Like many descriptive names, the word “hydropathy” is can be misleading, the active agents in the treatment being heat and cold, of which water is little more than the vehicle, and not the only one.

Hydropathy, as a formal system, dates from about 1829, when Vincent Priessnitz (1801-1851), a farmer of Grafenberg in Silesia, Austria, started his public career in the paternal homestead, extended so as to accommodate the increasing numbers attracted by the fame of his cures. Two English works, however, on the medical uses of water had been translated into German in the century preceding the rise of the movement under Priessnitz. One of these was by Sir John Floyer (1649 – 1734), a physician of Lichfield, who, struck by the remedial use of certain springs by the neighboring peasantry, investigated the history of cold baths, and published in 1702 his book The History of Cold Bathing, both Ancient and Modern. The book had six editions within a few years, and the translation was largely drawn upon by Dr J. S. Hahn of Silesia, in a work published in 1738, On the Healing Virtues of Cold Water, Inwardly and Outwardly applied, as proved by Experience.

The other work was that of Dr James Currie (1756 – 1805) of Liverpool, entitled Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, Cold and Warm, as a remedy in Fevers and other Diseases, published in the year 1797, and soon after translated into German. It was highly popular, and first placed the subject on a scientific basis. Hahns writings had meanwhile created much enthusiasm among his countrymen, societies having been everywhere formed to promote the medicinal and dietetic use of water.

At Grafenberg, to which the fame of Priessnitz drew people of every rank and many countries, medical men were conspicuous by their numbers, some being attracted by curiosity, others by the desire of knowledge, but the majority by the hope of cure for ailments which had as yet proved incurable. Many records of experiences at Grafenberg were published, all more or less favorable to the claims of Priessnitz, and some enthusiastic in their estimate of his genius and penetration; Captain Claridge introduced hydropathy into England in 1840, his writings and lectures, and later those of Sir W. Erasmus Wilson (1809 – 1884), James Manby Gully (1808 – 1883) and Edward Johnson, making numerous converts, and filling the establishments opened soon after at Islalvern and elsewhere. In Germany, France and America hydropathic establishments multiplied with great rapidity. Antagonism ran high between the old practice and the new. Unsparing condemnation was heaped by each on the other; and a legal prosecution, leading to a royal commission of inquiry, served but to make Priessnitz and his system stand higher in public estimation.

Increasing popularity diminished before long that timidity which had in great measure prevented trial of the new method from being made on the weaker and more serious class of cases, and had caused hydropathists to occupy themselves mainly with a sturdy order of chronic invalids well able to bear a rigorous regimen and the seventies of unrestricted crisis. The need of a radical adaptation to the former class was first adequately recognized by John Smedley, a manufacturer of Derbyshire, who, impressed in his own person with the seventies as well as the benefits of the cold water cure, practised among his workpeople a milder form of hydropathy, and began about 1852 a new era in its history, founding at Matlock a counterpart of the establishment at Grafenberg.

Ernst Brand (1826 – 1897) of Berlin, Raljen and Theodor von Jurgensen of Kiel, and Karl Liebermeister (1833-1901) of Basel, between 1860 and 1870, employed the cooling bath in abdominal typhus with astonishung results, and result was its introduction to England by Dr Wilson Fox. In the Franco-German War the cooling bath was largely employed, in conjunctior frequently with quinine; and it now holds a recognized position in the treatment of hyperpyrexia. The wet sheet pack has become part of medical practice; the Turkish bath, introduced by David Urquhart (1805 – 1877) into England on his return from the East, and ardently adopted by Richard Barter, has become a public institution, and, with the morning tub and the general practice of water drinking, is the most noteworthy of the many contributions by hydropathy to public health.

The appliances and arrangements by means of which heat and cold are brought to bear on the economy are:

References:

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

The post Hydrotherapy appeared first on Alternative Complementary Medicine.