Priessnitz: Keep Taking the Liquids
Ian Bradley looks at the life of Vincent Priessnitz, pioneer of hydrotherapy, whose water cures gained advocates throughout 19th-century Europe and beyond and are still popular today.
The recession seems to have made little impact on the booming market in alternative and holistic medicine. It may well be that these straitened times are encouraging more people to abandon expensive drug-based therapies and return to older, simpler remedies and more ‘natural’ ways of keeping fit.
A similar movement developed in the mid-18th century under the twin influences of evangelical religion and Romanticism. Among the first advocates of what would now be called holistic medicine was John Wesley (1703-91), the founder of Methodism, whose Primitive Physic, published in 1747, extolled the benefits of a healthy life based on the simple gifts that God had provided, avoiding excesses of every kind.
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