Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/106

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FASTING, HYDROPATHY, EXERCISE.

attack of climatic fevers in the bud; and Dr. Sydenham mentions the case of three smallpox patients who were capsized on the way to an island pesthouse, and in spite of (almost certainly because of) their involuntary ice-water bath, recovered with a facility unprecedented in the records of the lazaretto.

Two baths a day, one early in the morning, the other just before supper, is the usual routine of our hydropathic health-resorts, which, besides, prescribe liberal internal doses of cold spring-water. Common sense is bidding fair to prevail against prejudice in regard to the use of cooling beverages in febrile diseases, the world over, and one of our largest American sanitariums (managed mainly on an eclectic plan of reform) now offers its nurses premiums for persuading sufferers from various disorders to drink a maximum quantity of pure cold water.

The stronghold of the drug-delusion, indeed, is getting breached from all sides, but the leaders of the most numerous storming party must plead guilty to the charge of having recruited their ranks by manifold concessions to popular errors. Hydrotherapy has thus far not attained the