Hydropathy, or the water cure, was a 19th-century health reform movement and treatment popular in Europe and the United States. Patients soaked in cold or hot baths, took showers, were wrapped in wet compresses, sheets, belts, or special wet dresses, and also drank vast amounts of water. Hydropathy became a popular craze – a treatment … Continue reading Hydropathy: Pseudoscience in the 19th Century
The Zodiac Man or Man of Signs (homo signorum in Latin) is an age-old diagram relating the calendar and the movement of the heavenly bodies to the human body. Sections of the body are labeled with the twelve zodiacal signs, beginning with Aries, which ruled the head, and ending with Pisces associated with the feet. … Continue reading The Zodiac Man: How Astrology Guided Health Care
In the early 19th century, Nathanial McClure, a frontiersman in Garrard County Kentucky, had a problem. Open sores or abscesses were growing on his neck. Local physicians didn’t have the answer for his problem, diagnosed as the King’s Evil or scrofula. He learned about the cures of Richard Carter, a frontier herb doctor. According to … Continue reading What is scrofula? Can it be cured?