Sea-Water Therapy
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
Important: Safety Warning
This page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
In addition, this page promotes a medical device or treatment with no therapeutic value, of a kind now recognized as quackery. Relying on such treatments delays real medical care, and some — such as radium products — were actively harmful.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
or THA- LASSOTHERAPY. Sea water is used in the treatment of diseased or unhealthy conditions by two different methods, firstly by external bathing, secondly by injections into the tissues . The The first is, of course, by far the most common . The tonic effects of sea-bathing , even upon the healthy, have long been recognized, but it has been found especially beneficial U-Cyc Vol 8 in the treatment of certain morbid conditions. In some nervous disorders, and in the treatment of muscular rheumatism, arthritis and scrofula, considerable success has been experienced. Those suffering from profuse perspiration may also derive benefit from it, and it seems to increase the resistance of those unduly subject to colds. It is advisable, however, to exercise caution as regards the extent of indulgence in sea-bathing. In certain diseased conditions it should be avoided altogether. Those, for instance, suffering from heart disease or disease of the blood vessels, from organic affections of the nervous system, from epilepsy and from some other diseases, should not bathe in cold sea-water except under medical advice. Those whose constitutions are not strong and in whom violent shivering follows immersion in cold water should not remain in the water for more than two to five minutes, and hot drinks should be taken to bring about a quick reaction. In some cases, where bathing in the open is inadvisable, beneficial effects can be produced by taking warm sea-water baths in the house. Those living at considerable distances from the seashore can obtain the desired results by dissolving the necessary quantity of sea-salts in fresh water. Injections of sea-water into the tissues is looked upon with disfavor by American physicians, but in France much has been claimed for this method of application. The water is taken far out to sea and sterilized. Injections are made into the loose abdominal tissues or into the buttocks. It is claimed that good effects are produced in infantile diarrhea.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 the injectable half of the treatment was already contested — the entry notes it was "looked upon with disfavor by American physicians" while "in France much has been claimed for it." That method, popularized by the French biologist René Quinton, has no place in medicine today; the infantile diarrhea it was aimed at is now treated with oral rehydration salts, the cheap sugar-and-salt formula that spread worldwide from the 1970s and saves millions of lives a year. The scrofula on the list is tuberculosis of the lymph nodes, curable with antibiotics since the 1940s and 1950s rather than by immersion. Sea bathing itself survives as thalassotherapy, a large spa industry on the French and Breton coasts, and warm-water balneotherapy has modest trial evidence for easing arthritic and fibromyalgia pain — relief, not cure, and nothing that turns on the water having come from the sea.
Written for this edition, 2026.