Hydrotherapy
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The hydrotherapy ( Greek ύδρο- , idro- , "water", from ancient Greek ὕδωρ , hýdor , "water", and θεραπία , therapía , " therapy "), also hydropathy (formerly also "hydroposy") and German water medicine , is the Methodical use of water for the therapeutic treatment of acute or chronic complaints, for the stabilization of body functions ( hardening ), for prevention, for rehabilitation and / or for regeneration. Above all, the temperature stimulus of the water is used, less the pressure or buoyancy as a therapeutic stimulus.
Used water in all three states: ice, cold / temperate / hot water and steam. Hydrotherapy, which goes back to antiquity in its roots, is part and basis of "classical" naturopathy as a hydrotherapy which was dogmatically and critically applied between 1830 and 1850 .
Application forms
- Ablutions
- Wraps , pads and compresses , packs
- Casts
- Baths (partial and full baths) with and without additives
- Sauna , steam baths
Treatment methods
- Treading water : the patients trudge through a basin with about knee-high, cold water.
- Kneipp casts or flat casts : a water jet is aimed at the arms, legs, back, face or the entire body of the standing patient with low pressure.
- Pressure jet casts or lightning casts : a water jet is directed at the body with medium or high pressure (up to 3 bar).
- Wraps and packs : on a damp inner towel, which either only covers individual parts of the body or more than 50% of the body surface, is covered with a dry inner and outer towel.
- Rub-offs : a damp cloth is placed on the affected part of the body and rubbed with the hand to stimulate blood circulation.
- Exercise pool : in the case of spinal disorders or fractures , gymnastic exercisesare performed in the water, sometimes in combination with underwater pressure jet massages .
- Baths : a distinction is made between partial baths, in which arms and legs are exposed to cold and / or hot water, and brush baths, in which the patient is massaged with brushes, or the rod bath , in which the water in the tub conducts direct current. The gentle electrical stimulus has a pain-relieving effect and stimulates blood circulation.
- Continuous shower : warm water is applied over a shower head or shower cap for up to an hour.
- Vapors : the patients are exposed to hot water vapor, which may be mixed with herbs, also in saunas or Turkish steam baths ( hammam ).
- Arm baths : cold for nervous heart problems, hypertension; warm (36–37 ° C) to hot (38–42 ° C) for relaxation in the event of muscle pain and for preparing blood samples in the event of insufficient blood circulation.
- Aquatic body work : the deeply relaxed patient is actively moved in the thermo-neutral water. With Aquarelax and Water Shiatsu , his face stays above the surface of the water, with WaTa he dives under water at his own breathing rhythm. The practitioner's stretching and compression impulses are embedded in breathing therapy work.
Effects
The application of cold water initially causes local vasoconstriction (narrowing) of the skin vessels, then vasodilation (vasodilation) with reactive heating. An analgesic (pain-relieving) and anti-inflammatory (anti-inflammatory) effect is assumed in acute inflammatory processes. A general circulation and breathing stimulation should be a further consequence of the permanent use of a cold water application.
When using warm water, the blood vessels dilate and blood flow to the muscles increases.
Thermal is classified in three bath forms:
- cold: below 33 ° C
- thermoneutral : 33 ° C to 38 ° C
- hot: over 38 ° C
Contraindications
Hydrotherapy is not recommendable without reservation: In the case of acute and chronic cardiovascular diseases , varicose veins, skin inflammation with open wounds and flu-like infections, it should be avoided until the symptoms have subsided.
Historical
Water treatments have been part of medicine , especially bathing culture, for thousands of years . The Greeks already believed that water had healing powers. The Romans also built public baths, which developed into recreational and social centers in cities (= forerunners of today's health resorts ). The Roman honorary citizen Antonius Musa is considered the father of hydrotherapy , who is reported to have been born in 23 BC. BC healed the emperor Augustus with cold baths.
In the 15th century, the reputation of hydrotherapy was damaged because water was believed to carry infectious diseases . It only became popular again in the 18th century .
Théophile de Bordeu , in Germany the Lower Silesian doctors Siegmund Hahn (1664–1742) and especially his son Johann Siegmund Hahn (1696–1773), whose book from 1738 only - 100 years later - are considered to be the actual founders of "water therapy" or hydrotherapy In 1849 the philosophy student at the time Sebastian Kneipp (1821–1897) found it in the Munich court library and later successfully developed his own therapy from it. Both “water taps” were city physicians in Schweidnitz.
The military doctor and naturopath Lorenz Gleich (1798–1865) - a patient of Vincenz Prießnitz and Johann Schroth - entered in 1848 (at the Association for the Promotion of Hydrotherapy ) and also later dogmatically for the healing power of water and also tried the hydropathic treatment in the Bavarian medical service to integrate.
Vincenz Prießnitz (1799–1851) treated his own complaints with cold compresses and was successful with them. He founded a therapy center in which he tried to harden his patients with drastic methods. For example, he strapped them onto iron couches and poured icy water onto them from a height of 6 m.
The pastor Sebastian Kneipp used less violent methods of hardening. He too had successfully tested cold water treatment on himself for the first time. To treat his tuberculosis, he stepped into the icy Danube every day . He supplemented the hydrotherapeutic measures he mentioned with herbal medicine .
In addition to lay physicians Sebastian Kneipp, Heinrich Friedrich Francke , Theodor Hahn and others, doctors such as Wilhelm Petri in Bad Laubach am Rhein , August Friedrich Erfurth in Feldberg and Josef Schindler in Tiefenbach / Böhmen, Christoph Hartung von Hartungen (1849–1917), became a hydrotherapy institute Dr. v. Hartungen in Riva / Lake Garda and later in Bad Graefenberg in Silesia are known for their "water cures". These therapies were based on the assumption that numerous illnesses had their cause in effeminacy and that softening should be counteracted by hardening measures .
