Popular Objections Answered.
1. "WATER-TREATMENT is too slow for dangerous and violent diseases." Answer. It is the most speedy method of curing all diseases in the known world. 2. "It is too harsh for feeble persons." A. It is the mildest plan of treatment ever invented. 3. "It is troublesome, and too much like work." A. Health is worth working for. It is very convenient to take medicine, and very easy to die. A few drops of prussic acid would kill an invalid in five minutes, but long years of toil might be required to restore him to health. But which would the wise man choose? 4. "Pale, weak, and bloodless invalids cannot bear cold water." A. Nor should they take it. Such persons need warm or tepid applications. 5. "It shocks the system and disturbs the circulation, thus conducing to organic diseases of the heart." A. Nonsense. If too cold or too severe processes are employed, the result will be internal congestion and debility. But all this is unnecessary. 6. "Cold applications to inflamed, gouty, and rheumatic joints, tend to drive the disease inward upon the vital organs." A. Nonsense again. They are just the things to keep it on the surface. Gouty and rheumatic affections are never struck in upon the brain, heart, or lungs, except in persons who have been reduced by bleeding, or poisoned with drugs. 7. "In skin diseases, the application of cold water tends to repel the bad humors to the internal organs." A. Not so. Humors of all kinds naturally tend to the surface, and cold applications increase such determination, whenever there is preternatural heat. When repelled from the surface, it is always by depleting processes or poisonous drugs. 8. "Some persons have tried the wet-sheet pack, shower-bath, etc., with manifest injury; they did not react." A. Very true. But it was malpractice with them. Either the patients were not in condition for such appliances, or the practitioner who advised them did not understand his business. 9. "The dietary—mostly vegetable—is too low and meagre to suit all constitutions." A. It is the most nourishing diet that can be found. 10. "You exclude tea, coffee, etc., which to many persons are a necessity." A. They are no more so than alcohol and tobacco are to others. We take away all stimulants for the reason that they do not give strength, but waste it. 11. "Persons who live according to your system until they get well, are obliged to continue the system, or they are liable to get sick again." A. And so they should be. A reformed drunkard can remain sober no longer than he lets intoxicating drinks alone. Our system does not propose to avoid the penalties of disobedience to nature's laws. It is predicated on obedience to them. 12. "It deprives persons of many good things they are accustomed to." A. Habit is poor authority for what is good or bad. Our system prohibits nothing that is intrinsically good; but it opposes all false habits and morbid appetences—everything, in short, which is itself a cause of disease. 13. "The great majority of regular physicians oppose it." A. Because it opposes them. Its universal adoption would be the ruin of the medical profession. 15514. "Some Water-Cure physicians give medicine; others pretend to give none. Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" A. Refer to first principles. Our system is Hygienic, not medicinal. He who practices drug medicines is not a true Water-Cure physician, no matter what his pretensions may be. 15. "Why can not physicians, who are in possession of all the lore the profession has accumulated for three thousand years, judge of the merits of your system as well as you can?" A. Because they do not investigate it. 16. "Water-Cure, vegetarianism, and such new-fangled notions, expose one to ridicule." A. Unanswerable. You are right for once.