Part 4

I will add to what hath been said, one experiment more, that is very material: And that is, being very hypochondriacal, and of a melancholy temper, I have often been strangely dejected in mind when under grief for some misfortunes, which sometimes have been so great, as to threaten danger to life; in which fits of grief I always found the parts within my breast very uneasy, and sometimes continued long: But now I have found a good remedy; for, upon drinking a pint or more of cold water, I find ease in two or three minutes, so that no grief seems to afflict. Which experience I discover for the sake of others in the same circumstances, being certain, that the stomach sympathizeth with the mind, and this becomes the cause of that uneasy sensation perceived there, for which, cold water I have found to be the best remedy in myself, and I believe others may find the same benefit, who wilt make use thereof upon the like occasion. And it gives also relief to people under frights, which sometimes have been very fatal, even unto death.

There is also another experiment that I have often seen of good effect; and that is, that if persons, subject to what is called vapours, or that are afflicted with fits, commonly called the fits of the mother, will but drink water when they find their fits approach, it will immediately yield relief. There is in this case a mealy julep, prescribed by Dr. Bates, which is, to take a spoonful of fine wheat-flour, an ounce of fine sugar, and a pint of water, brew them together, and drink it off: This is pleasanter than water alone; but water of itself will be as effectual, or rather better, as hath been often proved upon persons in those fits.

Some perhaps may desire to know how to distinguish good from bad water. And the way to do this is, by the taste and scent; for being purely fresh, not salt, nor sweetish, nor ill-scented, it is good, provided it be pure and clear: Of which kind is the common water used in London, when well settled, or in fair weather. As for those who are curious, and will be at the charge, they may procure the best water for drink by distillation, either in an alembick, or in a cold still used in drawing any cold water from herbs; for no earthly or metallic substance, nor any kind of salt will rise in distillation: So that the water so distilled will be pure, and admirable to drink when cold, and will keep as long from stinking as any of the cold distilled water in the apothecaries shops; according to what Dr. Quincy hath affirmed about it in his Dispensatory.

Those who have not the conveniency of distillation, may boil it a little as they do for tea; for then, when kept a while after it is cold, it will become more fine, by suffering any mixture contained in it to settle to the bottom of the vessel, and that will render it still more pure: In short, all water that will make a good lather with soap, is wholesome to drink without boiling, but none else.

Since the collecting together the fore-mentioned accounts, I have met with a book written by Dr. Boerhaave, the present professor of physic at Leyden in Holland, who affirms that drinking water, made very warm, is a good remedy to pacify griping pains in the stomach; and that it is proper to bathe wounds in the face with it, when they come to be just healed, so that the place be kept continually wet, which I conceive is best done by applying often linen cloths wet, and binding them on till they begin to be dry, for this will prevent scars: And he saith, that warm water is better to attenuate or thin the blood than cold.

There is published lately a book of experiments made with water, by Dr. Hancock, a divine, called Febrifugum Magnum; wherein he saith, that drinking a pint or a quart of cold water in bed will raise a copious sweat, and cure all burning fevers, which at once taking hath done the business: It will raise a sweat without much more covering than ordinary. And he further affirms, that the same taken at the beginning of the cold fit of an ague, and sweating upon it, at two or three times taking, will cure that distemper. A large quantity of hot water, I know, hath been advised to take off the cold fit of agues, but the party was not ordered to sweat. Which discovery of the reverend doctor about fevers, is confirmed by the following accounts, which I received from a worthy gentleman, Mr. Ralph Thoresby, F. R. S. to whom they were transmitted by Mr. Lucas, a pious and learned gentleman of Leeds in Yorkshire, who says, that

Author of Ducatus Leodiensis, or Topography of Leeds, which the present learned Bishop of London, in his preface to the new edition of Cambden’s Britannia, stiles, An useful and accurate Treatise.

‘One Captain Rosier fell into a violent fever, which as soon as he perceived, he said he must have some cold water. The gentlewoman, at whose house he lodged, not thinking that proper, boiled the water (unknown to him) and put some spirits therein, and sent it up cold; but he smelt it before it came to his head, and refused to drink it, saying, he knew what he did, for he had several times tried it. Afterwards, some clear water being brought, he drank it, sweat profusely, and was well the next day.

