From the age of seven to twenty-one, Priessnitz was in constant attendance on his blind father; and on that account, escaped the liability of being drawn as a soldier. Early in life he married a distant relation of his own name, daughter of the _Schulz_ or chief magistrate of Bömishdorf, who was by trade a miller. He has had nine children, of whom six daughters and one son are living. The first-born, a sickly boy, died of apoplexy. When taken ill, the wife and relations insisted on having a physician from Nicholasdorf: this was at the commencement of Priessnitz's career, and he reluctantly yielded. He has since said he would not have given way, had he imagined the doctor could have killed the child so soon, for a powerful medicine being administered, death was the almost immediate result. Priessnitz supposes it was calomel. Whatever it was, it produced spasms and death. This was a severe lesson to Mrs. Priessnitz, who since that event has left the treatment of her children entirely to her husband. As has been said, the various manipulations which now form so complete a system, were gradually introduced just as Priessnitz became aware of their necessity and had experience of their effect. Finding that pain was relieved by natural perspiration, he instituted the sweating process by covering the patients up well in bed. Some time later he improved on this, by introducing the blankets. On a patient becoming faint, whilst under the process, he found that opening the windows to admit fresh air, and washing the face, afforded relief, and ordered it with equal advantage generally. At first he sponged the throat, then the chest, and gradually the whole body; finding the extension of this practice most beneficial in _every_ case, he ventured on the tepid (_i. e._ 62° Fahr.) bath and ultimately the plunge or cold bath. The relief afforded by local bandages to the finger, arm, leg, and other parts of the body afflicted with pain, or to which he wished to attract the vicious juices, suggested the use of the waist bandage, which he found fulfilled many useful purposes, especially in relieving pain in the abdomen, feverishness, and restlessness, and also in bringing the abdominal functions into a healthy state. Satisfied of the benefit derived from local cold bandages, he thought they might be extended over the whole of the surface of the body; and this originated the wet sheet, which supersedes the lancet by relieving the overcharged system of heat, and is the most powerful sedative known. It has gradually superseded the sweating process, though not in all cases. Priessnitz recommended the weaker patients to remain in the blanket only a sufficient time to get thoroughly warm; but they, thinking to accelerate a cure, sometimes remained in it too long, and fainted from exhaustion--a reason assigned for confining his treatment more especially to the wet sheet.