ave any success at all in the treatment of the terrible
scourge, are those who treat for symptoms and leave the disease to
Nature.

Under these circumstances, a mode of treatment which promises a decrease
in the number of victims, from the experience of a quarter of a
century, and a score of epidemics of different characters, cannot but be
received with pleasure by the public. I have treated scarlet-fever
hydriatically for twenty-one years, and out of several hundred cases
never lost a patient, except one who died of typhus during an epidemy of
scarlatina; and my observations, during twenty-five years, of the
practice of other physicians of the same school, present a result about
as favorable as my own.

My present position is such, that no self-interest, if I could have any
in a question of such importance for the human race; would induce me to
publish this article, as a rush of scarlet-fever patients would only
tend to destroy the practice at my establishment, instead of increasing
my income. My purpose, therefore, must be honest; and the zeal which I
have manifested for many years in the promulgation of the Water-Cure is
no longer the effect of enthusiasm, but of the observations and practice
of Priessnitz's method during the best part of a man's life, and the
conviction of its merits gained from _facts_.

I consider Hydro-therapeutics as one of the healthiest branches of the
Tree of Medical Science, but not, like some others do, as the whole
Tree. I do not pretend to be able to cure every thing with water; but in
yielding to other medical systems what belongs to them, I earnestly
claim for the Water-Cure, what belongs to it, frankly accusing for the
little progress the hydriatic system has made in this country, the
spirit of charlatanism and speculation on one side, and ignorance,
self-conceit, self-interest and laziness on the other. According to my
experience, and the result obtained by other hydriatic practitioners,
eruptive fevers decidedly belong to Hydro-therapeutics, or the
Water-Cure. If the result obtained by men like Currie, Bateman, Gregory,
Reuss, Froelichsthal, &c., long before Priessnitz, were highly
satisfactory, the important additions and the more systematic
arrangement of the treatment of the inventor of the Water-Cure and
myself, have made the method almost infallible in eruptive fevers, and
my innermost conviction is, that all the other modes of treatment of
these fevers put together will not