HYDROPATHY, the name given to the treatment of disease by water, used outwardly and inwardly. The active agents in the treatment are heat and cold, of which water is little more than the vehicle, and not the only one.
Hydropathy, as a formal system, dates from about 1829, when Vincenz Priessnitz (1801-51), a farmer of Graf enberg in Silesia, Austria, began his public career in the paternal homestead, ex tended so as to accommodate the increasing numbers attracted by the fame of his cures. Two English works, however, on the medical uses of water had been published in 1702 and 1i97 before the rise of the movement under Priessnitz. These were by Sir John Floyer a physician of Lichfield (largely drawn upon by Dr. J. S. Hahn, of Silesia, in a work published in 1738) and by Dr. James Currie (1756-1805) of Liverpool (translated into German in 1801 and 1807). Hahn's writings had meanwhile created much enthusiasm among his countrymen, societies having been everywhere formed to promote the medicinal and dietetic use of water; and in 1804 Professor Ortel of Ansbach republished them and quickened the popular movement by unqualified com mendation of water drinking as a remedy for all diseases. In him the rising Priessnitz found a zealous advocate, and doubtless an instructor also.
Captain Claridge introduced hydropathy into England in 1840, his writings and lectures, and later those of Sir W. Erasmus Wil son (1809-84), James Manby Gully (1808-83) and Edward Johnson, making numerous converts and filling the establishments opened at Malvern and elsewhere. In Germany, France, and America hydropathic establishments multiplied with great rapidity.
At first, hydropathists treated mainly a sturdy order of chronic invalids well able to bear a rigorous regimen. Later, to suit more delicate cases, the system was modified by John Smedley, a manufacturer of Derbyshire, who, about 1852, founded at Mat lock a counterpart of the establishment at Grafenberg.
Ernst Brand (1826-97) of Berlin, Ral jen, and Theodor von Jorgensen of Kiel, and Karl Liebermeister (1833-1901) of Basle, between 1860 and 1870, employed the cooling bath in typhoid fever with striking results that led to its introduction to England by Dr. Wilson Fox. In the Franco-German war the cooling bath was largely employed, in conjunction frequently with quinine ; and it now holds a recognized position in the treat ment of hyperpyrexia. The wet sheet pack has become part of medical practice ; the Turkish bath, introduced by David Urqu hart (1805-77) into England on his return from the East, and ardently adopted by Dr. Richard Barter (1802-7o) of Cork, has become a public institution, and, with the "morning tub" and the general practice of water drinking, is the most noteworthy of the many contributions by hydropathy to public health. (See BATHS, ad fin.) The appliances and arrangements by means of which heat and cold are brought to bear on the economy are—(a) Packings, hot and cold, general and local, sweating and cooling; (b) hot air and steam baths; (c) general baths, of hot water and cold; (d) sitz, spinal, head, and foot baths; (e) bandages (or compresses), wet and dry; also (f) fomentations and poultices, hot and cold, sinapisms, stupes, rubbings, and water potations, hot and cold.