by Paul J Croce
goal, but the “crisis” was also a moment of personal insight. 59
For the next few months, James felt the repeated curse of his “general
used up condition,” because of his “dorsal tricks,” as he added with gruff
humor. His response was becoming almost routine, since the water cure
was “one of the regular cards I . . . play.” He still had faith in “the action of
the cure,” even though “the trou ble with the water cure is that it takes such
a h-ll of a time to produce its effects”— a constant prob lem with sectarian
emphasis on subtle improvements rather than quick fixes. By August 1868,
he was ready to try variations on this therapy. He visited Divonne in France
near Switzerland, and while there, he also talked of adding Malvern in
England, where his brother Henry had visited. Unfortunately, despite the
change of scene, “the water cure seems to get no ‘purchase’ on the thing,”
and yet he stayed committed to the remedy.60
The per sis tence of his physical and mental symptoms gradually prompted
James to rely more on the potential firmness of his own will despite set-
backs. This new outlook emerged first only indirectly, through suggestions
to the people around him. In May 1868, he urged his friend Tom Ward to
“keep a stiff upper lip, & don[’]t drop that courage . . . that you have always
shown” since their time together in the jungles of Brazil; this was just as
impor tant to James himself since his friend’s example gave him “a fresh fire
in my gizzard and determination in my breast.” Continuing what he would
call his “legislative tone of . . . advice,” he also counseled that his sister Alice
should “snap [her] fin gers at fate” and “read as much comic lit er a ture as you
can”; this encouragement was also a homily to keep up his own endurance,
as he advised her that with this approach, “your sickness will wear itself
out.” This shows the downside in even his preliminary assertions of will: it
could lead to insensitivity to depths of trou bles. He could indeed be insensi-
tive toward Alice, and indeed, he even found himself to be a tough case.
Shortly before heading for Divonne for what would become his final scramble
in Eu rope to find a cure, he said evenly, “my back remains about as it was
before” he had gone to earlier water cures. He did not register despair but
instead noted, “I give myself no more disquietude about it but simply ac-
commodate my motions to its con ve nience.” He was trying to manage his
symptoms by relying less on cure and more on enlisting the power of his
will, and noticing its limits, so he could direct his attention to just how much
he could accomplish despite his prob lems; meanwhile, he learned much
120 Young William James Thinking
German science and hoped for enough health to study in a laboratory soon;
and so he concluded fairly serenely, “[I] get along very well. ”61
Water- Cure Experiences and Medical Thesis Writing
Throughout his own repeated treatments with water cure, James was study-
ing a very diff er ent, more materialistic type of medicine. But far from becom-
ing dismissive of sectarian thinking, he drew insights from these alternative
therapies in writing his final thesis for the medical degree. He declared in
December 1868, “I deci ded to choose for a graduating thesis, the physiologi-
cal effects of cold.” It has been easy to dismiss James’s topic and the thesis as
a whole because he himself was often unenthusiastic about the topic, just as
he was about medicine in general. When he was beginning the thesis, he
made it sound like a cursory effort when he observed, “I find I only have 6
weeks to do my thesis in. Said thesis on cold will not contain any exp[erimen]ts
or original suggestions.” Writing at a time when he was also slipping into
depression, he added forlornly, “Time is too short and I only aim at squeez-
ing through.” When it was done, he even said that the thesis, with “nary [an]
experiment, . . . [was] of no value. ”62 Although no copy has survived, the
array of his other experiences and words displays his major concerns and
arguments vividly.
The proposed research on the physiological effects of temperature is a
generalized, scientific inquiry into a central concern of water- cure theo-
rists. He had already paid keen attention to the role of temperature in his
own treatments, and he had witnessed his brother Henry’s repeated use of
ice for his chronic ailments. During his own water- cure visits, the treat-
ments involved deliberate use of cold and heat; he maintained, for example,
that “warm baths are certainly good for muscular rheumatism,” but he
wondered searchingly “if the heat is all” there is to the improvement. After
a year in Germany, when he had begun to despair of a permanent cure, he
remained hopeful since “I have 2 or 3 therapeutic arrows in my quiver wh.
