Every Man His Own Doctor: The Cold Water, Tepid Water, and Friction-Cure, as Applicable to Every Disease to Which the Human Frame Is Subject, and Also to the Cure of Disease in Horses and CattleClaridge, R. T. (Richard Tappin)
Science
Every Man His Own Doctor: The Cold Water, Tepid Water, and Friction-Cure, as Applicable to Every Disease to Which the Human Frame Is Subject, and Also to the Cure of Disease in Horses and Cattle
Claridge, R. T. (Richard Tappin)
Hydrotherapy; Veterinary medicine
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who added friction to cold
bathing, was accustomed to use cold water in his treatment of the most
serious illnesses. It was Hippocrates who first observed that warm water
chilled, whilst cold water warmed.
The Macedonians considered warm water to be enervating; and their women,
after accouchement, were washed with cold water.
Virgil called the ancient inhabitants of Italy, a race of men hard and
austere, who immersed their newly-born children in the rivers, and
accustomed them to cold water.
Pliny, in speaking of A. Musa, who cured Horace by means of cold water,
said that he put an end to confused drugs; and he also alludes to a
certain Charmes, who made a sensation at Rome by the cures he effected
with cold water. On being asked what he thought drugs were sent for, he
said, "he could not imagine, except that men might destroy themselves
with them when they were tired of living."
Celsus, called the Cicero of doctors, employed water for complaints of
the head and stomach.
Galen, in the second century, recommended cold bathing to the healthy,
as well as to patients labouring under the attacks of fever.
Charlemagne, aware of the salubrity of cold bathing, encouraged the use
of it throughout his empire, and introduced swimming as an amusement at
his court.
Michael Savonarola, an Italian doctor, in 1462, recommended cold water
in gout, ophthalmia, and hæmorrhages.
Cardanus, of Pavia, 1575, complains that the doctors in his time made so
little use of cold water in the curing of gout.
Van der Heyden, a doctor at Ghent, in a work published in 1624, states
that during an epidemic dysentery, he cured many hundreds of persons
with cold water, and that during a long practice of fifty years, the
best cures he ever made were effected with cold water.
Short, an English doctor, 1656, states that he had cured the dropsy and
the bite of mad dogs with cold water.
Dr. Sir John Floyer published a work, called "the Psychrolusic," in
1702, showing how fevers were to be cured with water. From that period
to 1722, his work went through six editions in London.
Dr. Hancock, in 1722, published an anti-fever treatise upon the use of
cold water, which went through seven editions in one year.
Dr. Currie of Liverpool, who published a work in 1797, on the use of
water, introduced that element extensively in his practice with
astounding results.
Tissot, in his "Advice to the People," published in Paris, 1770, shows
the importance of cold water.
Hoffman, the famous German doctor, says that if there existed anything
in the world that could be called a panacea, it was pure water: first,
because that element would disagree with nobody; secondly, because it is
the best preservative against disease; thirdly, because it would cure
agues and chronic complaints; fourthly because it responded to all
indications.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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