The ancient Greeks believed that certain natural springs were blessed by the gods to cure disease.
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“Oh, you won’t be drinking it,” crooned Anthony Hopkins as Dr. John Harvey Kellogg in the 1994 film The Road to Wellville.
The movie takes viewers back to the late 19th century and tells the story of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, America’s largest ever “wellness institute,” where Kellogg catered to the needs of the rich and famous with a plethora of unusual treatments.
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The likes of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Mary Todd Lincoln came to “take the cure.” They sat in a lightbox, ate a vegetarian diet, exercised and listened to Kellogg’s lectures about the evils of sexual activity. But mostly they were subjected to hydrotherapy. They sat in hot and cold baths, were hosed with cold water, and braved being wrapped in wet sheets.
For the “tour de force,” they endured water jetted into their colon, since Kellogg believed that to be the part of the anatomy where all disease begins. A thorough cleansing would put patients on the path to health!
Sometimes Kellogg determined that a more advanced form of therapy was needed and called for his enema machine to be loaded with yogurt instead of water. Hence his remark above to the patient who stated his dislike for yogurt upon hearing Kellogg give instructions to an attendant to “bring in the yogurt.”
Actually, the yogurt treatment was not total nonsense. Kellogg was a devotee of Ilya Metchnikoff, the Russian Nobel Prize winner who had advocated for the use of lactic acid bacteria, as found in yogurt, for a healthy and long life. Kellogg’s yogurt enemas can be considered to be an early application of “probiotics,” the introduction of “good” bacteria that proliferate to crowd out the “bad” varieties that cause disease.
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While not all patients encountered the delights of yogurt in this fashion, they were all subjected to some sort of water therapy. That, unlike breakfast cereals, was not a Kellogg invention. The ancient Greeks believed that certain natural springs were blessed by the gods to cure disease.
Hippocrates, who eschewed such myths, recommended bathing in mineral water to restore the body’s balance of “humours.” The Romans used hot thermal waters to relieve the pain of arthritis, and the epithet “baths, wine, and sex make life worth living” can be found on some Roman tombstones.
Hot springs maintained their therapeutic reputation throughout history as evidenced by Mark Twain’s comment after finding that his rheumatism was soothed by bathing in the spring waters of Aix-les-Bains in France. He claimed the experience was “so enjoyable that if I hadn’t had a disease, I would have borrowed one just to have a pretext for going on.”
English physician Sir John Floyer was the first to investigate water as therapy in 1702. He was intrigued by peasants in Lichfield bathing in cold water to treat their various ailments and became convinced that cold water therapy was effective.
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Floyer managed to persuade “worthy and obliging gentlemen” to contribute toward building a cold-water bath in Lichfield that was supplied by water from the spring. It turned out that his patients were not as obliging when it came to immersing themselves in the freezing water.
Dr. James Currie of Liverpool had somewhat greater success with his 1797 pamphlet, Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, Cold and Warm, as a Remedy in Fevers and Other Diseases, but it was Vincenz Priessnitz, born in 1799 in Grafenberg, now in Czechia, who put hydrotherapy on the map.
The story is that as a youngster, Priessnitz watched a wounded deer bathe in a pond and later saw the same deer with its wound healed. When as a teenager he was run over by a horse cart, he remembered the deer and wrapped himself in wet bandages to treat his broken ribs. Soon the pain was gone, and the ribs healed, despite the local physician having told him that the injury would forever be crippling.
The story of the miraculous treatment spread, and soon people began to approach Priessnitz for advice about treating their ailments. This usually involved being wrapped in wet cloths and lying under blankets until they perspired profusely. Then it was time for a plunge into cold water.
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Priessnitz’s rationale was that the quick change in temperature opens the pores in the skin and allows unnamed “bad substances” in the blood to escape. There was about as much evidence for this as for any of today’s “detox” regimens.
Nevertheless, claims of cures abounded. In 1822, catering to the enhanced demand for his services, Priessnitz expanded his father’s farmhouse to serve as a spa where patients received treatment, including cold showers with streams so strong that some complained of “being flattened” by them.
Apparently, Captain Richard Claridge was not one of the complainers. Quite the opposite. Suffering from headaches and rheumatism, he was so satisfied with his treatment at Grafenberg that in 1842 he published a book, Hydropathy, or The Cold-Water Cure, as Practiced by Vincent Priessnitz and toured the U.K. with lectures singing the praises of this wonderful treatment.
Soon water cure establishments sprouted up all over Britain, although they did not escape criticism. One clever writer claimed to have watched a duck fluttering about in a cold pond expecting it to shout “Priessnitz forever” but only crying out “Quack! Quack!”
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A major boost to hydrotherapy was given by German Catholic priest Sebastian Kneipp, who in 1847 fell ill with tuberculosis and having heard of water therapy took to bathing in the cold Danube River. He recovered and became a devotee, although certainly the cure was not due to cold water. Water does not kill the bacteria that cause tuberculosis!
Still, personal experience can be very convincing, and Kneipp launched a career as a healer, expanding on Priessnitz’s regimen by incorporating botanicals, exercise and a simple diet based mostly on plants and whole grains.
In 1891, Kneipp founded a company to market botanicals. It still exists today, offering “therapeutic” bath products such as “relaxing lavender mineral bath salt” and “joint and muscle arnica mineral bath salt.” Claims of proven effectiveness should be taken with a grain of salt.
Benedict Lust, who also believed to have been cured of tuberculosis by Kneipp’s method, established a Kneipp Water Cure Institute in New Jersey and blended hydrotherapy with his opposition to processed foods and prescription drugs. Believing in the inherent ability of the body to heal itself, Lust is regarded as the father of naturopathy in America.
In his 1901 book, Rational Hydrotherapy, Kellogg recounted the stories of his forerunners and claimed to have improved on their methods by showering the body on the inside as well as the outside. He was on firmer footing when he drenched his patients with lectures about the evils of smoking, drinking and eating the standard fare of salted meats, white bread and fried foods.
Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University’s Office for Science & Society (mcgill.ca/oss). He hosts The Dr. Joe Show on CJAD Radio 800 AM every Sunday from 3 to 4 p.m.
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