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Sample paper
Almost twins by birth: Hydropathy, temperance and the Scottish
churches 1840-1914
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1 Introduction
In October 1847, James Haughton of Dublin, of Quaker stock and
a committed Irish temperance advocate, wrote1 to Dr William
Macleod,2 an Edinburgh-trained physician who had just
taken over the management of the Ben Rhydding hydropathic Establishment
near Leeds. 'It does seem to me an interesting and beautiful coincidence
that the water cure and teetotalism are 'almost twins by birth'.
He continued: 'Hydropathy and Teetotalism may well be termed as
twin sisters in the work of purifying and elevating the human race.'
It is this very close relationship which this study explores. Although
the temperance movement predated the arrival of hydropathy3
in the early 1840s, once the latter made its appearance, the two
fed off each other. The connection was strong in Ireland, and in
the north of England, but nowhere more pronounced than in Scotland.
Temperance reformers saw in hydropathy a medical regime strongly
in tune with their general convictions, and the two ran together
to mutual benefit. The Scottish Reformers' Gazette (a temperance
journal), when reviewing in 1842 one of the first books on hydropathy
to appear, 'warmly recommended the volume to the medical and general
public, and in particular to all Teetotallers as the best work
ever written on behalf of their principles'. [My italics]. Medical
men, who were temperance supporters, such as John Balbirnie4,
took to hydropathy with enthusiasm, and the leading figures in both
movements encouraged each other. Father Mathew - the Apostle of
Temperance in Ireland - sent one of his temperance medals to the
Austrian pioneer of hydropathy, Vincent Priessnitz, in September
1845 with a covering letter praising Priessnitz as 'one who had
much promoted the cause of total abstinence5. Mathew
had heard about hydropathy some years previously from a book on
the subject written by an enthusiast, one Capt. Claridge, and was
enthusiastic about its virtues, which he acknowledged in a letter
to Claridge as 'a most powerful auxiliary in persuading men to join
our glorious Society and take the Total Abstinence Pledge. As he
concluded - perhaps naively - that Claridge was a teetotaler, he
enclosed a temperance medal, one of the hundreds of thousands he
distributed.6 The connection, then, was a close and beneficial
one; those committed to the cause of temperance welcomed a medical
regime which rejected the use of drugs of any kind, including alcohol,
and insisted that a central part of the healing process was abstinence.
Proper treatments, plenty of exercise, and a good diet, but no alcohol
were what made up the hydropathic regime proper to the purist. Other
therapies such as homeopathy and mesmerism, attracted some attention,
but none as much as the water cure: and there is little or nothing
in the literature of either the temperance or the health press about
value of the older and still much patronized spas. Hydropathy was
an obsession of many in the temperance movement. In its turn, hydropathy
drew much of its support from the ranks of the temperance army,
as promoters, as practitioners and staff, and as clientele, whether
as visitors or patients. This paper explores this connection; asks
when, why and with what consequences it came about, and how the
linkage was expressed.
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2 What was hydropathy?
It was one of a series of alternative and new therapies on offer
in the early Victorian period, a portfolio which included phrenology,
mesmerism and homeopathy, all of which promised a surer and less
painful road to good health, then - as now - a major preoccupation
of all ranks of society, but particularly for those who had the
means, temperament and time to pay for their health. Poverty forced
acceptance of disease and ill health; prosperity made for more curative
and remedial options. Hydropathy was based on a series of water
treatments: showers, baths sheets and rubbing or massage, drawn
together in a supervised and individually tailored regime that emphasized
exercise, good diet and no alcohol. Although the use of cold water
in, for example, the treatment of fever had a long pedigree in Britain,
hydropathy as a general system for the treatment of a wide range
of conditions originated in the 1830s on the Continent in Austria
at a centre in Silesia (Graefenberg) where Priessnitz had developed
a very successful practice. News percolated to Britain of this new
system, dubbed the cold-water cure, and aroused very considerable
interest both amongst uncured patients and medical men who were
dissatisfied with the existing therapeutic armory and were looking
for new options. By the early 1840s there was a flow of British
visitors to Austria, either as patients or observers.7
They reported back with enthusiasm, many having claimed cures for
themselves of long-standing complaints. The hydropathic cause was
greatly promoted by Captain Claridge, whose search for health on
the Continent had taken him to Graefenberg in 1841 for a lengthy
stay. Cured of his rheumatism, he set about promoting hydropathy
in Britain, at London in 1842, and then further afield in the following
year with lecture tours in Ireland and Scotland in 1843. Hydropathic
practices began to appear, and cure centres were established: in
England these were mostly initially in and around London, with Dr
Paterson's Glenburn House at Rothesay in 1843 the first north of
the Border. A decade later the provision of residential hydropathic
treatment in Britain had become dominated by the large establishments
in England of Malvern, Ilkley and Matlock, with Scotland trailing
well behind. But the movement in Scotland changed gear in the 1860s
with the foundation of Bridge of Allan, Crieff and Forres, and further
underwent marked expansion in the later 1870s where there was what
some called a 'hydropathic mania'. Almost inevitably a financial
crisis followed in the early 1880s, and consolidation rather than
new ventures was the rule thereafter. What stands out is how strong,
and how permanent the movement was by the later nineteenth century
in Scotland as against the rest of the United Kingdom. In 1900 Scotland
could boast some 15 hydros, England had 50, of which most were but
high-class hotels lacking any real tradition of treatment, but Ireland
only two. "The Scotch, who are pretty cautious in their undertakings
have plunged in a surprising manner into enterprises connected with
Hydropathic Establishments' remarked William Chambers in 1877.8
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3 What was the appeal of hydropathy?