‘Another captain of a ship also took the same method, when he, or any of his men, fell into a fever; which had the desired success.’

Mr. Lucas adds, in another letter to the same gentleman, ‘That his own wife fell very ill of a fever; she drank water, sweat very much, and thereby recovered.’

All which instances corroborate the new way of curing fevers, so lately discovered in this city by Dr. Hancock; who also saith, he has had long experience of curing common colds with cold water; and this is done by drinking a large draught of water at going to bed, another in the night, and another in the morning: which, he saith, will soon thicken and sweeten, and digest that thin sharp rheum that provokes coughing to no purpose; for the rheum, when thin, is hard to be brought up; but, when thickened, it will come up easily, and the cough will soon go off. Which agrees with what I before affirmed from my own long experience.

He also affirms from his own experience, that using sometimes to take a walk of eight or ten miles in a morning, he found that water gave twice as good breath for that purpose as wine or ale; and, if it would do this for a man who had no asthma, he doubts not but it would do the same in a person troubled with one. And he also affirms water to be the best remedy for a surfeit; to the truth of which I can testify by long experience.

He also affirms, that drinking cold water hath been found good in rheumatisms, and that to one so afflicted he had advised to drink it as he lay in his bed, and it took off the fit; but if hot water attenuates the blood most, as Boerhaave affirms it is then best to drink of it warm daily to a good quantity: For, as Pitcairn observes, it is then the best dissolver of all kinds of salts in the body, which it will carry off in the urine, if drank plentifully; for by urine salts are evacuated, as is evident by the taste.

And it is his opinion, from the long experience he hath had of the effect of water in keeping the stomach in order, and making it tight and strong to perform its operations, and digest all humours, that it will cure the gout in the stomach; and perhaps it may do it better than wine, which I have known to fail. And I do not wonder that the same liquor, which is the principal cause of the gout in other parts, should not be a help in that part, but rather kill, as it often is found to do, tho’ the strongest wine is drank.

In short, he affirms, and that with great reason, that sweating in fevers, by drinking cold water, is more natural than to do it with hot sudorifics, which often do harm in the beginning of fevers, except good store of cooling moistning liquors are drank with them, they being more apt to inflame than cool and quench heat in the body; and for that reason sweating hath not been often advised by physicians, because they were ignorant of this way of sweating to cure fevers, by drinking cold water.

Which cure, he said, did succeed in one who was his relation, at the fifth day after his falling sick; to whom he gave a dose of water after he was in bed, and he sweated profusely for twenty-four hours, and thereby was cured. Half a pint, he saith, is enough for a grown child; a pint to a man or woman, tho’ if they drink a quart, it will be better. And in scarlet fevers, small pox, or measles, tho’ the water will not cause sweat, yet it will so quell and keep under the fever, that the eruptions will come out more kindly; which is a confirmation of what before was said about Dr. Bett’s prescribing two quarts of water, when the small pox did not come out kindly; the water afforded matter to fill them up, according to what the author observes of a certain person, in the history of Cold Bathing, p. 347., that he could give an hundred instances where people of all ages have been lost, by being denied drink in the small pox,----for it hinders the filling of the pustules.

And Dr. Hancock sets down an account of the author of the Free-thinker, concerning a woman, who in the last great plague fell ill of that distemper, who got her husband to fetch her a pitcher of water from Lambs-conduit; she drank plentifully of it, but did not avoid the cold, and so did not sweat, however she was cured. And he gives us another relation of an Englishman, formerly resident at Morocco, that fell ill of the plague at that place, and, getting water to drink, fell into a violent sweat, and recovered: From whence the doctor concludes, that water is good in the plague; agreeable to what is related in Sir John Floyer’s book of Cold Baths, wherein it is said, that but two died of the plague who lived over the water upon London bridge, p. 223, the coolness of the air being supposed to contribute to their health who inhabited on the water in that manner, their blood being cooler than others: It is said also, the watermen escaped better than others.

