The ink-blot on your hand can be quickly washed off by the water, the bleeding wound is cleansed by it. If in summer-time after the day's exertions you wash the sweat off your forehead with fresh water, you feel quite revived; it refreshes, strengthens and does you good. The mother, perceiving scurf on her baby's little head, takes warm water, and through it the scurf is dissolved.
Dissolving, evacuating (washing off. as it were), strengthening, these three unquestioned qualities of the water, are sufficient for us, and we make the assertion:
The water, in particular my water-cure, heals all diseases in any way curable; for the various applications of water tend to remove the roots of the disease; they are able:
a) To dissolve the morbid matter in the blood,
b) to evacuate what is dissolved,
c) to make the cleansed blood circulate rightly again,
d) finally, to harden the enfeebled organism, i.e. to strengthen it for new activity.
4. What is the cause of the sensibility of the present generation, of the striking susceptibility for all possible diseases, of which even the names were scarcely known in former days?
Of course, many people would like to dispense me from this question. Nevertheless it appears to me to be of great importance, and I state, without hesitation, that these evils arise from want of hardening. The effemination of the people living now-a-days has reached a high degree. The weak and delicate, the poor of blood and nervous, the sick of heart or stomach, almost form the rule; the strong and vigorous are the exception. People are affected by every change of weather; the turn of season does not pass by without colds in the head and cheat; even the too quickly entering a warm room, when coming from the cold street, does not remain unrevenged, etc. etc. Fifty or sixty years ago it was quite different, and where shall we come to, if, according to the general complaint of the thoughtful, mankind's strength and life are decreasing so rapidly, if decay begins even before man has reached maturity? It is high time to see what is wanting. As a small contribution towards remedying such a distressing state of affairs we offer the few simple and safe remedies for hardening the skin, the whole body and single pails of the body. These may be added to the water-applications. These remedies have already been accepted by numbers of persons of all conditions, first by some of them with ridicule, but afterwards practiced with trust and with visible success. Vivant sequentes!
Treatises, as important as that about hardening, could be written on food, clothing and airing; this will perhaps be done later on. I am quite aware that my particular opinions will be strongly contradicted; nevertheless I keep to them; for they have been ripened by an experience of long years. They are not mushrooms sprung up in my brain during the night; they are precious fruits, hard and severe perhaps to incarnate prejudices, but extremely relishing to a sound mental digestion. 1 only want to give some hints regarding the food.
My chief rule is: Dry, simple, nourishing household-fare not spoiled by art or by strong spices; the drink should be the genuine beverage offered by Cod in every well. Both taken moderately are the best and most wholesome nourishment for the human body. (I am not a Puritan and allow gladly a glass of wine or beer, but without regarding them as important as they uncommonly believed to be.) From a medicinal view, after illness for instance, these beverages may sometimes play a part; but for healthy people I prefer fruits.
As regards clothing, I follow the maxim of our forefathers: Self-spun and self-made is the best country garb. First I oppose the striking inequality or rather unequal distribution of clothing, especially in winter time which is a great injury to health. The head has its fur cap, the neck its tight collar, covered with a woolen scarf a yard long; the shoulder's wear a: 3 or 4 fold cover; for walks a wadded cloak or even a fur-cape; only the feet, the poor neglected feet, are covered as in summer, merely with socks or stockings and with shoes or boots. What are the consequences of such an unreasonable partiality? The upper clothing and wrappers draw up blood and warmth to the upper story, while the lower parts are suffering from want of blood and from cold; headache, congestions, enlargement of the arteries o-f the head, hundreds of indispositions and miseries become vexed problems.
Further I oppose thick woolen clothing, worn next to the skin, but I approve of the under-clothing made of firm, dry, strong linen, or hemp-cloth. The latter is to me the best skin on the skin which never effeminates it but does the good service of a rubber. The many-branched, hairy, greasy texture of the wool on the bare body (how the wool serves my purposes, is said in the general explanations of my water applications) I look upon as a sucker of fluids and warmth, as a concurring cause of the dreadfully spreading want of blood in our weak, miserable generation. The newest method of wool-wearing in the revised style will not remedy this want nor aid the blood either. Younger people may live to experience this and to outlive the method. —
Now to the airing. — We prefer by far fish obtained from spring-water, or trout from the mountain streams to all others; fish from rivulets are inferior; those from ponds in moors and marshes, with their disgusting taste, we leave to somebody else. There is likewise moor and marsh air, and whoever inhales it, feeds his lungs with pestilential vapor. A celebrated physician says that the air, when inhaled for the third time, has the effect of poison. Indeed, if people would understand how to provide their sitting – and especially their bed-rooms, with pure, fresh air, they would prevent many indispositions and many diseases. The pure air is spoiled mostly by breathing. We know very well that 1 or 2 grains of incense strewn on the glowing fire, fill a whole room with perfume, and we know likewise that 15 - 20 puffs from a cigar or pipe are sufficient to make a large room smell of the smoke. Often the most insignificant thing is enough to spoil the pure air in one way or the other, agreeably or disagreeably. Is not breathing similar to such smoke? How many breaths do we take in a minute, in an hour, during the day, the night? How much must the air become spoiled, though we do not see the vapor? And if I do not air, i.e. purify the bad atmosphere spoiled by carbonic acid, what infected air, what miasmas, are streaming into the lungs? The consequences cannot, and will not, be other than injurious.
Like breathing and exhalation, too much heat is prejudicial to the wholesome, pure, vital air, especially too much heating of rooms. The air becomes bad, as the heat consumes and destroys the oxygen, it is rendered unfit for maintaining life and therefore injurious to breathing. 59 — (14 degrees are sufficient, 68 degrees should never be exceeded.
Care should be taken to air thoroughly all the sitting- and bedrooms, day by day, in such a way that without trouble to anyone each one's health may draw benefit from it. Above all great attention must be given to the airing of the beds.
Now I have stated what I considered necessary to be said on these points. It is sufficient to serve as a picture of a stranger who knocks at your door, and whether you admit him friendly or dismiss him unheard, he is prepared for both, and must be contented with either.
PART I. WATER APPLICATIONS.
GENERAL REMARKS.
THE applications of water used in my establishment and described in this first part, are divided into:
Wet sheets,
Baths,
Vapor baths,
Gushes,
Ablutions,
Wet bandages (packages),
Drinking of water.
The subdivisions of each application are given in the first index. The name and the meaning of strange sounding practices are explained in their proper place. The applications of water tend to the triple aim:
1) To dissolve,
2) to evacuate the morbid matters, and
3) to strengthen the organism.
In general it may be said that the dissolving is brought about by the vapors and the hot baths of medicinal herbs; the evacuation by the water packages and partly by the gushes and wet sheets; the strengthening