The uses of water in health and disease

by John Harvey Kellogg

Persian Baths.—The ancient Persians held the bath in such high esteem that they erected magnificent public structures devoted to bathing. The baths of Darius are spoken of as especially remarkable.

The Bath among the Greeks.—The cold bath was employed among the Greeks. Lycurgus, the famous Spartan legislator, prescribed its daily use for all his subjects, not excepting the tendered infants. In later times, the warm bath was introduced, and stately buildings were erected for the accommodation of bathers.

The learned Greek, Hippocrates, the father of medical literature, and a very acute observer of disease and the effects of various agents upon the body, highly recommended the use of water in many diseases, describing with great care the proper mode of administering a simple bath. He laid great stress upon the careful and skillful use of the bath, asserting that, when improperly applied, it, “instead of doing good, may rather prove injurious.” His directions for the employment of the bath were very discreet. He very wisely remarks that those patients whose symptoms are such as would be benefited by bathing should be bathed, even though some of the requisite conveniences may be wanting; while those whose symptoms do not indicate the need of this remedy, should not employ it, though all the necessary appliances are at hand. He made great use of water as a beverage in treating disease.

Roman Baths.—The Romans excelled all other nations in the sumptuousness of their bathing arrangements. Their public baths were among their greatest works of architecture, and were supplied with every convenience for increasing the utility and luxury of the bath. Kings and emperors vied with each other in perfecting and enlarging these sanitary institutions. Accommodations were provided, in some cases, for nearly 20,000 bathers employing the baths simultaneously; and at one time the number of public baths in Rome was nearly one thousand. Even Nero, whose name has come down to us covered with infamy, has the credit of doing at least one good act in erecting a magnificent public bath, though even the detergent effects of such an act can hardly cleanse his character of the many foul blots by which it is rendered odious.

Celsus and Galen, two noted Latin physicians, extolled the bath as an invaluable remedy, almost two thousand years ago. The latter pronounced the bath to be one of the essential features of a system of perfect cure which he termed apotheraphia, exercise and friction being the other essentials. If the regular physicians of half a century ago had followed the practice of Galen, as described in his works, they would have refreshed their languishing fever patients with cold water as a beverage instead of leaving them to be consumed by the pent-up fires which parched their lips, disorganized their blood, and finally ended their sufferings with their lives. Celsus was proud to boast of employing the bath more frequently and systematically than others had done before his time.

The Emperor Augustus was cured, by the bath, of a disease which had baffled all other remedies.

Testimony of Arabian Physicians. — Although the Arabians are at the present day looked upon, and justly, as a horde of wandering wild-men, a thousand years ago their physicians were among the most learned of the age; and they were as sensible as learned, we judge, for they were most enthusiastic advocates of the efficiency of the bath. Rhazes, one of the most eminent of them, describes a plan of treating small-pox and measles which would scarcely be modified by the most zealous advocate of water treatment at the present day. Avicenna and Meshnes, with others, may be mentioned as holding similar views.

The bath was much used in pestilences by this nation, and was largely employed in Constantinople in the fifteenth century.

Modern Bathing Customs.—Three centuries ago, public vapor baths were very numerous in Paris, being connected with barber shops, as are many baths in this country at the present time. According to Dr. Bell, Paris can still boast of a great number of bathing establishments. He states that in the baths connected with the city hospitals nearly 130,000 thousand baths were administered in a single year to out-door patients. Doubtless those treated in the hospitals were duly washed and steamed as well. This is certainly a very marked contrast with what we see in the hospitals in this country at the present day. Notwithstanding the advances in many other particulars of hospital management, the cuticles of patients are sadly neglected. In some of our largest hospitals, the filthiness of many patients is so great that close proximity to them is absolutely intolerable. Half a dozen of them, placed in a warm room, speedily impart to the air a fetor unequaled by anything but the effluvia arising from a neglected pig-sty. Such neglect is inexcusable.

The Germans of olden time were very fond of bathing, according to their historical records, and during the Middle Ages, when plagued by the leprosy, the national faith in the virtues of the bath was manifested by making it a religious duty. It is related of Charlemagne that he used to hold his court in a huge warm bath. Modern Teutons seem less partial to the bath, having transferred their fondness from aqua pura to lager beer.