I will here add to what the doctor hath said before, concerning the cure of fevers, that if the fever be accompanied in the beginning with any great illness at the stomach, nauseating or vomiting, it will be the surest and safest practice to clear the stomach first, by vomiting with warm water, as before directed; for I cannot believe it possible for the stomach to be cleared from foul humours by sweating. It may do, if no great sense of disorder is perceived there; but it will certainly be safest to cleanse the stomach first, which is the place where all diseases have their original; for then sweating with cold water afterwards may turn to good account. Indeed I have not made any trial of it since the doctor’s book was published, but I have a very good opinion of his accounts therein given concerning the benefit of water, having had so much experience thereof in my own practice for above forty years; for so long it is since I first began to collect those accounts, and make those experiments, which are herein made public for the benefit of all. I will only add, that in a book, intituled, Organum Salutis, p. 50. written by Judge Rumsey, he saith, he never found any thing more useful for the health of man, than to drink first in the morning half a pint of cold water; and this will contribute much to the cure of blood-shotten eyes.

Since the last edition of this work, there hath been published An Essay of Health and long Life, by Dr. Cheyne, wherein this truth is asserted too, ‘That water was the primitive, original beverage--(and happy had it been for the race of mankind, if other mixt and artificial liquors had never been invented) and that water alone is sufficient and effectual for all the purposes of human wants in drink. Strong liquors were never designed for common use, tho’ now we see the better sort scarce ever dilute their food with any other liquor: And thereby we see their blood becomes inflamed into gout, stone, rheumatisms, raging fevers, and pleurisies; and their passions enraged into quarrels, murders, and blasphemies; their juices dried up; and their solids scorched and shriveled.’ This author, p. 46., exclaims against strong drinks, as the root of one half of all the human miseries; but finds they are unwilling to leave them off, pretending the danger of all sudden changes. But he alledgeth, ‘That he hath known good and constant effects from leaving off suddenly great quantities of wine, and flesh-meats too, by those accustomed to both; and never observed any ill consequences from it in any case whatsoever; but that broken constitutions have thereby lived longer, and grown better, by so doing.’

Some few, and but very few, have pretended, that by leaving off wine and strong drink, and using only water, they found their bodies weakened: But this perhaps may proceed only from the same fancy which made the lady believe her doctor could not cure her, because he did not keep a coach. There may be some constitutions that water doth not agree with, even as cheese will not agree with some: Nay, I once met with an ancient woman, who affirmed, she could not, and never did eat bread. And there are so few in comparison to them who have found benefit by the use of water, to those who have not, that no wise man will refrain on their account, till, upon trial, he really finds it will not agree with him.

One of the most ingenious watch-makers in London, very lately, from a long continued flux, was very much weakened, and entirely lost his appetite, so far that he could eat no food whatsoever: He had the advice of an able physician, his intimate acquaintance, who could not give him any relief: He, upon reading my book, came to ask me, whether I thought he might venture to drink water? I thereupon prevailed with him to drink half a pint of cold water going to bed, and half a pint in the morning: He, tho’ an immoderate drinker of wine before, was so far from being injured by it, that in a fortnight he began to eat, and in about a month recovered as good a date of health and countenance as he had before.

It hath been objected by some few, that drinking of water maketh them costive: which well considered, is an argument that it strengthens the bowels; for all fluxes proceed from weak bowels, and are an enemy to the strength of the bodily members, no persons being in health, as Dr. Baynard affirms, but those who evacuate figured excrements, which weak bowels never do; so that firm excrements tend most to strength, provided there be an evacuation one in a day, which is enough for them who through temperance live wisely, and do not destroy themselves by gluttony.

SOME

RULES

FOR

Preserving Health by Diet,

Collected from Physical Authors.

In a little treatise, intituled, Kitchen-physic, written by Dr. Cook, the author declares, he can hardly be told of any disease which he cannot relieve or cure by a proper diet, p. 39. And in the same book we find his opinion to be this, that all tender sickly people, and all aged and decrepid persons, ought to eat often, and but a little at a time, because weak and wasted bodies are to be restored by little and little; and by moist and liquid food also, rather than by solid, because moist and liquid diet does nourish soonest, and digest easiest.