John and Caroline Smedley were self-taught hydropathists who published manuals and opened treatment centers, including Smedley’s Hydropathic Establishment, Matlock Bank in England.
By 1872 John Smedley had sold 85,000 copies of Practical Hydropathy (first published in 1858). His wife Caroline wrote a guide for women, the Ladies’ Manual of Practical Hydropathy (1861), and by 1873 it was in its fifteenth edition, having sold 45,000 copies.
To learn more about the history of medicine and questionable cures, see Discovering Quacks, Utopias, and Cemeteries