Human Physiology. 



quences, running through successive generations, and showing 

 themselves in the various forms of constitutional disease. 



Of course, the water cure is specially adapted to every variety 

 of skin disease; but the action of the skin, brought to its 

 highest power, also derives from, and purifies, and relieves all 

 the internal organs. A perspiration cures a cold, a fever, an 

 internal inflammation or congestion, if of a slight character. 

 In such cases a single vapour, or Turkish bath, or being rolled 

 up in blankets, may be sufficient. But the daily wet sheet 

 pack, with toning and invigorating baths, will reach deep- 

 seated, long-continued, and very severe and perilous cases of 

 disease. There are diseases whose only termination is death; 

 there are many cases of disease in which cure is sought too 

 late when the reactive and recuperative powers of the system 

 are exhausted. At a certain stage, diseases of the brain, heart, 

 lungs, kidneys, and bowels are hopeless of cure, but wherever 

 there is enough vitality to cope with the disease, I believe the 

 methods of hydropathy, judiciously applied, give the best aid 

 to nature, and the best prospect of cure. 



In the peculiar diseases of women, so numerous from our 

 artificial and enervating modes of life, and so distressing, the 

 wet sheet pack, the wet bandage around the hips, the sitz-bath 

 and vaginal irrigations offer the most rapid and most perfect 

 modes of cure. Through the whole period of pregnancy these 

 processes strengthen the whole system of the mother, enable 

 her to give pure blood and an energetic life to her child, and 

 so invigorate the pelvic viscera that childbirth is freed almost 

 entirely from all its dangers, and often from any sensation of 

 pain. Mrs. Nichols, in her little book entitled, "A Woman's 

 Work in Water Cure and Sanitary Education," says, "The 

 world is scarcely prepared to believe that the processes of 

 water cure relieve childbirth of nearly all its dangers and suffer- 

 ings, yet this truth has many living witnesses. The writer had 

 a large obstetric practice for several years, and has never had a 



