Water is the most compound of fluids, although when pure it promotes little or no sensation, which is owing to the certain proportion of its elements to each other. It seems to have, as constituents, a portion of each of the general elements; of which, when any are in excess or deficiency, the fluid differs from common pure water, but still is an aqueous fluid. All aqueous fluids which differ from pure water, do so from elementary disproportion in their constitution. Ancient philosophers considered water the parent of all things, because it contributes matter of substance and increase, they said, to all kinds of bodies, and because there is nothing elementary belonging to bodies which is not obtainable, by one means or other, from water or its productions. It contributes increase to the whole of the vegetable kingdom, and through vegetable matter to the increase of animal flesh. From the vegetable world are obtainable, by means of art, earths, metals, salts, acids, alkalies, even flame; the primitives of which are of the same kind as the initials of water; also of the atmosphere, which is convertible to water, but is not water, by reason of not only elementary disproportion, but the enormous excess of medium of space in which its elements are involved.

The constitution of water being unknown, and supposed to consist of only the gases, hydropathy is condemned, like mesmerism, through the ignorance and intolerance of professionals, themselves falsely educated at best. As alimentary, water is the most wholesome drink under heaven; as medicinal, far beyond comparison with extracts from metals and minerals, from which deduct the water, the remainder kills. The hydropathic perspiration cleanses the flesh from head to foot; physic, the intestines and stomach only. Water is the elixir of both body and mind; witness the persons who are teetotallers. A patient declared to the present writer, he would rather have run naked into the street, were he not bound up by the wet sheets, than endure the fog and stench from his body by the cold water perspiration. Yet doctors insist that hydropathy is not medicinal or curative, or why not adopt the practice?

Water is formed by detonating the gases, oxygen and hydrogen, by which their elements become combined in the form of water; which is the only formative mode pursued in the laboratory of art; whereas, in that of nature, it is variously formed: the number of elements determines the number of modes. Suppose six the number of the natural elements, then any five and the remaining one, any four and the remaining two, or any three and the other three, met and compressed within the atmosphere, the product is water. On the meeting of certain clouds, where the gases could not have equal elevation, water is formed; and on walls and wainscots, under cover, in humid weather, it is formed from the electric matter on their surface and the complement of elements contributed by the atmosphere: the same walls, in the same weather, would have no water, if kept de-electrised by stoves. It is formed similarly on furs, woollens, and the spider's web, all of which are retainers of electric matter; and on the leaves of plants as dew, but on the side only which is covered with the like electric matter. Dew-water is neither a precipitation nor exhalation, but a formation on that where it is found.

Water is formed on glass and metallic vessels, however closely covered, as long and no longer than the included water gives out electric matter through the pores of the vessel. In the air of the tropics, the dew or water running down the outside of covered and uncovered vessels, cannot be considered humidity of the air condensed by cold. In proof of the foregoing, the hitherto unexplained experiment is opportune.

A plate of glass, covered on one side with tin foil, has much dew on the naked side when uppermost, and none, when the covered side is uppermost, of equal dewy nights. The foil acquires electric matter from the ground, which the glass or naked upper side receives and retains; but when the naked side is next the ground, the portion of electric matter it acquires is conducted off by the foil at top; and as where there is no electric matter there is no dew, the upper coated side is dry, and under circumstances which would have left much dew on the glass side if uppermost.

Within the animal system various aqueous fluids and humidities are formed, and, as in the former instances, without oxygen and hydrogen being present; namely, hydrocephalus, the stomach juices, liquor pericardium, water of blister, milk, tears: to these add the juices of fruit, the chymists' aqueous fluids, together with the variety of formative modes, and the complex constitution of water remains unquestionable. Lavoisier's experiments proved the same, by the endless variety in the residue and product, from decomposing and recomposing the same water several times. Davy states, that, when experimenting on different substances, water frequently appeared, when there was nothing sensibly present to which it could be attributed, if not to nitrogen, which disappeared simultaneously with the water appearing: electric matter is everywhere present, although not sensibly discoverable.

From which it is obvious that the alchymists of old mistook the road to El Dorado. Instead of aiming at turning the grosser metals into gold, they should have alchymised on water, taking its elements as the money-changer does those of the numeration table, and by the rules of transposition made the valueless stand in the place of most value.

Water in the boiler loses electric matter to the fire beneath, and is expanded by influent medium of space; the excess of the latter throws out the elements of the superior stratum, which, with an enormous influx of medium of space, are the constituents of steam and the power of steam. The so-acquired medium of space, by the pressure from without which it is under, is the cause of the elasticity and force of steam. Steam is not water, nor is it ever condensed by "cold." It consists in the elements of water, less that which the water lost to the fire: both, with a reduced or proportional quantity of medium of space, make the original stratum of water. What but electric matter can steam receive from the pipes it may be passed through, and is discharged from as water? Insulated, "centrifugally repellant heat," without fulcrum, is a most inconsiderable substitute for the pressure of nature by the all-pervading medium of space, and but a shadowy substitute in accounting for the powerful effects of steam. There is no repellant force in the flame of a candle; and what but influent medium of space can make a pint of water fill and overflow a quart vessel.

Water loses its fluidity and is made solid or congealed, upon losing the imponderable oxygenating element. Priestley through his experiments made the discovery, that, "air, purer than atmospheric, is given out by water at the instant of congelation,"—which must be oxygen air. From which we learn, that oxygen is the natural hinderance against the waters of the globe being solid; with which experimental practice and experience agree, it being well known that oxygen added to a freezing solution, retards congelation; and that, to facilitate the freezing of water, a smart tap is given to the side of the vessel, hitherto unknown why, but seems as if to shake out the oxygen. The following observed circumstances exhibit the congelation of water throughout all its stages. The air in a chamber being favourable for the reception of oxygen from water, the water in a cylindrical earthen pitcher became frozen; a plate of ice was formed, which equalled the area of the vessel, and firmly fixed to the sides one full inch higher than the water had been at first. The bottom of the vessel was blown out, the sides remained whole, and the ice not broken or moved.

The circumstances of the case admits of the following illustration. Medium of space, by its pressure, forced out the oxygen; additional increments of the same medium entered, collapsed the elements of the deoxydated stratum of water, and so forcibly expanded the rest of the water as to make it explode the bottom of the vessel, all at the same instant. As all excess of medium of space retired from the water, the latter sunk to the original height; and had not the water escaped, it would have been an inch separate from the plate of ice. A river thus frozen, flows freely beneath the ice from the same circumstances. The bomb-shell at Hudson Bay was exploded by the expanded water, not by the newly-formed ice; or else the sides, not the bottom of the earthen vessel, would have been exploded.

Ice is deoxygenated water, and abounds with electric matter, hence it floats; and ice-water is at the minimum of density from being deficient of oxygen. Ice, in a Florence flask, hung over a lamp, yields abundance of electric matter, towards the formation of lamp-black on the outside of the bottom of the flask, which, to the miniature painter may be preferable, from being the freest of grit. In all cases of combustion, the elements of lamp-black are present; so that, in combustion of the diamond, the same kind of soot being formed, affords no information of the constituents of this highly-prized crystal. With more reason than that of pure carbon, (which is but another name for the electric matter which is the principal constituent of ice, and lamp-black) being the base of diamond, it may be assumed, that, diamond is a crystalized oxyde of water. The electrician's opposite characteristics of the two, diamond and ice, accord with the suggestion.