Healing Waters Everywhere and lots of drops to drink
When Coleridge’s ancient mariner and crew are stuck out at sea, surrounded on all sides by water, but far from the fresh water they needed to survive, he is famously quoted as saying, Water, water everywhere, And all the boards did shrink Water, water everywhere Nor any drop to drink. Mankind has long been fascinated by and dependent upon water. The composition of our very bodies is more than half water! Throughout time, healers and everyday individuals have sought water as a means of cure and solace. In Back to Eden Jethro Kloss explains why: Water has been used from time immemorial for remedial purposes. The world’s oldest medical literature makes numerous references to the beneficial use of the bath in treating various diseases. The learned Greek, Hippocrates, who lived about five hundred years before Christ and is referred to as the “father of modern medicine,” was the first to write much on the healing of diseases with water. He used water extensively, both internally and externally, in treating illness of all kinds. “When pain seizes the side, either at the commencement or at a later stage, it will not be improper to try to dissolve the pain by hot applications...A soft large sponge, squeezed out of hot water and applied, forms a good application...A soft fomentation like this soothes pains, even such as shoot to the clavicle.” Hippocrates goes on to say: “...for the bath soothes the pain in the side, chest and back; concocts the sputa, promotes expectoration, improves the respiration, and allays lassitude; for it soothes the joints and the outer skin, and is diuretic, removes heaviness of the head, and moistens the nose. Such are the benefits to be derived from the bath.”
-45-
Long before Hippocrates recorded his experiences with the healing properties of water, we have learned from the study of ancient history that the Egyptians enjoyed bathing in their sacred river, the Nile. Pictures of ancient Egyptians, found in the tombs, show people preparing for a bath. The baby Moses was found in the rushes when Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the river to bathe. Bathing held a prominent place in the instructions that were given by Moses, under divine guidance, for the government of the Hebrew nation. The relations of the bath to the treatment of leprosy would lead us to believe that it was used for its curative effects, and it would seem likely that an agent held in such high regard as a useful remedy would also be highly esteemed as a preventive of disease. The ancient Persians and Greeks erected stately and magnificent public buildings devoted to bathing. The baths of Darius I (about 558-486 B.C.), one of the earliest Persian kings, are spoken of as being especially remarkable. The Greeks were probably the first nation to use the bath for personal cleanliness as well as for health reasons. Records show that they were using the warm bath more than one thousand years before the birth of Christ. In the ruins of King Nestor’s palace in Greece there was found a built-in-bathtub and drainage system more than 3000 years old. Rome, however, surpassed all the older nations in the costliness and magnificence of her bathing facilities. The first public bath was erected in Rome in the year 312 B.C. and it used only cold water. It was not long, however, until warm water baths replaced all those using cold water alone. Some of the greatest works of architecture in Rome were the warm public baths, which were supplied with every convenience for increasing the use and luxury of bathing as well as having many rooms for social gatherings. Kings and emperors
