Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
William Radde,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States,
for the Southern District of New-York.
____________________
Henry Ludwig
, Printer,
39 Centre-street, N.-Y.
In offering this pamphlet to the Public in general, and to Parents andPhysicians in particular, I have no other object than that ofcontributing my share to the barrier which the medical profession hasattempted, for more than two hundred years, to raise against theprogress of the terrible disease which carries off upon an average, halfa million of human beings annually. All the efforts of medical men tostop the ravages of Scarlet-Fever have hitherto proved unavailing; everyremedy which was considered, for a while, a specific proved subsequentlyinefficient; and, notwithstanding the assertion to the contrary of afew, the Dr. Jenner who shall discover a reliable prophylactic againstscarlatina, is probably not yet born. The patients die in the sameproportion as they did two hundred and fifty years ago, and thephysicians who have any success at all in the treatment of the terriblescourge, are those who treat for symptoms and leave the disease toNature.
Under these circumstances, a mode of treatment which promises a decreasein the number of victims, from the experience of a quarter of a[Pg iv]century, and a score of epidemics of different characters, cannot but bereceived with pleasure by the public. I have treated scarlet-feverhydriatically for twenty-one years, and out of several hundred casesnever lost a patient, except one who died of typhus during an epidemy ofscarlatina; and my observations, during twenty-five years, of thepractice of other physicians of the same school, present a result aboutas favorable as my own.
My present position is such, that no self-interest, if I could have anyin a question of such importance for the human race; would induce me topublish this article, as a rush of scarlet-fever patients would onlytend to destroy the practice at my establishment, instead of increasingmy income. My purpose, therefore, must be honest; and the zeal which Ihave manifested for many years in the promulgation of the Water-Cure isno longer the effect of enthusiasm, but of the observations and practiceof Priessnitz's method during the best part of a man's life, and theconviction of its merits gained from facts.
I consider Hydro-therapeutics as one of the healthiest branches of theTree of Medical Science, but not, like s