SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited by Deborah Madsen):

This book introduces, defends, and explains the most important principles and practices of the water-cure, with specific attention to the diseases and ailments of women and children. The Preface summarizes the water-cure's most crucial tenets as follows:

Daily ablution, suitable exercise, with always pure air to breathe both night and day, are indispensable. All hot drinks injure the teeth and debilitate the stomach. Tea and coffee color the teeth, render the complexion always more or less sallow, and at the same time make one nervous. Butter, all oily food and salt, affect the skin, causing pimples which are so common, and for which those quack medicines are so much used, and by which the skin is at the time made to appear a little better, but is always in reality injured. Pure soft water is always the best. Compressing the chest renders the face dark or pale. Tight sleeves throw the blood to the hands. Tight elastics obstruct circulation, and thus injure health and appearance. Hair tied too tight gives a disagreeable expression to the face. Too warm clothing, as is generally worn upon the back, causes weakness and pain of the part. Tight shoes, as all tight clothing, affect gracefulness and motion, as well as the health of the body (ix-x).

Regarding diet, the Shews, like all water-cure enthusiasts, are convinced that “[t]he dietetic rule of the greatest importance is that which relates to quantity” (37), that most people simply eat too much. They condemn the use of stimulants like “alcoholic drinks, opium, tobacco, in every form, tea, coffee, spices, salt, &c.” (38) and promote a “very simple” diet “consisting almost entirely of fruits and vegetables” (39), “coarse unbolted rye bread” (41),  “grapes, raisins, or figs” (41), that is, “a rigidly abstemious vegetable diet” (42). They briefly quote and discuss historical examples to make their case.

The book also notes that during the 1832 cholera epidemic in New York, those who practiced “abstinence from flesh-meat and flesh-soups, and from all alcoholic and narcotic substances” fared best (45-46). Separate brief chapters on various stimulants, condiments, and narcotics such as salt, mustard, tobacco, tea, and opium detail the detrimental effects of each. The Shews note that “the best health of body and mind does not require the use of flesh meat at all” (63) and they quote Sylvester Graham on the tendency of domestic animals to be diseased when slaughtered. Still, the book does include advice concerning the preparation of meat, noting that “[f]lesh soups and broths are very objectionable forms of preparation” (65). The Shews also warn of the dangers of salted and smoked meats. The book then presents the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of food, ranging from fruits to vegetables to breads to cakes and pies.

The Shews are convinced that “those whose diet is pure and principally or entirely vegetable, with pure water for drink” live the healthiest lives (96).