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Hydropathy

Properties of Water

Kellogg has labeled the various uses of hydropathy as being byproducts of the many properties of water. In his 1867 book, The Uses of Water in Health & Disease, he acknowledges both the chemical composition and physical properties of water. Hydrogen and water, when separate, are two “colorless, transparent, and tasteless” gases, which are explosive when mixed. More importantly, water, he says, has the highest specific heat of any compound. As such, the amount of heat and energy needed to elevate the temperature of water is significantly higher than that of other compounds like mercury. Kellogg addressed water’s ability to absorb massive amounts of energies when shifting phases. He also highlighted water’s most useful property, its ability to dissolve many other substances.

Remedial Properties of Water

According to Kellogg, water provides remedial properties partly because of vital resistance and partly because of its physical properties. For Kellogg, the medical uses of water begin with its function as a refrigerant, a way to lower body heat by way of dissipating its production as well as by conduction. “There is not a drug in the whole materia medica that will diminish the temperature of the body so readily and so efficiently as water.” Water can also serve as a sedative. While other substances serve as sedatives by exerting their poisonous influences on the heart and nerves, water is a gentler and more efficient sedative without any of the negative side-effects seen in these other substances. Kellogg states that a cold bath can often reduce one’s pulse by twenty to forty beats per minute quickly, in a matter of a few minutes. Additionally, water can function as a tonic, increasing both the speed of circulation and the overall temperature of the body. A hot bath accelerates one’s pulse from seventy to one hundred and fifty beats per minute in fifteen minutes. Water is also useful as an anodyne since it can lower nervous sensibility and reduce pain when applied in the form of hot fomentation. Kellogg argues that this procedure will often give one relief where every other drug has failed to do so. He also believed that no other treatment could function as well as an antispasmodic, reducing infantile convulsions and cramps, as water. Water can be an effective astringent as, when applied cold, it can arrest hemorrhages. Moreover, it can be very effective in producing bowel movements. Whereas purgatives would introduce “violent and unpleasant symptoms”, water would not. Although it would not have much competition as an emetic at the time, Kellogg believed no other substance could induce vomiting as well as water did. Returning to one of Kellogg’s most admired qualities of water, it can function as a “most perfect eliminative”. Water can dissolve waste and foreign matter from the blood. These many uses of water led Kellogg to belief that “the aim of the faithful physician should be to accomplish for his patient the greatest amount of good at the least expence of vitality; and it is an indisputable fact that in a large number of cases water is just the agent with which this desirable end can be obtained.”

Incorrect Uses of the Water Cure

Although Kellogg praised hydropathy for its many uses, he did acknowledge its limits. “In nearly all cases, sunlight, pure air, rest, exercise, proper food, and other hygienic agencies are quite as important as water. Electricity, too, is a remedy which should not be ignored; and skillful surgery is absolutely indispensable in not a small number of cases.” With this belief, he went on to criticize many medical figures who misused or overestimated hydropathy in the treating of disease. Among these, he criticized what he referred to as “Cold-Water Doctors” who would recommend the same remedy regardless of the type of ailment or temperament of the patient. These doctors would prescribe ice cold baths in unwarmed rooms even during the harshest winters. In his opinion, his prejudicial approach to illness resulted in converting hydropathy a more heroic type of treatment where many became obsessed with taking baths in ice cold baths. He addresses the negative consequences that resulted from this “infatuation,” among them tuberculosis and other diseases. This dangerous habit was only exacerbated by physicians who used hydropathy in excess. Kellogg recounts an instance where a patient with a low typhus fever was treated with thirty-five cold packs while in a feeble state and, not to the surprise of Kellogg, died. Kellogg posits this excessive and dangerous use of hydropathy as a return to the “violent processes” of bloodletting, antimony, mercury and purgatives. Kellogg also criticizes the ignorance in “Hydropathic Quacks” as well as in Preissnitz, the founder of modern hydropathy, himself. Kellogg states that the “Quacks” as well as Preissnitz are ignorant for overestimating the hydropathy as a “cure-all” remedy without understanding the true nature of disease.

Did you know:

Kellogg published The Uses of Water in Health & Disease where he detailed the benefits of hydropathy. The chemical and physical properties of water lent its ability for its healing properties including cooling functions for fevers and functions as a tonic among many other functions. Kellogg believed in the curative properties of water, but disapproved it as a "one-size fits all" property.

Article 2: Havelock Ellis

Sexual Impulse in Youth

Dr. Havelock Ellis’ 1933 book, Psychology of Sex, is one of the many manifestations of his interest in human sexuality. In this book, he goes into vivid detail of how children can experience sexuality differently in terms of time and intensity. He mentions that it was previously believed that, in childhood, humans had no sex impulse at all. “If it is possible to maintain that the sex impulse has no normal existence in early life, then every manifestation of it at that period must be ‘perverse,’” he adds. He continues by stating that, even in the early development and lower function levels of the genitalia, there is a wide range of variation in terms of sexual stimulation. He claims that the ability of some infants producing genital reactions, seen as “reflex signs of irritation” are typically not vividly remembered. Since the details of these manifestations are not remembered, there is no possible way to determine them as pleasurable. However, Ellis claims that many people of both sexes can recall having agreeable sensations with the genitalia as a child. “They are not (as is sometimes imagined) repressed.” They are, however, not usually mentioned to adults. Ellis argues that they typically stand out and are remembered for the sole contrast of the intense encounter to any other ordinary experience.

