(W. G.)
[1] In Nicholson’s Journal, iii. 89, Citizen Eusebe Salverte calls attention to the poem “De Ponderibus et Mensuris” generally ascribed to Rhemnius Fannius Palaemon, and consequently 300 years older than Hypatia, in which the hydrometer is described and attributed to Archimedes.
[2] Nicholson’s Journal, vol. i. p. 111, footnote.
HYDROPATHY, the name given, from the Greek, to the “water-cure,” or the treatment of disease by water, used outwardly and inwardly. Like many descriptive names, the word “hydropathy” is defective and even 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. Thermotherapeutics (or thermotherapy) is a term less open to objection.
Hydropathy, as a formal system, dates from about 1829, when Vincenz Priessnitz (1801-1851), a farmer of Gräfenberg in Silesia, Austria, began 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 neighbouring peasantry, investigated the history of cold bathing, and published in 1702 his Ψυχρολουσία, or the History of Cold Bathing, both Ancient and Modern.” The book ran through 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 1797, and soon after translated into German by Michaelis (1801) and Hegewisch (1807). It was highly popular, and first placed the subject on a scientific basis. Hahn’s writings had meanwhile created much enthusiasm among his countrymen, societies having been everywhere formed to promote the medicinal and dietetic use of water; and in 1804 Professor Örtel of Ansbach republished them and quickened the popular movement by unqualified commendation of water drinking as a remedy for all diseases. In him the rising Priessnitz found a zealous advocate, and doubtless an instructor also.
At Gräfenberg, 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 Gräfenberg were published, all more or less favourable 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 Malvern 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 severities 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 severities 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 Gräfenberg.
Ernst Brand (1826-1897) of Berlin, Räljen and Theodor von Jürgensen of Kiel, and Karl Liebermeister (1833-1901) of Basel, between 1860 and 1870, employed the cooling bath in abdominal typhus with striking results, and led to its introduction to England by Dr Wilson Fox. In the Franco-German war the cooling bath was largely employed, in conjunction 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 Dr Richard Barter (1802-1870) of Cork, 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 (see [Baths], ad fin.).