In spite of all drawbacks, bow-ever, the undoubted merits of hydropathy at length called to its defense many men of standing in the profession, who, allowing for some of its early extravagances, stepped forth to explain it scientifically, and pressed it on the acceptance of their brethren; and from their advocacy has sprung up in England a school of hydropathic physicians, the philosophy of whose plan of treatment we shall DOW briefly describe.
Physiology teaches us thatthe 'various organs of our bodies cannot be kept in a healthy state without the observance of certain regulations called the primary "laws of health." When these are broken, the result to the offender is disease in one of its many forms. Until the appearance of hydropathy, physicians attempted to correct the evil thus caused—and the great majority do so still—by the administration of one or other of the drugs which go to form the medical repertory known as the pharmacopoeia; and the argument on which this practice has been based is the very simple one, that experi ence has proved the medicine or medicines to be efficacious in a large proportion of similar cases. Hydropathy proceeds according to a very different method. Taking us his central maxim the principle first propounded by Hippocrates, that it is nature's own strivings after health (via medicatrix natures) that really cure the patient when he is cured, the function of art being mainly to remove obstacles, the hydropathic physician avoids using all meatus with whose effects he is not thoroughly conversant, or which may, at least, interfere with nature's own operations. Hence, as a rule, he eschews the use of drugs, and betakes himself to those more simple natural agents which, in their totality, receive the name of hygiene. The conditions of health, as unfolded by physi. ology, may be briefly stated to consist of five necessary requirements—air, exercise, water, diet, and nervous repose. These are undeniably essential to the preservation of health; no human being can possibly continue in a fair state of health when deprived of the just proportion of any one of them. This proposition, which may be regarded as axiomatic, forms the starting-point of hydropathy in the cure of disease. Adinitted that certain agencies are necessary to the preservation of health, the hydropathic prin ciple is simply this, that the very same agencies, infinitely modified of course according to the requirements of each particular case, and generally much intensified, are not only the safest, but by far the surest means of curing chronic disease; or, to put it more cor rectly, are the best means which can be brought to nature's assistance for enabling her to effect a cure herself.
Here it is proper to explain what is meant by saying that the natural agents of health are intensified when they are used, not for the preservation of health, but the cure of disease; or, in other words, when we pass from natural hygienics to natural therapeutics. Take the element of exercise, for instance, one of the most powerful hydropathic agen cies. Every one knows, although but few act systematically on the knowledge, that is certain amount of exercise is necessary- to maintain the body in health; the hydropathic doctrine, accordingly, is, that in the cure of chronic disease, this exercise mnst be inten sitied—increased to the full extent which the patient's strength will warrant. So, again, as to the use of water: a certain amount of pure water, used externally and internally, is also necessary to the maintenance of health: hydropathically, a much. more liberal use of the same element in both ways is necessary to the cure of disease. The reader's special attention is called to this, which in fact is the very kernel of the hydropathic theory.
Let us now explain more in detail how and in what cases hydropathy employs the agents on which it relies. Diseases may, for general purposes, be divided into two great classes: those in which the physician is called on to lower or reduce to the standard of health; and those in which the object of Ids endeavors is, on the other hand, to assist in elevating to the same standard. In the former category, range themselves all those diseases which are marked by a plethoric or inflammatory type—hy an overplus of maid irected strength in the economy; • in the latter, those distinguished by a correspond ing diminution in the vital powers. It may be truly affirmed, that to rectify both these abnormalities, and to restore the equilibrium of health. is the great object of medical treatment. The ordinary practice seeks to achieve this object mainly, in both instances, by means of drugs, respectively adapted to the two classes, and tending to lower in the one case and to exalt in the other. The hydropathic practice, with the same object in view, employs, as already stated, the natural remedies—air, exercise, water, diet, and repose.