The utility of water as an agent in the treatment of disease is not a
modern discovery, as the pretensions of some aspirants for notoriety
have led many to believe. A very cursory glance at the history of
various ancient nations furnishes sufficient evidence that the use of
the bath as a curative agent was of very remote origin. The works of the
oldest medical authors contain numerous references to the bath,
recommendations of its use in cases of disease, and testimonials of its
good effects when properly employed. As this is a matter of some
interest to many of those who employ and advocate the use of water as a
remedial agent, as well as to those who are investigating its merits, we
shall devote a little space to a sketch of the use and estimation of the
bath by various nations and tribes—civilized and barbarous—and regular
and irregular physicians, from the remote ages of antiquity down to
modern times. For several of the facts presented we are indebted to a
valuable work by Dr. Bell, long out of print and now somewhat rare.
=The Bath in Egypt.=—That bathing was practiced to a considerable extent
by the Egyptians at a very early period, is evinced by both sacred and
profane history. It was through obedience to this custom that Moses was
discovered among the rushes by Pharaoh’s daughter as she went down to
the river side to bathe. Pictures discovered in ancient Egyptian tombs
represent persons preparing for the bath. We have no expression of the
estimate which was placed upon the bath as a remedial agent; but it is
hardly possible to believe that an agent held in such high esteem as a
preventive of disease should not be valued as a useful remedy.
=Bathing among the Jews.=—The code of laws prepared by Moses, under
divine instruction, for the government of the Hebrew nation after its
departure from Egypt, made bathing a prominent feature. The connection
of the bath with the treatment of leprosy would naturally lead to the
conclusion that it was employed for its curative effects.
=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.
Although the bath was very freely used in England while the island was
occupied by the Romans, who erected commodious baths like those in Rome,
the wholesome practice is now sadly neglected by the English people, if
we may credit their own writers.
It is a curious fact that the bath seems to be quite generally neglected
by the most civilized races, while it is almost universally employed by
those less advanced nations, the Russians, Turks, Finlanders, and the
inhabitants of Persia, Egypt, Barbary, and Hindostan. The Finlanders
make great use of the sweating bath. To nearly every house is attached a
small sweat-house, where they subject themselves to a temperature of
more than 160° F., often emerging at once into an atmosphere much below
freezing, with apparent impunity. The Turkish and Russian baths, similar
to which are those in use in Egypt and India, are elsewhere described.
The North American Indians employ the bath for many diseases. They have
original and peculiar ways of administering both water and vapor baths.
The most common bath among them is the vapor, followed by a plunge into
a neighboring stream. They generate the steam by pouring water upon hot
stones while they are inclosed in a small, close hut made of mud or
skins. The native Mexicans secure a hot-air bath by confining themselves
in a brick sweat-house which is heated by a furnace outside. These
savages seem to have the most implicit confidence in the efficacy of the
bath, always employing it when ill, and with excellent success.
=Modern Medical Use of Water.=—In the early part of the eighteenth
century, a Sicilian named Fra Bernado acquired the title of “coldwater
doctor” from his exclusive use of cold water in treating the sick.
At the very beginning of the eighteenth century, Floyer published a
history of bathing which contains accounts of many remarkable cures
effected by means of the bath, which he recommended as a most efficient
cure for numerous diseases.
A Mr. Hancock, a clergyman, published, in 1722, a tract entitled,
“Common Water the Best Cure of Fevers.” Another writer, in a work
entitled, “The Curiosities of Common Water,” published in 1723, speaks
of water as an “excellent remedy which will perform cures with very
little trouble, and without any charge,” and “may be truly styled, an
universal remedy.” Both French and German writers were zealously
advocating the use of water as a remedy for many diseases at this same
period. Many of the French surgeons had also discovered the immense
utility of water in surgery, receiving their first lessons of
instruction from an ignorant and superstitious miller, who used water in
conjunction with charms.
In the latter part of the last century, Drs. Jackson and Currie each
published reports of cases of fever in which they had found the use of
the bath a remedy of remarkable efficacy. Dr. Currie obtained many
followers for a time, but no very deep impression was made upon the
public mind, though his cases were authentic, and were very ably
reported.
About the end of the first quarter of the present century, a native of
Græfenberg, Prussia, by the name of Priessnitz, met with an accident by
which three of his ribs were broken. He treated himself by applications
of cold water, and then tried the same remedy upon others in similar
cases. His success encouraged him to make further experiments, and
though an ignorant peasant, his natural acuteness enabled him to devise
various means for applying water to the body, and to suit the
application to different diseases. His increasing success attracted
numerous patients, and his fame became, in a few years, worldwide. Many
of his methods were very rude, and his ignorance of medical science
often led him into errors; but he succeeded in restoring to health
hundreds of patients whose maladies had been pronounced incurable.
The interest in the new method became so great that numerous other
individuals, equally ignorant and possessing less shrewdness, undertook
to imitate the German innovator. Some of them were successful, many of
them were not; all were alike in committing numerous blunders through
ignorance of scientific medicine. But the public attention was called to
the utility of water as a remedial agent so forcibly that a powerful
impression was produced in its favor. From that time until the present,
the use of water has been largely in the hands of unscientific empirics
who have advocated it as a specific, and employed it to the exclusion of
other remedies in a great degree. This course, together with many other
gross errors connected with the practice, has deterred scientific
physicians from employing it sufficiently to test its merits, only in a
few exceptional instances.
The friends of Priessnitz claimed for him a great discovery; but as we
have seen, he discovered nothing which was not known a century before,
if not, indeed, some thousands of years previous. It is doing Priessnitz
no injustice to say that he did little or nothing toward establishing
principles, but followed, chiefly, a routine method of practice.
Some scientific members of the medical profession have investigated the
subject in some degree, however, at various times, and the result has
been that at the present day the utility of water is a well-recognized
fact, and it is now often prescribed in the standard text-books as an
excellent remedy for many diseased conditions. Yet, that there is still
a want of appreciation of the remedy is fully attested by the
infrequency of its use by the regular profession. This neglect may be
due in part to a prejudice which the members of the regular profession
have acquired, on account of the quackery which has too often been
connected with the use of this remedy. Nevertheless, there is no good
reason why an efficient remedial agent should be suffered to receive the
stigma which properly attaches only to those who are responsible for its
abuse.