HYDROP'ATHY, or ITYGIEVIC MEDICINE, popularly termed the water cure. Under the head of baths and bathing (q.v.), an account has been given of the bath in general, as a means of preserving health. We have here to speak of water in its manifold uses as an engine in the cure of disease, and as forming a principal element in that combina tion of hygienic appliances which goes to make up hydropathy as at present practiced. (In accordance with the plan followed in other cases of the kind, the view exhibited is that of an adherent of the system.) The efficacy of water, in the cure of numerous forms of disease, has long been recog nized. Water was largely employed by Hippocrates, the "father of medicine," more than 2,300 years ago, in the treatment of many kinds of disease; and along with a regu lated diet, and an implicit belief in the vis medicatrix naturm, it appears to have formed the chief clement in his medical armory. Horace has enshrined the memory of Antonins Musa, the hydropathic physician of the emperor Augustus (Epist. i. 15). Both Celsus and Galen—who flourished, the one about 50 years B.c., and the other in the 2d c.— speak favorably in their writings of the use of water in the cure of disease, regarding it AS of high value in the treatment of acute complaints, particularly of fevers. Through out the middle ages, likewise, many physicians of name, including Aetius and Paulus 2Egineta, and the more celebrated Paracelsus, were advocates of the remedial virtues of water; all of them, however, having faith in its uses in the treatment rather of acute than of chronic disorders. In 172eNicolo Lanzani, a Neapolitan physician, published a learned treatise on the subject. In our own country, about the beginning of the 18111 c., sir John Floyer and Dr. Baynard made a large use of water. Their conjoint work, denominated Psychrolousia, or the "History of Cold Bathing, both Ancient and Modern," is replete with quaint learning and practical shrewdness and sagacity. But the most able and scientific among the older treatises that have appeared in England on the subject of the water treatment, is the work of the well-known Dr. Currie (q.v.), the biographer of the poet Burns, published in 1797, and entitled Medical Reports on the of Water, Cold and Warm, etc. In this work, Dr. Currie recommends the cold allusion in typhus and other fevers, and gives practical directions in regard to the cases and the times when it may be used with advantage. Eminent physicians of the present day have admitted that these views, so far as they went, were as scientific in principle as they were novel in their application; but the practice founded on them was con sidered too dangerous by Currie's contemporaries, and fell into speedy neglect. It is
worthy of remark that Currie appears to have limited his use of water to acute ail ments exclusively.
We have thus seen that up to the beginning of the present century, by some of those who employed it as a curative agent, water was used in the treatment of acute, and by others of chronic diseases; by some as an internal agent alone, by others as an external application in the various forms of the bath, but never in all the manners combined. This combination was first effected by the original genius of Vincent Priessnitz, a Sile sian farmer, with whom began a new era for the water-cure. It was owing, we are told, to his successful treatment of more than one bodily injury which lie had sustained in his own person that, about the year 1820, Priessnitz became so fortified in his con victions as to the curative powers of water as to devote himself to employ it medically in the cure of others. Beginning with the external application of water for trifling dis eases among the poor of his neighborhood, he gradually undertook an extended range of cases, and multiplied the modes of administration, introducing the wet compress, the douche bath, partial baths of all kinds, the sweating process, the wet sheet, together with copious drinking of pure water. In addition to water in all these forms, he insisted on the value a exercise, diet, fresh air, and mental repose, iu the cure of dis ease; thus practically calling to his aid the entire r2sources of hygiene, and establishing by a simple, yet thoroughly original combination, nothing less than a new system of medical treatment. As to the success which attended Priessnitz's practice, it is a his torical fact that of 7,500 patients, who had gone to Grilfenberg for advice and treatment, up to the year 1841, or within the space of about 20 years, there had been only BD deaths, and some of these, according to the registry of the Austrian police, " had died before commencing the treatment, while some others were reported in a forlorn state befdre anything was attempted." It is to be regretted, however, that the founder of the new system was not himself an educated physician, so that he could have understood better the philosophy of his own practice, and explained it more correctly. He would not have called his system the " water-cure," a name scientifically one-sided and incomplete, and therefore misleading. It is equally to be regretted that many of the immediate followers of Priessnitz, while destitute of his remarkable sagacity and genius, should have been no better furnished than himself with a scientific knowledge of disease and general professional culture.