The decisive breakthrough in hydrotherapy in Germany on a practical basis helped Karl Friedrich Ferdinand Runge (1835–1882) in his water sanatorium in Nassau an der Lahn and in Austria-Hungary on a scientific-theoretical basis, the spa doctor and naturopath Wilhelm Winternitz , who gave in Kaltenleut owned a water sanatorium near Vienna and was the first physician in German-speaking countries to receive a chair for hydrotherapy as a full professor at the University of Vienna in 1899 .
Quotes
“It is absolutely unbelievable what the casts can do with water. So one often sees examples of healings that seem almost unbelievable to some, because no other means are available for such ailments. A girl was about to bleed deathly from her nose, the blood rushed so violently to her head and nose; a garden watering can full of water on the neck and head immediately put an end to the bleeding [...].
According to the doctors, Christian has emphysema caused by a previous pneumonia . It is clear here that a lot of mucus remained after the healing process, which is still clinging to the internal organs and cannot be taken any further. Six upper pourings and chest pourings have loosened everything; a mass of mucus has loosened and the patient is now breathing quite well. "
See also
literature
- Michael Anderson: Healing with Water. Pours, baths, wraps, packs, heat and cold. 2nd, improved edition. Jopp, Wiesbaden 1995, ISBN 3-926955-78-3 .
- Hubertus Averbeck: From cold water therapy to physical therapy. Reflections on people and at the time of the most important developments in the 19th century. European University Press, Bremen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86741-782-2 .
- Alfred Brauchle : Naturopathy in life pictures. Reclam, Leipzig 1937.
- Dietrich von Engelhardt (ed.): Biographical encyclopedia of German-speaking doctors. Volume 2: R - Z. Register. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11462-1 .
- Otto Gillert: hydrotherapy and balneotherapy. Theory and practice. 11th edition. New edition completely revised by Walther Rulffs. Pflaum, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7905-0586-2 .
- Christoph Hartung von Hartungen : About hydrotherapy, diet cures, massage and suggestion. In: Ärztlicher Central-Anzeiger. Organ for the general interests of doctors in Austria-Hungary. Vienna, 1889/1890.
- Jürgen Helfricht : The recipe for success of Saxon natural healers (= facts. 24). Tauchaer Verlag, Taucha 2004, ISBN 3-89772-077-9 .
- Jürgen Helfricht: Friedrich Eduard Bilz. 1842-1922. Old master of naturopathy in Saxony. Sinalco AG Detmold and Radebeul City Administration, Radebeul 1992.
- Jürgen Helfricht: Vincenz Prießnitz (1799–1851) and the reception of his hydrotherapy until 1918. A contribution to the history of the natural healing movement (= treatises on the history of medicine and natural sciences. Volume 105). Matthiesen, Husum 2006, ISBN 3-7868-4105-5 (also: dissertation, Philosophical Faculty of Palacký University Olomouc, Department of History, 2004).
- HD Hentschel: From cold water treatment to naturopathic treatment. In: Physical Therapy. Volume 18, 1997, pp. 604-613 and 673-680.
- Katharina Knauth, Barbara Reiners, Renate Huhn: Physiotherapeutic recipe book. 8th, unchanged edition. Urban & Fischer, Munich a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-437-46630-5 .
- Alfred Martin: German bathing in the past few days. In addition to a contribution to the history of German hydrology. Diederichs, Jena 1906; New print Diederichs, Munich 1989 ( ISBN 3-424-00959-8 ).
- Julius Pagel (ed.): Biographical lexicon of outstanding doctors of the nineteenth century. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin a. a. 1901.
- Jill Steward: The culture of the water cure in nineteenth-century Austria, 1800-1914. In: Susan C. Anderson, Bruce H. Tabb (Eds.): Water, leisure and culture: European historical perspectives. Berg, Oxford 2002, ISBN 1-85973-540-1 , 23-35.
- Bernhard Uehleke : Hydrology (hydropathy, hydrotherapy). In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil, Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1466 f.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernhard Maximilian Lersch : History of balneology, hydroposy and pegology, or the use of water for religious, dietetic and medicinal purposes. A contribution to the history of cult and medicine. Wuerzburg 1863.
- ^ Karl Eduard Rothschuh : Naturopathic Movement, Reform Movement, Alternative Movement. Stuttgart 1983; Reprint Darmstadt 1986, p. 9, 40 f. and more often.
- ^ Bernhard Uehleke : Hydropathy (hydropathy, hydrotherapy). In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil, Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1366.
- ↑ Submerged and deeply relaxed . SRF , September 5, 2011; accessed on July 8, 2019
- ↑ Albert Schalle: The Kneipp cure: the cure of successes. 11th edition. Munich 1948; especially pp. 21–55 (on the history of the water cure ).
- ^ Gundolf Keil : Vegetarian. In: Medical historical messages. Journal for the history of science and specialist prose research. Volume 34, 2015 (2016), pp. 29-68, p. 42.
- ↑ Lorenz Gleich: The natural healing method without medicine in sharp contrast to the healing method with medicine. Munich 1855.
- ^ Wolfgang G. Locher: Gleich, Lorenz. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil, Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 496 f.
- ↑ Sebastion Kneipp: My water cure, tested and written for more than 35 years to cure diseases and maintain health. 1886. 56th edition. Kempten / Bavaria 1895; numerous reprints, reprints and adaptations.
- ↑ Sebastian Kneipp: This is how you should live! Hints and advice for the healthy and the sick . 4th edition. Kempten 1897, p. 351ff. (Facsimile edition: ISBN 3-88140-066-4 )