Ellis claims that sexual self-excitement is known to happen at an early age. He references authors like Marc, Fonssagrives, and Perez in France who published their findings in the nineteenth century. These early ages are not strictly limited to ages close to puberty as can be seen in their findings. These authors provide cases for children of both sexes who’ve masturbated from the age of three or four. Ellis references Robie’s findings that boys’ first sex feelings appear between the ages of five and fourteen. For girls, this age ranges from eight to nineteen. For both sexes, these first sexual experiences arise more frequently during the later years as opposed to the earlier years. Ellis then references Hamilton’s studies that found twenty percent of males and fourteen percent of females have pleasurable experiences with their sex organs before the age of six. This is only supplemented by Ellis’ reference to Katharine Davis’ studies, which found that twenty to twenty-nine percent of boys and forty-nine to fifty-one percent were masturbating by the age of eleven. However, in the next three years after, boys’ percentages exceeded that of girls.

Dr. Ellis also contributed to the idea of varying levels of sexual excitation. He asserts it is a mistake to assume all children experience are able to experience genital arousal or pleasurable erotic sensations. He proposes cases where an innocent child is led to believe that stimulation of the genitalia will result in a pleasurable erection. Some of these children may fail and not be able to experience this either pleasure or an erection until puberty. Ellis concludes, then, that children are capable of a “wide range of genital and sexual aptitude.” Ellis even considers ancestry as contributions to different sexual excitation levels, stating that children of “more unsound heredity” and/or hypersexual parents are “more precociously excitable.”

Auto-Eroticism

Ellis' views of auto-eroticism were very comprehensive, including much more than masturbation. Auto-Eroticism, according to Ellis, includes a wide range of phenomena. Dr. Ellis states in his 1897 book Studies in the Psychology of Sex, that auto-eroticism ranges from erotic day-dreams, marked by a passivity shown by the subject, to “unshamed efforts at sexual self-manipulation witnessed among the insane.”

Ellis also argues that auto-erotic impulses can be heightened by bodily processes like menstrual flow. During this time, he says, women, who would otherwise not feel a strong propensity for auto-eroticism, increase their masturbation patterns. This trend is absent, however, in women without a conscious acceptance of their sexual feelings and in a small percentage of women suffering from a sexual or general ailment which result in a significant amount of “sexual anesthesia.”

Ellis also raises social concern of how auto-erotic tendencies are affecting marraiges. He goes on to tying auto-eroticism to declining marriage rates. As these rates decline, he concludes that auto-eroticism will only increase in both amount and intensity for both men and women. Therefore, he states, this is an important issue to both the moralist and physician to investigate psychological underpinnings of these experiences and determine an attitude toward them.

Smell

Dr. Ellis believed that the sense of smell, although ineffective at long ranges, still contributes to sexual attraction, and therefore, to mate selection. In his 1905 book, Sexual selection in man, Dr. Ellis makes a claim for the sense of smell in the role of sexual selection. He asserts that while, we have evolved out of a great necessity for the sense of smell, we still rely on our sense of smell with sexual selection. The contributions that smell makes in sexual attraction can even be heightened with certain climates. Ellis states that with warmer climes come a heightened sensitivity to sexual and other positive feelings of smell among normal populations. Because of this, he believes people are often delighted by odors in the East, particularly in India, in “Hebrew and Mohammedan lands.” Ellis then continues by describing the distinct odors in various races, noting that the Japanese race has the least intense of bodily odors. Ellis concludes his argument by stating, “On the whole, "it may be said that in the usual life of man odors play a not inconsiderable part and raise problems which are not without interest, but that their demonstrable part in actual sexual selection is comparatively small.”

Reflection Piece

My two main articles concerned the views of two doctors, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and Dr. Havelock Ellis. Dr. John Harvey is known to be a big supporter of alternative forms of medicine like hydropathy. After reading his 1867 book of The Uses of Water in Health & Disease, I learned that Harvey’s deep admiration for water was due in part to its chemical and physical properties as well as its versatility of uses. As to Dr. Havelock Ellis, I investigated his views on what contributes to sexual attraction as well as the progression of sexual impulses in youth.

For both of these doctors’ general pages, not specific topics, I collaborated with Arjav Shaw and Haley Wendt.

I will admit that, at first, I was a bit lost as to where to begin on my Wikipedia pages and how to go about them. Initially, I wrote my articles in the objective and fact-packed Wikipedia style, but my TA shortly informed me to also focus on bringing all this information I found into perspective. I believe that if this were relayed and advice on how to analyze for context were given, the assignment could flow easier.

As a whole, I loved the assignments. It was extremely informative to know how the largest online database is further complemented by contributors and it was a lot of fun acting as one. I learned how to analyze for validity as well as learning as we relay valuable and historic information to the rest of the world.

The pros of these assignments are that they are different and that they’re especially enjoyable because we are able to pick our topics and sub-topics. Therefore, we can pick a topic that interests us. Cons include mandatory training modules that may not have been as relevant to the assignment.