Career
Gully began his practise as a physician in London in 1830, and went on to write and translate numerous medical books and papers, becoming a fellow of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London and a fellow of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. He edited the London Medical and Surgical Journal and the Liverpool Medical Gazette. Gully showed an interest in the idea of transmutation of species, and translated an evolutionary treatise on Comparative Physiology by the embryologist Friedrich Tiedemann.
He was dissatisfied with the medical treatments of the time, and in 1837 met Dr.James Wilson who then spent some time on the continent, and had returned enthused with the idea of hydrotherapy. Dr Wilson was one of the few Englishmen who stayed at the hydropathic establishment of Vincent Priessnitz, at Gräfenberg before Captain R. T. Claridge, whose name became synonymous with hydropathy due to his 1842 book Hydropathy; or The Cold Water Cure, as practiced by Vincent Priessnitz... and his lecture tours. While acknowledging that Claridge did much to promote hydrotherapy, Wilson states that "I had been a considerable time at Grafenberg", and that Claridge "came to Graefenberg some time after I had been there". One writer states Wilson was at Grafenberg for 10 months. Nevertheless, in an earlier 1842 publication, Wilson acknowledged having read Claridge's work, and unconditionally praised his "enthusiastic" promotion of hydropathy.
In 1842, Gully and Wilson opened "water cure" clinics, and later established a partnership at Malvern offering a regimen similar to that at Priessnitz's Gräfenberg clinic. In 1843, Wilson and Gully published a comparison of the efficacy of the water-cure with drug treatments, including accounts of some cases treated at Malvern, combined with a prospectus of their Water Cure Establishment. Then in 1846 Gully published The Water Cure in Chronic Disease, further describing the treatments available at the clinic. In 1848, Gully became a member of the British Homoeopathic Society.
The fame of the water-cure establishment grew, and Gully and Wilson became well-known national figures. Two more clinics were opened at Malvern. Famous patients included Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, Florence Nightingale, Lord Tennyson and Samuel Wilberforce. With his fame he also attracted criticism: Sir Charles Hastings, a physician and founder of the British Medical Association, was a forthright critic of hydropathy, and Dr Gully in particular.
Read more about this topic: James Manby Gully
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