SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited by Deborah Madsen):

Published the year before his early death, Joel Shew claims this to be “the most full and explicit” popular work on the water-cure (iii). His aim is primarily “to teach the people the prevention of disease” (iii.), thus the book is a large catalog of all kinds of disease and ailments and the water-cure treatment prescribed for each. As Shew succinctly puts it, the water-cure uses for its “prophylactics and medicaments” simple “water, air, exercise, and diet” (iii.). Specific applications and combinations of these four elements are recommended for specific diseases. This means that Shew's dietary recommendations are made in the context of specific diseases or individual cases. For example, Shew holds that in the case of diarrhea, a “[v]egetarian diet is especially favorable” (315) and that “[a] consistent vegetarian never gets dysentery” (323). Quoting William Lambe, he claims that a “strict vegetarian diet has in some cases cured cancer” and that “Dr. Lambe has well shown the effects of exclusive vegetable food and distilled water in mitigating this disease” (584) and Shew warns that veganism will not help in the context of poor dietary choices:

A particular class of persons have erred greatly in regard to diet. I refer to such as have adopted wholly, or in part, what is denominated the vegetarian system. Among this class many have been astonishingly cured by making a careful beginning. By degrees, however, not a few of these have gotten themselves into bad habits, and, so far as diet is concerned, have actually in the end gone from bad to worse. … In order to make up in some measure for the lack of the stimulation caused by flesh meat, and to which they bad been accustomed, they have eaten enormous quantities of sweets (794).

In the chapter on “The Hunger-Cure” Shew offers general remarks on diet, explicitly noting that he is “an advocate of what is popularly termed the vegetarian system, or, in other words, of the doctrine that it is not natural for man to eat flesh” (797). He presents anatomical and physiological arguments in favor of veganism by comparing human anatomy, particularly with respect to teeth, to the orangutan. Shew claims that “all well-ascertained physiological, pathological, chemical, and, I may add, moral and intellectual evidence, goes to establish the position I have taken in regard to the natural dietetic character of the race” (801). He concludes the chapter with general dietary rules according to the water-cure:

The rules of diet, it will be seen, therefore, are few and simple, when once they are well understood. In the first place, it is not natural for man to eat flesh. Second – great changes should not be made suddenly, and for this reason it may be found necessary, for a long time yet, to furnish more or less of flesh meat in the establishments for Water-Cure. Third – all medicinal and stimulating articles, whether in food or drink, which afford no nutriment to the system, should, as far as possible, be avoided. Fourth – the food should contain a proper amount of innutritious, as well as nutritious matter, a law of nature which is almost every where in society violated. And, lastly, the most important of all dietetic rules, THE QUANTITY OF ALIMENT SHOULD BE SUITED TO THE NATURAL DEMANDS OF THE SYSTEM” (802).

An appended extra-chapter “On the Formation and Management of Water-Cure Establishments” concludes the book.