Bulwer and Forbes on the water-treatment : a compilation of papers on the subject of hygiene and rational hydropathy; edited with additional matters.

  • Houghton, Roland S.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bulwer and Forbes on the water-treatment : a compilation of papers on the subject of hygiene and rational hydropathy; edited with additional matters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    acute complaints in the hospitals. The principal rem- edy here employed by the water-doctor is the wet-sheet packing, which excites such terror among the unin- itiated, and which, of all the curatives adopted by hy- dropathy, is unquestionably the safest—the one that can be applied without danger to the greatest variety of cases, and which, I do not hesitate to aver, can rarely, if ever, be misapplied in any cases where the pulse is hard and high and the skin dry and burning. I have found in conversation so much misapprehension of this very easy and very luxurious remedy, that I may be pardoned for re-explaining what has been ex- plained so often. It is not, as people persist in sup- posing, that patients are put into wet sheets and there left to shiver. The sheets, after being saturated, are well wrung out—the patient quickly wrapped in them —several blankets tightly bandaged round, and a feather-bed placed at top ; thus, especially where there is the least fever, the first momentary chill is promptly succeeded by a gradual and vivifying warmth, perfectly free from the irritation of dry heat—a delicious sense of ease is usually followed by a sleep more agreeable than anodynes ever produced. It seems a positive cru- elty to be relieved from this magic girdle in which pain is lulled, and fever cooled, and watchfulness lapped in slumber. The bath which succeeds refreshes and braces the skin, which the operation relaxed and soft- ened ; they only who have tried this, after fatigue or in fever, can form the least notion of its pleasurable sensations, or of its extraordinary efficacy; nor is