SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

This is an updated version of Nichols' earlier publication, Experience in Water Cure. “The following pages,” she writes at the end of the Introduction, “contain chiefly the records of my work in America, first published in New York, under the title of 'Experience in Water Cure,' to which I have added a few English cases” (6). Nichols notes that she “tried every bath and every mode of practice” on herself (2) and established “the American Hydropathic Institute” with her husband, Thomas Low Nichols, before emigrating to England “at the outbreak of the [civil] war” (3). She reports that their time in England had been rather difficult, lamenting in particular that she has been “discouraged” from practicing the water-cure due to the prevailing “prejudice against female physicians in England” (3).

Nichols recommends a vegan diet both for specific diseases and more generally, as the best and healthiest choice of nutrition.