Note 17 — LIFE IN A TUB.1

We know not whether the public will prefer the impartial testimony of an intelligent observer like Sir Bulwer Lytton, to that of the Allopathic physician, naturally wedded to his own system and anxious to sustain it against all intruders; but we may observe, that we never yet met a physician opposed to Hydropathy, who did not, on catechising him, exhibit the most absurd ignorance respecting it. Their chronic idea is that of a person being left to shiver in wet sheets; and, as a consequence, their chronic note of warning, accompanied by an ominous shake of the head, consists in, “Don’t attempt the water cure, or it will kill you.”17 If medical men would but see, before they assert, then much value might be attached to their opinion; but what value can be attached to their opinion about a system which they will not take the trouble of examining into? How many orthodox physicians have ever visited Blarney, or any similar Hydropathic establishment?—The proportion of such visitors (and no one can form a fair idea of the system without seeing it at work), to the whole profession would be more than represented by an infinitesimal fraction.