Physic and Metaphysic in Nineteenth-Century America: Medical Sectarians and Religious Healing

Abstract

Writing in the first issue of The Magnetic and Cold Water Guide in 1846, an unnamed editor hailed the virtues of the cold-water cure: “Instead of the dosing and drugging of the old system of practice, it proposes to rely on the indwelling healing power of nature alone, to provoke and regulate which, it employs the widespread element of fresh unadulterated water.” In case readers had not caught the full dimensions of the message, the writer inserted “the testimony of an experienced physician of Massilon, Ohio.” The doctor, an A. Underhill, waxed eloquent on his investigations of “the Water Treatment of disease” and worked his way to a concluding rhetorical flourish. “Physiology, Phrenology, and Magnetism,” he summarized, “are the keys that are unlocking the great mysteries of nature and mind, and letting us in, as it were, to the inner temple, where the sunbeams of light and truth are filling the minds and understandings of all the truly devout worshippers of the Eternal principles which govern all things.”