SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

This is an account of Mary Nichols' experience in the water-cure (similar and in part identical to the eponymous series of articles), including advice on proper nutrition which, for Nichols, is vegan. In the Preface, Nichols notes that there is already a wealth of useful books on the water-cure, but emphasizes that her contribution “contains more particular directions to women, and treats more of their peculiar diseases” as her “mission has been to instruct and help woman” (5). Much of the book presents individual case studies of various diseases and their specific treatments. In relation to the “diseases of women,” Nichols notes “tight dressing, improper food or drinks, late hours, the round of fashionable dissipation; … excessive labor, … mental anxiety,” and “excessive indulgence of amativeness” as some of the most common causes of illness (61).

In the first few pages, Nichols establishes that the maintenance of health requires “a simple nourishing diet, pure air, exercise, cleanliness, and the regulation of the passions.” Unfortunately,

[m]en cram themselves with the impure flesh and fat of diseased animals, heating condiments and spices, spirituous drinks, and the poisonous narcotics, as opium, tea, coffee, and tobacco – injuring their digestive powers, and filling their systems with poisonous matter; and to these are added a long list of vegetable and mineral poisons, given as medicines, not one grain of which can be taken without permanent injury to the human organism; we inhale poisons in filthy streets and unventilated buildings, and these poisons are kept in the system; and the skin – the great purifying organ of the body – is weakened, by a neglect of personal cleanliness, which cannot be maintained in perfection without daily bathing in cold water (8).

Nichols is convinced that standard medicine "poisons and oppresses the human constitution with drugs, and debilitates it with bleeding.” As a consequence, she considers it to be “one of the greatest evils that now rests upon the civilized world” (27).

Regarding diet and nutrition, the book asserts that one should avoid “eating oily food and condiments,” adhering instead to “[p]lain, simple food, in which vegetables, fruit, and farinacea predominate” (88). In its “first years the child should eat no animal food” at all, relying predominantly on “[b]read, fruit, milk, and vegetables” (54). According to Nichols, “other things being equal, human life is lengthened by a vegetarian diet” (88), particularly given that “a large portion of the flesh of animals brought to market is diseased; and we have good reason to believe that all pork, fattened as it is ordinarily, is full of scrofula” (53). Accordingly, she deems pork “one of the worst forms of food in the world, and the lard is even more unhealthy than the flesh” (88). Nichols also reports that at the time of writing, it has been “eleven years since” she has “tasted flesh” (88).