Hydrotherapy

“ Some writers stress the suggestive value of hydrotherapy as well as of electricity, radiant heat baths, and the like (Ballard) . A neuropsychiatric center properly equipped with a hydrotherapeutic plant can do therapeutic work by means of the suggestion afforded by a cold shower, which may act quasi miraculously, like electricity (Roussy and Boisseau) . In fatigue and exhaustion cases, along with adrenalin and strychnin, Aimé gives mild hydrotherapy without other sedatives. Laehr’s free sanatorium at Schönow treats the arrhythmia and tachycardia cases with rest and hydrotherapy. ”

“ These measures should never be attempted by anyone who has not had an extended practical experience. Much can be accomplished by hydrotherapy in the alcoholic and toxic conditions, infective and exhaustive psychoses, manic excitements, involutional melancholia, hysterical and neurasthenic conditions, as well as in occasional cases of dementia praecox. Occupational therapy has been used to great advantage in connection with the hydrotherapeutic treatments. ”

“ General hygiene must be made the subject of special attention. We have often been convinced of the salutary effects of alteration in a patient's mode of life, or of modification of his environment, such as is ensured by holidaying, or by sea voyages, or by "cures" at watering-places and seaside resorts.
Hydrotherapy in one or other of its forms may also be utilised. Except in cases of hysteria, the tepid douche is preferable to the cold one. A morning and evening tub, followed by energetic friction of the skin, is a favourite prescription. ”

“ In order to do justice to our patients and not neglect our responsibilities toward them we must use in the treatment of disease all that is good in all the natural methods of healing. In serious chronic cases any single one of these methods, whether it be pure food diet, hydrotherapy, massage, spinal treatment, mental therapeutics or homeopathy, is not by itself sufficient to achieve satisfactory results or to produce them fast enough. ”

“ They have a wonderful effect on the metabolism of the human organism, and increase the oxidation of all diseased cells that poison the system. The radium tablets are officially guaranteed and the bath salts are the result of many years study in balneotherapy and hydrotherapy, and have demonstrated their effectiveness by the wonderful results that have been obtained during the last thirty years. Rheumatism, gout, arterio-sclerosis, etc., cannot exist in the system when these baths have been taken for a certain length of time. I rarely undertake a treatment for disease of this kind without them. ”

“ Freeing himself from many of the old medical prejudices he applies modern thought in his treatments and more closely follows his own logical conclusions than book prescriptions. He believes that in numerous cases massage treatments, X-Rays, light baths and general hydrotherapy will achieve more beneficial and lasting results than the older treatment of giving medicaments internally. ”

“ Massage and Hydrotherapy have taken their places as most important measures of relief in many chronic conditions, and the latter has been almost universally adopted as the only safe means of combating the high temperatures of the acute fevers. ”

“ Heat, cold, water and light are effective because of their action upon the distribution of circulation, rate of metabolism, the local [Pg 351] and reflex nerves, the heart action, the chemical condition of the blood. Their therapeutic use has only in recent years become a science. Extensive study and experience is necessary for their efficient application. A few fundamental principles will guide in their ordinary use, but only a physician trained in hydrotherapy and thermotherapy can give directions meeting every factor in an individual case. ”

“ Sir Charles Scudamore, M.D., records his opinion as follows:—
“The principles of the water-cure treatment are founded in nature and truth. We have in our power a new and most efficacious agent for the alleviation and cure of disease in various forms, and in proper hands as safe as it is effectual. I should be no friend to humanity nor to medical science if I did not give my testimony in its recommendation.”
Dr. James Johnson, Editor of the Medical Quarterly, thus writes of hydropathy:—
“Its paramount virtue is that of preserving many a constitution from pulmonary consumption.” ”

“ Even drugs are sometimes useful auxiliaries, though, doubtless, infinitely more harm has resulted from the employment of drugs in conjunction with water treatment than from their omission.
Rational Hydropathy leaves room for every other remedy of value. It does not regard water as a specific nor as a panacea, but only as one of the most valuable of numerous excellent remedies. It discards the erroneous and harmful practices of empirics and ignorant charlatans, whether they concern water or other agents, and gives to the aqueous element only its due share of importance. ”

“ Like many descriptive names, the word “hydropathy” is defective and even misleading, the active agents in the treatment being heat and cold, of which water 166 is little more than the vehicle, and not the only one. Thermotherapeutics (or thermotherapy) is a term less open to objection.
Hydropathy, as a formal system, dates from about 1829, when Vincenz Priessnitz (1801-1851) , a farmer of Gräfenberg in Silesia, Austria, began his public career in the paternal homestead, extended so as to accommodate the increasing numbers attracted by the fame of his cures. ”

“ A physician can scarcely be expected to own that hydropathy will cure diseases that have resisted an armament of vials.”
On looking about us for some therapeutic system more satisfactory than the allopathic, simpler in its principles and more consonant with the laws of nature, we select for examination hydropathy, on account of the great success which has attended its practice, the simplicity and rationality of its processes, and the high recommendations it has received from several eminent men, amongst which we extract the following. ”

“ Sulphur waters are very useful in the treatment of rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, and kindred diseases, and in glandular affections and certain chronic diseases of the stomach, liver, intestines, spleen, kidneys, bladder and uterus, and in dropsy, scrofula, chlorosis and mercurial diseases. It is beneficial, used both internally and externally in the form of baths at different degrees of temperature, best determined in each case by the physician under whose advice, as a general rule, they should be used. The water is highly beneficial in cutaneous diseases, inflamed eyes, etc. ”

