HOT SPRINGS AND COLD WATER CURES
LEE, Edwin.
The Principal Baths of Germany [– The Baths of Nassau Baden and the adjacent Districts; – The Baths of central and southern Germany] considered with Reference to their remedial Efficacy in chronic Disease [– with an Appendix on the Cold Water Cure] …
London, Whittaker & Cp., Paris, Galignani & Cp., and Frankfurt & Wiesbaden, Charles Jugel 1840 [– 1841].
Two vols bound in one, 8vo, pp. I: [1, blank], [5], iii–xx, 172, II: [4], ii, [2], 134, [2]; with part-titles; a very good, partially unopened copy in dark green publisher’s cloth, boards blocked in blind, spine ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; corners very lightly rubbed with two minor nicks to upper cover, spine very slightly sunned, endcaps bumped.
Added to your basket:
The Principal Baths of Germany [– The Baths of Nassau Baden and the adjacent Districts; – The Baths of central and southern Germany] considered with Reference to their remedial Efficacy in chronic Disease [– with an Appendix on the Cold Water Cure] …
First edition, scarce, of Edwin Lee’s two-volume survey of palliative bathing spots in Germany, including an appendix on the ‘Cold Water Cure’, a combination of induced sweating and cold-water therapy ‘of late very much in vogue’ (appendix).
Part travel guide, part medical survey, this volume describes natural springs in the Duchy of Nassau (volume one) and southern Germany (volume two), detailing each spring’s environs, its chemical composition, and the ailments best targeted by its waters and accommodation available to travellers. Edwin Lee (d. 1870) became interested in spa treatment whilst training in medicine in Berlin and Munich and sought ‘to call the attention of the profession to such points of continental practice in medicine and surgery, as were but little known, and which I considered might be advantageously adopted in England’ (p. iv).
Following the loss of a heated contest for the position of assistant surgeon at St George’s Hospital, London in 1843, Lee became critical of the electoral procedure which governed medical organisation in England. He saw an ‘increasing deterioration of the profession’ (Additional Notes, p. 39). A vocal supporter of medical reform, Lee published Remarks upon medical Organisation and Reform in 1846 and subsequently served as a witness to the 1848 select committee for medical registration and medical law amendment (1848), vocalising the struggles of medical professionals excluded from the London hospitals. Lee wrote further on medical topics such as sleepwalking and stammering, as well as Bradshaw’s Companion to the Continent (1851), which ‘bridged the gap between the grand tour by carriage and the package tour by Thomas Cook’.
See Lee, Additional Notes corroborative of the remarks in the ‘St George’s Hospital Medical Staff’ (1860).
