SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this brief booklet Nichols introduces “the nature, principles, and results of that system of curing diseases, and acquiring and preserving health, which is, from its chief agent, properly designated – the WATER- CURE” (3). First he gives a short account of his education, emphasizing his credentials in “the allopathic system of practice,” “Homeopathy,” and “Crono-Thermalism” (5). The booklet includes short, critical surveys of all of these as well as his interest in and engagement with the water-cure, including his acquaintance with and subsequent marriage to Mary Sargeant Gove, to whom he credits much of his knowledge in the practice. Having “attentively considered” the “leading systems and doctrines of medicine,” Nichols is convinced that hydropathy or the water-cure is “not only the best, but the only system founded in nature and adapted to the wants of man” (5). For Nichols, the water-cure is not just  a medical practice, but constitutes a wholesale “knowledge of the relations of man to the universe.” It is “the desideratum of progress, and the basis of reforms” (6).

Given that any disease is the result of “a weakening of the nervous energy or principle of life” (10), and that nutrition is one of the most important factors in sustaining that principle, Nichols emphasizes the importance of diet: “A healthy digestion and pure nutrition are at the foundation of health” (33). He notes that humans are “naturally frugivorous or fruit eating; hence our best sustenance is derived from fruits, grains, roots, nuts, etc.” Even though we usually also consume “milk, eggs, fishes, the flesh of animals etc.,” Nichols emphasizes that a “large portion of the human race lives entirely upon vegetables.” Only “a very small portion lives almost entirely upon animal food. We can live far better on vegetable food without animal, than we can on animal, without vegetable. The more the vegetable preponderates over the animal, the purer is our diet, and the better adapted to health” (12-13). “An impure diet,” in contrast, “conveys morbid matter into the system” (13). “Gluttony” (13), irrespective of the actual diet, is another source of disease: “Eating too fast and eating too much, are our greatest vices” (13). “[C]offee, tea, and alcohol,” just like “opium and tobacco,” are pure “poison” (13).

“[T]he purest food,” Nichols contends, “and that best adapted to all the wants of man, is furnished by the farinacea, as wheat, rice, barley, Indian corn, rye, oats, etc.” (33). The water-cure emphatically recommends a vegan diet. In the remainder of the text Nichols focuses on the successful application of the water-cure in the treatment (and prevention) of a range of ailments and diseases.