On emerging from the bath, the patient is quickly dressed, and immediately commences exercise, and drinks abundantly of cold water. The limit to this ingurgitation is sense of pain or weight in the stomach. The patient, although rather averse to the cold drink at first, soon becomes fond of it, and will swallow fifteen or twenty goblets with a keen relish. After the promenade and cold drink is over, a nourishing breakfast is taken. All stimulating or exciting beverages are entirely prohibited. The appetite generally becomes keen, and the digestion, even of dyspeptics, strong and effective during this course. Between breakfast and dinner is variously employed, according to the strength of the patients or the nature of the disease. Some take riding or pedestrian exercise—others gymnastics—and a few have more cold water, as a plunging or shower bath. The dinner is to be light, and soon after mid-day. It is generally taken with a keen appetite. During the three or four hours after dinner, all exercise of mind or body is forbidden, but sleep is not to be indulged in. Towards evening, some of the stronger patients repeat the same process which they underwent in the morning; but those who are weak, or in whom the crisis is approaching, only take cold water to drink in moderation. After a slight supper the patient retires to sleep, in order that he may early resume the routine of the water-cure. The professors of this system vary the mode of application almost infinitely—especially the external application of the cold water, according to the general or local seat of the complaint. They act very much on the doctrine of revulsion or derivation. Thus when there are symptoms of fulness or congestion about the head or the chest, a half-bath or hip-bath of cold water is employed, disregarding the first impression of cold on the lower parts of the body, but looking to the _reaction_ which is to take place there, and to the consequent derivation of blood from the head and chest. Foot-baths, cold lotions, fomentations, and poultices are variously used, according to the nature or seat of the malady. Like the spa waters, this HYDROTHERAPEIA produces, in a great many instances, a CRISIS. For some days the patients feel themselves much more energetic and comfortable than before the course was begun; but after a time “a veritable state of fever is produced, the result of this general effervescence.”[46] Then the symptoms of the complaint, whatever it may be, are all exasperated and acquire an increase of intensity—even old diseases, that were forgotten, will sometimes re-appear—but all this commotion is the precursor of a salutary crisis and a return to health. A kind of prickly heat, with itching of the skin, is a common occurrence in the course of the cure. “The effects produced even on organic diseases by this hydro-therapeutic treatment would convince the most sceptical of its wonderful efficacy.”—_Engel._