Hydrotherapy

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

the scientific use of water in the treatment of human disorders and ailments. This is one of the oldest known curative methods, for it is known that Hippocrates used it in the treatment of many kinds of disease, and it is also a matter of record that the Emperor Augustus had a personal hydropathic physician. There were many practitioners of hydrotherapy during the Middle Ages, and in 1723, Niccolo Lanzani, a physician of Naples, issued a treatise on some phases of the subject, as did Dr. Bayard and Sir John Floyer in England at about the same time, and in 1797 Dr. Currie published "The Medical Report of the Effects of Water" in which the use of cold water for fevers was advocated. About 1820, Vincent Priessnitz, not a doctor but a Silesian farmer, insisted that water was a cure for a great many ailments because of its beneficial effects upon him, and he began to practice his ideas upon his neighbors with remarkable results. It was he who introduced many of the methods of using water, such as the sheet bath, the compress, and the douche. He insisted that his patients drink large quantities of water, take vigorous outdoor exercise, pay strict attention to their diet, and have long periods of complete relaxation, thus combining all the resources of hygiene for his new system of treatment, which was so successful that in twenty years of treatment he had only about 40 deaths out of nearly seven thousand patients. In 1883 Dr. Winternitz, a German, established the scientific principle that water may be used internally for its own properties, and either internally or externally ally as a mechanical carrier of heat or cold, and may be used in any of its three physical forms-ice (solid), liquid, or steam (gas). While the most modern practice does not consider water a cure-all, there are few physicians who do not use hydrotherapy in some form, such as ablution, affusion, the drip sheet, wet pack, compress, tub bath or douche.