IS THE WATER-CURE "INERT?" 111 negatively and positively unsafe. A word on either assertion. They who talk about the inertness of the Watercure discover a wonderful share of ignorance of it, and of the human body to which it is applied. It is, in fact, a mode of treatment whose results are more extraordinary than any that drugs can lay claim to. For example, how astounded you must have been when you found the three or four tumblers of water before breakfast which you so wisely ordered (see ante, p. 36) produce spasm of the stomach and cramp of the belly for the rest of the day! How astonished would you be to find tumbler after tumbler rejected as acid as vinegar! How astounded would you be to find a wet-sheet bath produce a regular bilious attack! How amazed to behold a tooth-ache or head-ache yielding to a foot-bath and friction! How astonished to witness the cure of a dangerous inflammation in the time it would take your gig to carry you from Worcester to Malvern! How utterly confounded to find the stomach and bowels getting into perfect order after thirty years physicking! No, no, doctor: believe me they who talk about the "inertness" of the Water-cure are themselves too "inert" to inquire into it: they imagine people will take their word for it. 112 THE SAFETY OF THE WATER-CURE. Regarding the danger or safety of the Watercure, it may be said of it, as of all powerful agents, that all depends on the judgment used in its employment. On the one hand, we have the proof of its safety in the fact that many uninstructed persons have practised it on themselves without any serious results. But, on the other hand, it should be shown that the cases are not a few in which such attempts might be hazardous:-the case of the patient, for instance, to whom you gave the tumblers of water before breakfast, (pardon my frequent allusion to this, but it does really come so apropos to everything that is absurd and ignorant.) It would, moreover, be hazardous for a patient having strong tendency of blood to the head, or substantial mischief about the heart, to try his hand on his own case. Of either condition, he is not likely to be himself the judge: he cannot be acquainted with the oftentimes small indications that lead to the knowledge of the existence of either. it is that I am especially chary of recommending a plan of treatment by the Water-cure to those whom I cannot see: or of holding any responsibility regarding those who think fit to treat themselves after leaving Malvern. It is a responsibility which no one ought to wish to impose upon me Hence WHEN IS THE WATER-CURE DANGEROUS ? 113 and which I will not in any case hear. Whilst they are under my immediate superintendence, I will readily hold myself responsible for the complete safety of the Water-cure in all instances that are submitted to me: beyond this no reasonable person should desire to impose upon me. 66 Thus, with reference to the "inertness," the danger," and the "safety," of the Water-cure, we must arrive at the conclusions: 1st, that it is powerful, safe, and beneficial when applied by those who have seen, studied, felt, and appreciated it, and who, to do the latter, understand the human body and its diseased states; and 2nd, that, inasmuch as it is a powerful treatment, it is likely to be either dangerous or useless when applied by those whose limited comprehensions and contracted notions of health and disease, lead neither to the study nor application of it: by such, for instance, as yourself, learned doctor. I should quake for the patient who allowed you to employ the Water-cure to his case. Another piece of edification I have to bestow on you is the information that your scurrility and abuse have had an extraordinary, and to you no doubt unlooked for, effect, on that "strange production called the Water-cure." My publisher I 114 THE HOMME AFFICHE." writes to me to say that four editions of it are sold, and that in consequence of increasing demands for it, a fifth is immediately wanted. In fact, learned doctor, you have been benevolent without wishing or intending to be so; you have saved my publisher vast expenses in advertising the work, by being yourself a walking, talking, scribbling advertisement, a veritable homme affiché. You will no doubt perceive, learned doctor, with your usual penetration, that this interesting discovery has not been thrown away upon me. You are, in truth, a valuable person, and "I could better spare a better man." Alas! that, in the midst of the grateful feeling with which your kind offices were just now inspiring me, I should have it marred by recalling the following severe strictures in the pages of the Provincial Medical Journal, from your candid and generous pen. You state that in that abominable book, the Water-cure, "The reader will find it stated that a physician in Edinburgh, by his medicines, caused cancer of the stomach. Now I will beg to ask what are the evidences, medical or non-medical, that a physician in modern Athens not only could not cure a cancer of the stomach, but had even occasioned it in Two instances and killed BOTH his miserable patients? These are very grave charges, which 66 115 the author of them should be prepared to substantiate, or he will otherwise be despised as A FOUL LIBELLER AND MISERABLE CHARLATAN." "Foul libeller and miserable charlatan !!!" Hard words these, learned doctor: a proposition in which I shall be joined by every reader of these pages who has or may read my "Water-cure." Literæ scriptæ manent: my words are still in print, and if any one except yourself can find Two cases of "cancer of the stomach," (you might as well have said a DOZEN, learned doctor, while you were about it,) in my Water-cure, I will consent to drink a bottle of wine a day, and never again to taste a drop of water, which would soon rid you of the "water doctor." And if any one except yourself can find it, as you assert, stated in my book that I attribute the origination of cancer of the stomach, or its inevitably fatal termination, to "a physician, of Modern Athens," I will consent to give up the Water-cure and acknowledge that I and not you are a "foul libeller and miserable charlatan." But this and even much more I could easily have forgiven, had you let the wet-sheet escape your blind and perverted detraction. I really could be almost angry with you for this-for endeavouring to throw a damper over the invaluable wet-sheet, |