A Shadow of Orthodoxy? An Epistemology of British Hydropathy, 1840–1858

Abstract

Hydropathy and its Historians During the 1820s Vincent Priessnitz established Grafenberg' as the first centre for hydropathy, his novel modification ofwater-based therapies. As word ofthe seemingly miraculous cure spread, spiralling numbers of patients journeyed from across Europe, and further afield, to place themselves under Priessnitz's care.2 It was not, however, until the early 1840s that hydropathy impinged upon the consciousness of Britain's medical practitioners and valetudinarians. While short reviews describing the new therapy appeared in the medical press in 1841,3 it was Captain Claridge who was responsible for mobilizing British interest in the water cure. In 1842 he published an account of his experiences as a patient of Priessnitz, and followed this with a tireless lecture tour around the British Isles.4 His descriptions of hydropathy appealed to a public whose ardour remained undimmed for any therapy that promised relief from disease. The bulk of the medical practitioners were less convinced. Some reacted

‘A certain instability of mind’: Herbert Mayo, 1796–1852, Surgeon and Physiologist

“…At a time when orthodox medical practitioners continued to rely upon venesection and the use of highly poisonous chemicals, the water cure presented a therapeutic challenge to orthodoxy only rivalled by homeopathy. 47 By June 1842, both James Wilson and James Manby Gully had opened hydropathic institutions in Malvern. But Mayo was too unwell to travel overland, either to Malvern, which was not yet within the railway's reach, or to Gra¨fenberg.…”

“…At a time when orthodox medical practitioners continued to rely upon venesection and the use of highly poisonous chemicals, the water cure presented a therapeutic challenge to orthodoxy only rivalled by homeopathy. 47…”

The Curious Case of Charles Darwin and Homeopathy

“…There is a long history of antagonism to homeopathic medicine from orthodoxy, and also a history of antagonism to water cure ( 16 ). While homeopathy has persisted internationally as a minority school of medical thought and practice ( 17–19 ), water cure as a medical treatment for chronic ailments has become marginalized or is hardly utilized today except by a minority of naturopathic physicians.…”

“…Sir Charles Hastings, a physician who later helped to found the British Medical Association, was Gully's most vitriolic antagonist. Dr Hastings was so opposed hydrotherapy that he frequently wrote articles about its ‘dangers’, while he utilized a wide range of orthodox medical treatments that everyone would soon call simply barbaric ( 16 ). The additional drama to the lives of Gully and Hastings is that their sons were also antagonists to each other.…”

James Frame’s The Philosophy of Insanity (1860)

“…Frame’s excoriation of the suitability for vulnerable nervous cases of ‘Hydropathic Establishments’ relied on anecdotal accounts of patient deterioration, suicide and murder. His negative review sits uncomfortably with scholarship stressing that these establishments were performing valuable services and offering an attractive alternative to asylumdom (Bradley and Dupree, 2003; Marland and Adams, 2009). Nonetheless, it is the alternating lighter and darker shades of Frame’s perspectives which make his writing such an illuminating resource for the history of psychiatry.…”