The Practice of the Water-Cure, James Wilson, MD and James Manby Gully, MD, New York, 1846
Originally devised by Silesian peasant Vincent Priessnitz, the "water cure" was another popular 19th-century alternative to regular medicine. Proponents of the water cure believed that the administration of water and baths of various kinds would purify and invigorate the body's physiology. The water cure, also called hydropathy, reached the United States in the 1840s.