Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/559

543 HYDROPATHY 543 of medicine that approaches in completeness the system of Priessnitz, though much leading up to it can be dis covered. Among most primitive peoples, indeed, both in the Old and in the New World, the existence of one kind or another of hydropathic practice can be traced ; and the fathers of medicine made frequent reference in their writings to the employment of water. The warm bath came into use at an early period (see BATHS, vol. iii. p. 434) ; and the clyster, shower bath, douche, plunge, wet compress, drop bath, head and foot baths, are mentioned from time to time, as also combinations of heat and cold and primitive modes of sweating, until, before the end of the 17th century, all the processes of modern hydropathy, the wet sheet pack and induced cutaneous crisis alone excepted, had become known and were in a measure prac tised. Prominent in the roll of names associated more or less with the advocacy of water in earlier times are those of Asclepiades of Prusa (90 B.C. ), surnamed ^ir^poAoirn/s (&quot; cold bather &quot;), Antoninus Musa (30 B.C.), famed for his cure of Augustus by cold water (comp. Hor., Epist. i. 15, 3-5), Galen (130 A.D.), Rhazes (923), Avicenna (1036), Cardan, and Van der Heyden. Raymond of Marseilles (1755) gained a prize for the best treatise on the applica tions of cold water in disease, and another prize essay by Marteau shows what knowledge of the subject prevailed in his time. At Griifenberg, to which the fame of Priessnitz drew people of every rank and many countries, medical men were conspicuous by their numbers, some being attracted by curiosity, others by the desire of knowledge, but the majo rity by the hope of cure for ailments which had as yet proved incurable. Many records of experiences at Griifen berg were published, all more or less favourable to the claims of Priessnitz, and some enthusiastic in their esti mate of his genius and penetration ; and from these alone can a knowledge of his practice and views be obtained, not a line having ever been written by this singular man. To Captain Claridge was due the introduction in 1840 of hydropathy to England, his writings and lectures, and later those of Drs Wilson, Gully, and Edward Johnson, making numerous converts, and filling the establishments opened soon after at Malvern and elsewhere. In Germany, France, and America hydropathic establishments multiplied with great rapidity. Antagonism ran high between the old prac tice and the new. Unsparing condemnation was heaped by each on the other ; and a legal prosecution, leading to a royal commission of inquiry, served but to make Priessnitz and his system stand higher in public estimation. _ But increasing popularity diminished before long that timidity which hitherto had in great measure prevented trial of the new method from being made on the weaker and more serious class of cases, and had caused hydro- pathists to occupy themselves mainly with a sturdy order of chronic invalids well able to bear a rigorous regimen and the severities of unrestricted crisis. The need of a radical adaptation to the former class was first adequately recognized by John Smedley, a manufacturer of Derbyshire, who, impressed in his own person with the severities as well as the benefits of &quot; the cold water cure,&quot; practised among his workpeople a milder form of hydropathy, and began about 1852 a new era in its history, founding at Matlock a counterpart of the establishment.at Griifenberg. Whilst hydropathy as a system has been gaining favour with the people, and receiving ample acknowledgment from the more liberal members of the medical profession, indi vidual measures have from time to time been advocated in the medical journals and adopted more or less widely in particular diseases. Brand of Berlin, Riiljen and Jiirgensen of Kiel, and Liebermeister of Basel, between 1860 and 1870, employed the cooling bath in abdominal typhus with results which, after every deduction on the score of defective classi fication had been made, were striking enough, and led to its introduction to England by Dr Wilson Fox, whose able monograph commanded general acceptance. In the Franco- German war the cooling bath was largely employed, in conjunction frequently with quinine; and it now holds a recognized position in the treatment of hyperpyrexia. The wet sheet pack has of late been much used in fevers of all kinds both in private and hospital practice ; and the Turkish bath, introduced about twenty-four years ago by Mr David Urquhart on his return from the East, and ardently adopted by Mr Barter of Cork, has become a public institution, and, with the ^morning tub&quot; and the general practice of water drinking, is the most noteworthy of the many contributions by hydropathy to public health. The theoretical basis of hydropathy is wide and funda mental enough to include within its scope all disease. Each individual cell of the mass constituting in various forms and combinations the human body being in its growth and function dependent on and regulated by the nervous and vascular systems, themselves cellular, and every de rangement of these cells originating in or being. attended with a derangement of their nervous and vascular supply, and that supply being powerfully and in quite diverse ways influenced by heat and cold, all morbid conditions of the economy may be influenced materially by the regulated employment of heat and cold, which are entitled therefore to rank as powerful factors in therapeutics. Hydropathy insists in quite a special way on the necessity of regarding disease first in relation to its cause. It next requires that whatever assistance may be afforded to the vis medicatrix naturce should in the first place be similar in kind (i.e., should be natural or physiological), rather than alien to it and drawn from sources remote and strange ; and, while proceeding on lines which have been common to all medical practice from an early period, it does so by agents hitherto strangely neglected, though not unknown, and effects its purpose in ways less open to objection than those it would displace. For example, when local deple tion is required, as of the lung in pneumonia, or the brain in hsemorrhagic apoplexy, the final withdrawal from the general circulation of a quantity of blood is deprecated as unnecessary for the attainment of the object in view, and prejudicial in the after period of convalescence. Hydro pathy substitutes a diversion to parts indifferent, as the extremities and general cutaneous surface, and so material and sustained as to be much more effectual ; while at the same time it holds in reserve the abstracted blood to perform its part in the restoration of strength. Where purgation is employed to derive blood from the brain, liver, or kidneys, a highly sensitive and vital membrane is more or less injured thereby, and convalescence proportionately imper illed. Hydropathy selects the skin as more accessible than the mucous membrane of the alimentary tract, more service able also, and less, if at all, susceptible of injury, either temporary or permanent. The skin can with safety be used for counter-irritation, and is a reservoir of capacity almost unlimited, into which to divert the excess of blood from the brain or other part, while for purposes of excretion it is not inferior to the bowels themselves, and, unlike the latter, is left even more efficient than before. In the febrile state, a reduction of pulse and temperature, and relief from pain and sleeplessness, were commonly attempted, at the period when hydropathy was introduced, by depressants, as antimony, ipecacuanha, and perhaps large doses of alcohol, in combination with sedatives, as opium and chloral. Im paired digestion and depressed vitality were results in some measure inevitable, and always of moment, especially in the more protracted fevers, where recovery becomes a question often of simple physical endurance. By means of the wet