“ Are the effects, as described by hydropathists and by the British and Foreign Medical Review, produced without purging, vomiting, drugging, or the lancet—or by what other means are such essential results to be attained? We answer, by hydropathy alone are they to be produced, through the medium of the external and internal skin or mucous membrane, the most important organ in the human structure, and the most neglected by the guardians of the public health; and by the promotion of all the secretions and excretions. ”

“ Therefore we are obliged to regard many of the processes which have been contrived to lengthen out the play at hydropathic institutions, not only as ridiculous, but positively injurious. It has never been pretended that water was unimportant in the treatment of disease—rational medicine has always employed it, and must continue to do so whilst the world stands. ”

“ Chapter II WATER-CURE
Since air is invisible, we cannot perceive the wonderful way in which it does its work. But the work of water and its curative effects can be easily seen and understood.
All people know something of the use of steam as a curative agent. We often employ it in cases of fever, and very often severe headaches can be cured only by its application. In cases of rheumatic pain in the joints, rapid relief is obtained by the use of steam followed by a cold bath. Boils and ulcers not cured by simple dressing with ointments can be completely healed by the application of steam. ”

“ The very simplicity of the processes of the “water-cure,” which people cannot believe capable of producing the effects ascribed to them, combined with a belief, ingrained by long habit, in the absolute necessity for drugs in curing disease, have chiefly militated against a more extended reception of Hydropathy by the lay public ”

“ It is, furthermore, true that a great majority of ordinary diseases are commonly so void of danger under careful nursing and hygienic management that the application of water is a simple matter which any intelligent mother can perform successfully. A case is related by good authority of a person who fell in apoplexy an hour after taking an excessively hot bath. Another patient became a paralytic from the same cause. Water is a remedy which cannot be safely used by one who has not informed himself of its effects, and of the proper modes of application. ”

“ This mode of treating disease (Hydropathy) is unquestionably far from inert, and most opposed to the cure of diseases, by the undisturbed processes of nature. It in fact perhaps affords the very best evidence we possess of the curative power of art, and is unquestionably when rationally [7] regulated a most effective mode of treatment in many diseases. Still it puts in a striking light, if not exactly the curative powers of nature, at least the possibility—nay, facility—with which all the ordinary instruments of medical cure, drugs, may be dispensed with. ”

“ There can be no doubt of the complete omnipotence of Hydropathy over this malady; its cure is only a matter of time. It is difficult to lay down any prescribed treatment, as the chief aim of the practitioner must be to bring his patient into fine health. All organic action is contraction; all strength depends upon the power of the different parts of the body to contract, and nothing will aid the operation so much as the different appliances here made use of. As a rule, I observed that when rupture exudes, the sweating process should be resorted to ”

“ At other times, too, the patient’s system appears to be in a state highly calculated to favor cracking or chapping of the surface, such as we observe in many persons, who, when they commence bathing, find their hands and feet becoming very sore. These are always evidences of impurity in the body, and the proof of this fact is found in the circumstance, that if they set resolutely at work to renovate their health by the hydropathic treatment, they become cured of the symptoms, just in proportion as they become firmer and more vigorous in general health. ”

“ Hydrotherapeutic treatment is much more efficacious when conducted at a well-regulated institution, for several reasons. Measures troublesome in themselves are here carried out as a matter of daily routine. Numerous patients permit of the employment of competent attendants. The change is often of great benefit. The close personal supervision which hysterical patients are likely to have in a hydrotherapeutic establishment is also to be taken into consideration. Better modes of living, proper forms of exercise, regulated diet, etc. ”

“ No other application, internal or external, can equal them in efficiency and certainty of action.
There are very few agents which possess so many remedial properties as water. There are none which effect so much with so little expense to the vital powers of the patient. Many drugs will produce results similar to those obtained by the use of water, and thus accomplish good, no doubt; but at the same time, they often work so much mischief in the system that the evil done is frequently much greater than the good accomplished. ”

“ While, however, it is better to remove hysterical patients, for hydrotherapeutic as well as for other treatment, from their family surroundings, and to place them in some well-regulated establishment, it is not by any means impossible to carry out such treatment in private practice, particularly in a house supplied with a bath-room. Many of our hydrotherapeutic institutions are in the hands of charlatans or of individuals who are not practically well fitted for their work. ”

“ Never employ a bath without a definite and legitimate purpose in view. It is somewhat 93customary, in many institutions where water is employed, to apply it in a routine way. Many baths are prescribed for the sake of producing variety, or pleasing the patient. A faithful and scientific physician will carefully adapt his remedies to the condition of his patient, and will observe the results. It seems to be a prevalent error that it makes little difference how water is applied, provided the patient is only wet. Warm, hot, tepid, temperate, cool, and cold baths are used indiscriminately. ”

“ Herbert Mayo, Senior Surgeon of the Middlesex Hospital, speaking of hydropathy, thus expresses himself:—
“It (hydropathy) more than doubles our power of doing good. Of course it will meet with much opposition, but none, come from quarter it may, can possibly prevent its progress, and its taking firm root. It is like Truth, not to be subverted.” ”

“ This being the case, the natural and common sense mode of curing disease, would obviously consist in assisting nature in its efforts to expel the morbid substance from the system, and thus relieve it from the danger which threatened it. Now, this is exactly the principle on which Hydropathy proceeds; it aids, encourages, and strengthens the efforts of nature to heal herself, instead of irritating, thwarting, and weakening those efforts, by the pernicious administration of drugs. ”