I am going to try in succession.” He did not specify what the therapies were,
but they may have been the remedies of a water- cure establishment in Swit-
zerland, recommended by a medical student he had met in Berlin, that treated
a range of diseases with the same therapy his brother was using: “I am con-
vinced by my experience that there is in Ice great power to change the state
of things in this back if one cd. only regulate its application so as to get the
good without the bad.” As with the advice of hydropathic manuals, he wanted
to consult “Water- Cure physicians who know their business.” Unable to
Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 121
find the recommended place near Interlaken in Switzerland, he went on to
Divonne. Without immediate results, some of his therapeutic arrows were
“of dubious promise,” but they repeatedly involved experiences with tem-
perature variation that caught his attention. By the time he returned to Cam-
bridge, he added the hydropathic use of temperature variation along with
the homeopathic law of similars to his list of “many remedies” worth
studying.63
At first, James’s encounter with the temperature topic was experiential—
in pursuit of his own health at water cures— but by January 1868 he ex-
changed questions with Henry Bowditch “about the therapeutics of Heat &
Cold.” He had already read some works on the physiological impacts of dif-
fer ent temperatures before April 1867, and then by 1868 he was gathering
still more works in French and German on the subject— with his ongoing
hopes for laboratory research, or even already in anticipation of the medical
thesis. After enough reading, he was ready to generalize beyond his own
situation, pointing out the therapeutic benefits of water cure through dis-
charge of congestion for a range of prob lems, especially chronic ones. As a
scientist in medical training, however, he did not settle for these empirical
observations; instead, he pushed for scientific understanding: “I sh[oul]d
like very much to know if their effect arises only f[ro]m the heat. ”64 His own
clinical applications of water cure supplied observation; he sought causation.
James continually related the therma
l practices at the water cures with
his own physiological research. From introspecting on his own treatment,
he developed his own theories about ways to maximize those therapeutic
benefits: after reporting on the vari ous “thermal experiments” he had tried,
he proposed, in a scientific third- person voice, that “the coldness of the
water must be accommodated to the power of reaction of the subject, but if
he can react, the colder the better.” His water- cure experiences were the
most immediate contexts for his choice of thesis topic, and they may even
explain the haste of his work. By late 1868, he wanted a topic that played to
his strengths so he could gradu ate in the spring, and he knew he could draw
on his own fund of personal encounters with thermal- based cures, in addi-
tion to his reflections and reading on the topic. While he lamented, as he
had for years, that his research would be in books rather than in new labo-
ratory study, he did have the de facto laboratory experiences of his own
treatments. He also noted proudly that “the physiological effects of cold . . .
ramifies off into the whole of physiology almost, and suggests all kinds of
openings.” His friend Bowditch was interested in James’s approach; in fact,
122 Young William James Thinking
while he was in Paris, he sent James some French works on temperature
and physiology. Remembering James’s philosophical critiques of recent med-
ical trends, he also assured him that one of the books “shows that the modern
doctrine of the correlation of forces does not lead to materialism. ”65
James’s correspondence with Bowditch shows that he was reading widely
in recent physiological research on his topic, even using his knowledge of
French and German to explore books sent from Eu rope. In effect, James
conducted a lit er a ture search and wrote more of a bibliographic essay than a
study based on fresh laboratory research. This was in keeping with his pre-
diction two years earlier that his education would prepare him to write for
medical periodicals, and this is the posture he would maintain in much of
his psychological work through the 1870s, when he read widely and wrote
many reviews. Such synthetic assemblage and creative reflection on current
understanding would remain his central method through his later work, even
as he added laboratory insights and a compelling style of writing. While
mainstream doctors derided the sectarians’ claims of healing as mere em-
piricism or even just coincidence, James’s letters to Bowditch and his own
evaluations of water cure confirm that James sought to substantiate the evi-
dence from experience by turning to scientific explanation. His own water-
cure therapies suggested the thesis topic, but his scientific scrutiny of sec-
tarian claims set the tone for the posture he would also take with hypnotism,
psychical research, and spirituality; as with his later study of religion, he
was already evaluating claims to healing in terms of “fruits . . . not . . . roots.”
Despite his self- deprecation about the poor quality of his thesis and his
medical training in general, he did conclude after receiving his degree that
this education was “pretty impor tant” for “its scientific ‘yield.’ ”66 And this
was exactly his purpose: medicine was a means toward physiological learn-
ing, not an end in itself— James’s medical education yielded a depth of learn-
ing in fields that would become parts of scientific psy chol ogy. Even while
searching for a vocation and feeling discouraged and hobbled by uncertain-
ties, here was a confirmed profession that would provide his first steps into
the new profession of psy chol ogy.
