Hydrotherapy - Historical Background

Historical Background

Various forms of hydrotherapy have been recorded in ancient Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman civilizations. Egyptian royalty bathed with essential oils and flowers, while Romans had communal public baths for their citizens. Iranians classified spa waters according to effect of spa water in treatment of illness.(Avecina,shafa)Hippocrates prescribed bathing in spring water for sickness. Other cultures noted for a long history of hydrotherapy include China and Japan, this latter being centred primarily around Japanese hot springs, or (onsen). Many such histories predate the Roman thermae.

After an apparent oblivion during the Middle Ages, hydrotherapy was rediscovered during the 18th and 19th centuries by people such as J.S.Hahn, MD, (1696–1773), Philippe Pinel, Vincent Priessnitz (1799–1851), Professor E.F.C. Oertel (1764–1850), and J.H. Rausse (1805–1848).

In the 19th century, a popular revival followed the application of hydrotherapy around 1829, by Vincenz Priessnitz, a peasant farmer in Gräfenberg, then part of the Austrian Empire. This revival was continued by a Bavarian priest, Sebastian Kneipp (1821–1897), "an able and enthusiastic follower" of Priessnitz, "whose work he took up where Priessnitz left it", after he read a treatise on the cold water cure. In Wörishofen (south Germany), Kneipp developed the systematic and controlled application of hydrotherapy for the support of medical treatment that was delivered only by doctors at that time. Kneipp's own book My Water Cure was published in 1886 with many subsequent editions, and translated into many languages.

A significant factor in the popular revival of hydrotherapy was that it could be practised relatively cheaply at home. The growth of hydrotherapy (or 'hydropathy' to use the name of the time), was thus partly derived from two interacting spheres: "the hydro and the home".