Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/101

Rh additional customers from ever-increasing distances, and two years before his death the now old "water doctor" could boast of having eight patients from France and two from the Netherlands. Women, strange to say, came to outnumber the male visitors, though probably only after Priessnitz had modified his rather heroic routine of prescriptions in favor of hysterical patients.

We should add a few words about the fierce controversy which a few years after Priessnitz's death was excited by the attempt to suppress the "water-cures" which in the meantime had sprung up all over Western Europe. The indignation of the hydropaths now and then rose to a pitch of fury, but their grievance was really worse than the proverbial provocation of saints. In Las Casas' "History of the West Indian Colonies" an eyewitness describes the numerous victims of Spanish despotism, as worn-out fugitives who could be seen perishing in way-side ditches, and faintly crying "Hunger, hunger!"

Even thus the lovers of truth had been persecuted and starved for a long series of centuries. Opponents of the autocrat swindle were slain as rebels. Dissenters from the insanities of the