James’s Own Sectarian and Scientific Medicine
Despite the alternative medicines and philosophies that surrounded him in
society and in his personal life, James remained persuaded of the value of
scientific medicine, even if he could not accept all of its assumptions. Al-
though he did not formally practice after receiving the degree, he did repeat-
Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 123
edly offer medical advice and suggest medicines for friends and family. The
pluralistic medical contexts of the time encouraged his own pluralism, at
first with diverse healing remedies, before his mature philosophical plu-
ralism; he used diff er ent medical systems at diff er ent times, for diff er ent
individuals and diff er ent complaints. He made a muted reference to the
spiritual side of alternative medicine when he told his father in 1868 that he
was glad the elder James had had a wart removed rather than trust to a
“conception of their nature” as something other than a bothersome improper
growth of physical flesh. His language suggests that he was trying to talk
his father out of a more sectarian way of viewing the wart as a symptomatic
expression of his father’s holistic remedy picture; the allopathic approach
was conceptually simple and more direct: the blemish would be removed
through minor surgery. The slower action of sectarian therapies acting in
concert with the body’s own healing power would, he reported in an ironic
rhetorical inversion, “accumulate on the spirits,” while his father would
have to wait for cure.67
William James often mentioned other regular therapeutic practices, such
as the application of iodine for back ailments (his own and his brother Rob-
ertson’s), and he offered a conventional allopathic explanation about their
ability to induce “counterirritation,” the irritation of one part of the body to
reduce the inflammation in an adjacent part. Back at the water cure, James
tried an experimental treatment called “faradization,” named for Michael
Faraday, whose experiments pointed to technological uses of electricity;
James had read his work in scientific school. This form of electric therapy
involved literally strapping wires to the body and running electricity through
them. Even when early treatments made him feel “so much the worse,” as
with the “healing diseases” of water- cure crises or homeopathic aggrava-
tions, he did not reject them, but “judged it prudent to stay another month
before coming away.” He continued using “electro- therapeutics” through-
out his life, as would his wife, and he would study its physiological effects.
Like the lymph compound and Sequarine, electric therapies drew on a ra-
tionale also pres ent in water cure: treatment to supplement and enrich the
body’s energy when it became depleted from work and worry; and this is
precisely the way James used these and hydropathy. Water- cure therapists
warned about “ner vous debility from excessive study,” and James himself
noted that “sedentary life makes you weak & ner vous.” His comment that a
friend had become “prey to her nerves” could apply to his whole circle of
intellectual workers. 68
124 Young William James Thinking
While attention to the relation of ner vous energy to health was already
increasing, New York physician George Beard crystallized these ideas into
a clear, comprehensive, and extremely popu lar medical diag
nosis with his
identification of “Neurasthenia, or Ner vous Exhaustion,” in 1869. The term
means “nerve fatigue” on the theory that “want of ner vous force” paralleled
the anemic “want of blood” in anemia. Like sectarian medicine, neurasthe-
nia offered integrated attention to physical and mental health. In addition,
the diagnosis had scientific appeal for identifying the physical causes of
mental symptoms, especially depression, anxiety, morbid fear, and hope-
lessness, but also a host of physical trou bles including fatigue, headache,
and digestive prob lems. However, it emphasized illness emerging from
functional exhaustion in the ner vous system rather than a set of prob lems
caused by organic impairment. Beard’s diagnostic innovation was his blend-
ing of medical analy sis with evaluation of the social settings in modern
times that encouraged these conditions, especially the hectic lives and sed-
entary brain work of middle- class professionals. Hard work had been a pe-
rennial virtue, but the modern escape from economic scarcity enabled even
the possibility for this medical critique of excess work; and the diagnosis drew
upon the con temporary examples of industrial engines as meta phors for the
body’s limited stores of energy that could be dangerously used up. S. Weir
Mitchell presented an influential therapy for recovery from neurasthenia, the
rest- cure regimen, which would become notorious for its callous ignoring of
ambitions, especially with its disregard for women’s work and personal
creativity. After being diagnosed for neurasthenia and confined to bed,
Charlotte Perkins Gilman poured her outrage into “The Yellow Wall-
paper,” a story bristling with indignation against this stifling of a woman’s
energies. Beard’s thinking was laced with such gender and racial hierar-
chies. He asserted that, with this disease, “the strong man becomes like
the average woman”; and he thoroughly assumed that his diagnosis ap-
plied to whites whose stuffy, unhealthy rooms exacerbated the ill effects of
their debilitating brain work. By contrast, he stated flatly that, because Na-
tive Americans are inherently primitive, “[t]he Indian does not need pure
air in order to be healthy”— his evidence: wigwams are small and have no
win dows.69