HYDROPATHY.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVI, Issue 2277, 6 August 1894, Page 2

HYDROPATHY.

TO THE EDITOK. Sib, —A few days ago you reported that a hydropathist advised that tobacco juice should be injected into the body of a boy as a remedy for some real or supposed ailment, and that the following up of such advice resulted in the boy’s death. Owing to the fact that orthodox M.IVs very frequently kill their patients or shorten their lives, made miserable by the injection of morphia into their bodies, I deem it possible that other charlatans outside of the fraternity of orthodox ones may at times act as recklessly as the former. But what I want to note in reply to your report, which I imagine may have boon circulated by some professional, M.D. or druggist, is that no hydropathist could, or would, commit a folly which hydropathy teaches him to avoid above all tilings. Hydropathy, as the name implies, is simply a cure by water, in different ways and forms, aided by a very pure, plain and moderate diet, and a total abstinence from poisons administered to patients by orthodox doctors under the name of drugs. Smedley, who spent a largo fortune, regardless of profit, in establishing a hospital for the cure of patients by hydropathy, would receive no patient who used tobacco in any shape or form, and others since his day will never give a patient hopes of a permanent cure who uses tobacco in any form ; they look upon it as a deadly poison. Hydropathists recommend to their patients:—(l) A very pure diet, in quantity from starvation point to moderation ; (2) they recommend unleavened and unsalted bread, fruit, vegetables. &c.; (3) they forbid, if possible, the ordinary baker's bread, all condiments, tobacco, alcohol, &0., they repudiate all drugs and ordinary orthodox doctors’ advice; (4) they insist upon as much open air as possible, and walking exercise, while they condemn carriage exercise. A short time ago I saw a sick man whose life is at present of great value to New Zealand riding in an open carriage on the most bleak day we have had this season. Among other things that Smedley condemned was vaccination. In his time and since, vaccination has been condemned as spreading leprosy and numerous filthy diseases over the world. In England the people' have resisted the murdering law to such an extent that the authorities have ceased to prosecute those who decline the risk of committing murder, and the certainty of spreading and multiplying diseases. I understand that the interim report of the commission appointed a few years ago on the subject of vaccination furnishes such evidence as amounts to a condemnation of the filthyg practice.—l am, &c., Observer.