Life in a tub; with a description of the Turkish bathDiogenes [pseudonym]
Science
Life in a tub; with a description of the Turkish bath
Diogenes [pseudonym]
Baths, Turkish; Hydrotherapy
The freeing of the mind from old and preconceived ideas—from practices,
with which we have been familiarized from childhood—the looking with
distrust upon a system which since the times of Æsculapius and
Hippocrates has held undisputed sway, arrogating to itself the name of
Orthodox, and dubbing its opponents as quacks—such a change in public
opinion deserves respect or reprobation, according to the causes from
which it springs, whether from a calm investigation of the question
presented for examination, in which strong arguments, based on natural
laws—prescribing a treatment which produces the results aimed at—are
found to preponderate in favour of a new system, or from a
revolutionary love of novelty, indicative of versatility and want of
faith in established institutions, a love of change which would espouse
and propagate any doctrine irrespective of its merits, merely because
it was new.
That this change of opinion to which we refer, viz., the want of
confidence in drugs, is not altogether frivolous, would appear from the
following confession of Dr. Forbes, a distinguished allopathic
physician, who thus sums up the experience of a long professional
career:—
“Firstly, that in a large proportion of the cases treated by
allopathic physicians, the disease is cured by nature and not by
them. Secondly, that in a lesser, but still not a small proportion,
the disease is cured by nature in spite of them; in other words
their interference opposing instead of assisting the cure; and
Thirdly, that consequently in a considerable proportion of diseases
it would fare as well or better with patients, if all remedies,
especially drugs, were abandoned.”
Again one of the most eminent of living medical writers says:—
“When healthy properties are impaired, we know of no agent by which
they can be directly restored, when vital action is perverted or
deranged, we possess no means of immediately rectifying it, but we
must be satisfied with using those means under which it is most
likely to RECTIFY ITSELF.”
It is the knowledge of these facts that has produced discontent with
the usual mode of medicinal treatment, and has encouraged the belief,
that it does more harm than good in cases of disease. Dr. Gully
states:—
“By it (the drug system) the body is placed in the most unnatural
position, and its efforts at relief constantly thwarted. Disease,
which is quite as natural a process as health, is not allowed to go
on as nature would; the internal organs whose morbid action alone
can cause death, are made the arena for all sorts of conflicting
and inflicting medical stimulants; and between the action which
these excite, and that which originally existed, their vitality
fails, their efforts towards restoration flag, and their functions
are at last extinguished.”
Dr. Rush says:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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