typhus, pleurisy, pneumonia, rheumatic fever, 

 in a word, every form of acute disease yields to the water treat- 

 ment with a wonderful facility, and diseases that commonly 

 last two or three weeks can be cured in as many days, simply 

 because the purifying process set up by nature is expedited by 



