388 faiman Physiology. 



the hydropathic process. Chronic diseases are cured more 

 slowly, but as fast as the reactive energy of the patient will 

 permit. Like causes produce like effects. Every diseased 

 body must be purified, every weakened nervous system must 

 recover its strength. Nature does the work, but does it easily 

 and rapidly when there are all the conditions of healthy action. 

 The natural, hygienic, and hydropathic treatment, I believe 

 to be beneficial in all cases, either alone, or in conjunction 

 with other medicines and modes of cure. It should, indeed, 

 always be combined with proper gymnastic or calisthenic 

 exercises, with the movement cure, with the best system of 

 diet, and especially the free use of juicy fruits, as in the famous 

 grape cure, in which people are rapidly restored from the ex- 

 haustion of Paris life, by going to the vineyards, living out of 

 doors, and eating nothing but bread and grapes. The water 

 cure is specially adapted to all miasmatic diseases, cleansing 

 the system with great rapidity, and robbing the most terrible 

 and fatal of them small-pox, scarlet fever, and typhus of 

 their terrors. In all such diseases the work of purification is 

 wonderfully aided and accelerated, and no mother need fear 

 any of the epidemic diseases of infancy and childhood if she 

 have but a moderate knowledge of its applications. And for 

 the " Contagious Diseases," specially so caHed, I believe there 

 is no treatment so much to be relied upon. Syphilis, in all its 

 modifications, yields more readily to this than any known 

 method of treatment. Even in the best allopathic hospitals 

 primary sores are now treated with cold water dressings : mer- 

 cury is no longer relied upon to cure. Rest, a careful diet, 

 and the spontaneous action of the skin and other excreting 

 organs, are trusted to remove the virus ; but this is a slow 

 and uncertain method ; whereas, the action of the skin excited 

 by a series of packs and baths, surely and rapidly cleanses the 

 system and cures the disease ; and not only in its primary, 

 secondary, and tertiary stages, but in its long train of conse- 



