Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1711

JAMES MANBY GULLY (1808-1883) The water cure in chronic disease. Wiley & Putnam 1846 xi, 405 [3] pp., plate (front.). 20 cm.

Gully, born in Jamaica, was the son of a wealthy coffee plantation owner and was educated in England and France. He studied medicine at Edinburgh and was dresser to Dupuytren at the Hôtel Dieu before receiving his medical degree in 1829. He entered practice in London but lost his expected inheritance when the enactment of the Emancipation Act in Jamaica in 1832 freed the slaves, who promptly left the plantations. An energetic young physician, Gully then began to supplement his income through publishing, translating foreign medical works, and editing the London medical and surgical journal and the Liverpool medical gazette. In 1837 he met James Wilson (fl. 1840), a physician who had just returned from Europe where he had studied hydrotherapy under Vincenz Priessnitz (1799-1849). Gully and Wilson pooled their resources and established what was to become a popular clinic and spa at Malvern, one frequented by many of the country's best known citizens. Widely hailed by the public, although heartily opposed by the orthodox medical community, hydrotherapy flourished until late in the nineteenth century. Gully published this work at London and New York in 1846 and it was so generally acclaimed that it went through nine editions. He commented in the Preface that his purpose was "to afford a truthful and rational exposition of the value of the water treatment in certain chronic diseases" (p. [v]).

Cited references: Wellcome III, p. 181