tage of much education; he was sent for a time to the town school of Freiwaldau, but he was soon obliged by the death of his elder brother, and by his father becoming blind, to return home for the purpose of assisting his mother in the care of their farm. He continued for some years to work as an agricultural labourer. He one day, however, met with an accident from a restive horse, which fractured two of his ribs. Some country surgeon who examined him gave an unfavourable prognosis, affirming that if he recovered he would be a cripple for life. Priessnitz kept the parts at rest by placing himself in such a position that the broken ribs were not moved in breathing, applied some cold water, and rapidly got better, as might have been expected. He then began the external application of cold water in various inflammations, and found the treatment beneficial. Patients soon began to come to him from various places in the neighbourhood. He obtained some medical works and read them, and gradually excogitated a system of medical treatment which has since been widely practised under the name of "hydropathy." He established cold water baths at Gräfenberg, and the reputation of his system soon extended to all parts of Germany. From the 1st of January, 1829, to the 1st of January, 1844, he treated eight thousand five hundred and seventy-three patients. In 1843 one thousand and fifty people placed themselves under his care. The usual number of persons present for the "water-cure" at Gräfenberg was about three hundred and sixty. One great secret of Priessnitz's success, was the sensible regimen which he enforced on his patients. Moderate and nutritious diet, exercise, pure air, early hours, cheerfulness, regulated clothing, are all powerful adjuvants to health; and the ignorance of mankind frequently ascribes to foreign or novel methods of treatment the improvement really due to a careful management of the daily regimen. Another peculiarity in the cold water cure was, the entire disuse of all kinds of medicine. Cold water did everything; it acted as a purgative, diuretic, diaphoretic, sedative, narcotic, antispasmodic, tonic, and stimulant. After a course of baths inducing violent diaphoresis, a crop of boils broke out on various parts of the body. The appearance of these boils was hailed as a "crisis," the harbinger of health. To some cases, especially those of chronic rheumatism, gout, and other diseases in which the function of the skin is deficiently performed, to those whose general habits were sedentary and modes of life luxurious, to the plethoric and overfed, Gräfenberg and its water cure did good; but to many other persons it did irreparable harm. The system, however, continued in full operation until the death of Priessnitz, and it is still practised, although not so frequently, as a sole method of cure. Priessnitz died at Gräfenberg on the 28th November, 1851. His disease was dropsy of the chest. He himself published nothing. There are, however, plenty of works on the water cure, published both in this country and on the continent.—F. C. W.
PRIESTLEY, Joseph, LL.D., F.R.S., son of Jonas Priestley, clothier, was born at Fieldhead, parish of Birstall, March 13, 1733. His parents were pious orthodox dissenters; but Joseph was brought up by an aunt, who spared no expense on his education to fit him for the christian ministry. A fondness for learning early distinguished him, and he soon made considerable proficiency in the classical and oriental languages. At his aunt's he frequently met and conversed with ministers who were regarded as heterodox, and who, it is believed, exercised a moulding influence on his religious opinions. At the age of nineteen he entered the dissenting academy at Daventry, then under the care of Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Rushworth, successor to Dr. Doddridge. Before leaving home he had been deeply affected by being refused admission as a communicant by the congregation usually attended by his aunt, because he expressed his doubt as to the liability of the whole human race to the "wrath of God, and the pains of hell for ever," on account of Adam's sin. In the academy he found tutors and students divided in opinion respecting the most important subjects of religion, which were freely discussed. Here he came to "embrace what is called the heterodox side of every question," and left Daventry "not yet more than an Arian." At the age of twenty-two he was chosen assistant-pastor of the independent church of Needham Market, in Suffolk; but as his Arian doctrines by degrees oozed out, his hearers "fell off apace." Having left Needham Market, he became pastor of a small dissenting church in Nantwich, Cheshire, in 1755, where he devoted himself almost exclusively to the labours of a school, and experiments in natural philosophy. Having by this time renounced most of the principles of his early creed, he published his "Scripture Doctrine of Remission," in which he utterly discards and tries to refute the doctrine of the atonement by the death of Christ. In 1762 he was chosen to succeed Dr. Aikin in the chair of languages and belles-lettres at Warrington. While here he married the daughter of a wealthy iron-master of Wales, with whom he lived happily, and by whom he had several children. Here also his literary course in good earnest commenced. Having met Dr. Franklin during a visit to London, he undertook to write the "History and Present State of Electric Science, with Original Observations," 1767, which he completed before the end of the same year; and which was so well received by the learned world that a third edition was published in 1775; and a fifth in 1794. Shortly before its publication he was elected member of the Royal Society; and about the same time, on the publication of his "Chart of Biography," 1765, the university of Edinburgh conferred on him the honorary title of LL.D. Some disagreement having arisen between the professors and trustees, he resigned his post at Warrington (1767), and accepted an invitation to become pastor of a congregation of dissenters assembling in Millhill chapel, Leeds, where he "became what is called a Socinian." Here he prosecuted both his theological and philosophical studies with renewed vigour, and composed several works in the former department, chiefly of a controversial nature. In 1772 his "History and Present State of Discoveries relating to Vision, Light, and Colours," 2 vols., appeared, which he intended to follow up by a similar history of the other branches of experimental science; but this work not realizing the success he expected, he abandoned the project. In the same year he published his pamphlet on "Impregnating Water with Fixed Air;" and communicated to the Royal Society his observations on different kinds of air, to which, in the following year, the Copley medal was awarded. While at Leeds proposals of an advantageous kind were made to him, to accompany Captain Cook on his second voyage to the South Seas; but when he was a bout to prepare for the voyage, it was signified to him by Sir Joseph Banks, that objections to his religious opinions had been successfully urged by the ecclesiastical members of the board of longitude. But on the recommendation of Dr. Price to the earl of Shelburne, he was invited by his lordship (1773) to become his librarian and literary companion, with a salary of £250 a year, and a separate house. He also travelled with his lordship on the continent. In Paris, by means of his writings on subjects of natural philosophy, he secured easy introduction to the leading scientific men, all of whom he found professed infidels and atheists; and who were astonished at a man of his enlightenment retaining his faith in Christianity. This circumstance led to his writing the "Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever," 1780; and afterwards, his "State of the Evidence for Revealed Religion," 1787. While residing with Lord Shelburne he published four volumes of his "Experiments and Observations on Air," 1774-79; to which he added a fifth in 1780. This year, for reasons wholly unknown, his connection with Lord Shelburne terminated; his lordship allowing him an annuity of £150. At this period his creed may be given in his own words, in letter to a friend (1774). "I believe the prophecies in our Bible were given by God; that the gospels are true; that the doctrine of original sin is absurd; that the spirit of God only assists our apprehension; that the foreknowledge of God, held by the Arminians, is equal to the decree of God, held by the Calvinists; that they are both wrong and the truth is, the pains of hell are purgatory. Many things I yet doubt of; among these are the Trinity and the mediation of Christ." This is a creed chiefly of negation and doubt, rather than a confession of faith. But a few more negative articles might have been added to it. Having, in his introductory dissertation on Hartley's Observations on Man, expressed his doubts as to the immateriality of the soul, he was fiercely assailed in several newspapers and other periodicals as an unbeliever and an atheist, which induced him to publish his "Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit," 1777, in which he aims to show that man is wholly material, and that his only hope of living in a future state rests on the christian doctrine of the resurrection. On leaving Lord Shelburne he went to live in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, and became the minister of a dissenting congregation in that town. Here he published his "History of the Corruptions of Christianity," 2 vols., 1782, a refutation of which was proposed for one of the Hague prize essays, and which was burned the following year in the city of Dort by the
