Rational Hydrotherapy: A Manual of the Physiological and Therapeutic Effects of Hydriatic Procedures, and the Technique of Their Application in the Treatment of Disease

Philadelphia: The F.A. Davis Company, 1901. 2nd Printing. Half-Leather. Very Good/No Jacket. 0x0x0. Second printing. Crudely rebacked (new backstrip is laid over board edges), though with a piece of leather that nicely matches the corners. Edges rubbed, corners exposed, ink owner stamp of Dr. John P. Chase of Rochester, NY on front flyleaf. 1901 Half-Leather. Includes 293 illustrations, eight of which are in color. A treatise on the 'water cure' by the director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which used hydrotherapy (also known as hydropathy) and other progressive methods of the time to treat various ailments. Kellogg was a leading advocate for improving digestive health through diet. His interest in hydrotherapy, when viewed through the lens of modern medicine, appears to be part of an effort to reduce inflammation. He and his brother developed the popular corn flakes cereal. "Modern scientific research has placed upon a sure foundation the great truth dimly recognized by the earliest physicians... that healing power is not possessed by physicians nor by remedies, but that the curative process is simply a manifestation of the forces which dwell within the body and which are normally manifested in creating and maintaining the organism, in other words, that the body heals itself. Water, applied externally or internally, and at such temperatures as may be required, is a natural agent more capable than any other of co-operating with the healing powers of the body in resisting the onset and development of pathogenic processes." (Pref. p. viii) "This is the second issue of the first edition of Rational Hydrotherapy, first published at Philadelphia in 1900. The work began as a series of lectures delivered to Adventist medical students beginning in 1890. Though the published work was intended for medical students, nurses and the profession, it is included here because the therapies described were all in use at the Battle Creek Sanitarium and derive, in part, from the hydropathic armamentarium of the previous century (i.e., procedures with which Kellogg was familiar even before his attandence at Russell Trall's Hygieo-Therapeutic College). Interestingly, Trall is nowhere acknowledged in Kellogg's preface, probably because of his small regard for the training he received at Trall's College in 1872, and also to dissociate the therapies described here from a similar but outdated school of hydrotherapy. Kellogg describes the book's arrangement: 'First, a short historical sketch and a brief resume of physical, anatomical, and physiological facts which are especially related to the subject; second, a study of the physiological effects of thermic applications; third, a description of the technique of all useful hydriatic procedures; and fourth, a section on hydriatic prescription making, in which is presented a brief summary of the indications presented by the diseases most commonly encountered in practice and of the hydric measures required to meet the same... The number of procedures described in this work is about two hundred... Of those procedures which are the outgrowth of his own experience, the author has mentioned only such as have acquired a recognized value by extended use. Of these, the most worthy of mention are the electric-light bath, the percussion douche, cold mitten friction, cold towel rub, alternate spine sponging, a number of forms of hot and cold compress and the hot and cold pack, and the simultaneous hot and cold douche' (p. vi)." (Hoolihan 2104)