[I]t is sufficiently evident from the physiology of man, that boils and eruptions cannot be produced in perfectly healthy persons through the action of water, since water is a matter the most conceivably mild, and since boils produce a feeling always painful, and more or less acrimonious and corrosive, which can only be caused by acrid corrosive matters, or by biting animalculae which form the boil.
1850, J. H. Rausse, “B. Practical Proof”, in C. H. Meeker, transl., The Water-cure, Applied to Every Known Disease: A Complete Demonstration of the Advantages of the Hydropathic System of Curing Diseases: Showing also, the Fallacy of the Medicinal Method, and Its Utter Inability to Effect a Permanent Cure. With an Appendix, Containing a Water Diet and Rules for Bathing, 3rd enlarged and improved edition, New York, N.Y.: Fowlers and Wells, Clinton Hall, 131 Nassau Street, page 39