In trying to explain why the movement achieved such success in
Scotland, we need to understand what its attraction was to a health-seeking
public. There was an appeal both in medical or therapeutic terms
and on temperance grounds. The first was strengthened as hydropathy
toned down its initial claim to be a panacea and became more selective
in the conditions which it looked to treat. Its armory of treatments
became much more sophisticated, adding massage, peat baths, electro-magnetic
stimuli well beyond the original core of the bath, sheet and the
douche. Also important to their commercial appeal was the way from
the 1850s in which hydropathic establishments altered in function
and focus; they ceased to be purely curative institutions, to which
only the seriously ill went. Increasingly they catered for a much
wider constituency of those in need simply of a break, ministers
from their preaching, and ladies from the demands of running a household,
and became more and more commercial, providing leisure and pleasure,
becoming high-class recreational rather than narrowly curative establishments.
It was not a change of which the purists entirely approved; the
veteran hydropath Samuel Kenworthy of Stockport was asked what he
thought about the growing practice of providing entertainments.
He allowed that at peak holiday times, there might be some relaxation,
but only within very strict limits: 'we certainly don't approve
of dancing or drinking alcoholics.'9 But the tide was
against him and his kind. The resident doctor lost his central position
in the hydro's affairs and fortunes to the chef and the entertainments
manager. Baths and therapy were for some, not all.
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| Loch-head Hydro,
Aberdeen, complete with Turkish baths, c. 1862 (From
Robert Anderson, Aberdeen in Bygone Days, Aberdeen 1910). |
And that, of course, raised real questions as to whether the old
regime with its firm abhorrence of alcohol could be sustained. Tobacco,
incidentally, was equally deplored by the orthodox, but could not
be outlawed. Amongst the hydropathic doctors there was some tolerance
of other systems; MacLeod used homeopathy, Barter hypnotism, Munro
galvanism, Veale drugs. But not alcohol. Most hydros remained firmly
temperance but some did not, notably the very large establishments
at Peebles and Pitlochry, the Atholl. The very occasional indulgence
to those with specific medical permission gave way to a general
blind eye, or even a table licence. Interestingly, alcoholics were
hived off to separate specialist institutions for treatment. Amongst
the old school there was a grim satisfaction when hydropathic managements
who had relaxed the ban on alcohol came to financial grief as did
Macleod at Ben Rhydding, or at Peebles; 'We understand that the
Peebles Hydropathic Establishment has been sold to a new company
for £26,000, the loss on last year's working being estimated
at £2,500. Its prosperity apparently declined on the introduction
of intoxicating liquors. This innovation was forbidden after a short
trial of six months...'10 It was a campaign which was
eventually to be lost, but some strongholds held out for many decades;
with Crieff Hydro the last major hotel in Britain to acquire a table
licence, as late as 1983.11 Even then, it was a step
taken with considerable anxiety: there was a constituency to be
won, but also one whose loyalty might be forfeit, and generous supporters
who would be alienated. But times had changed, and the conference
trade, so essential to viability in the off-season, could not be
drawn otherwise.
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4 Temperance and hydropathy
The message of hydropathy spread hand in hand with temperance,
using the same networks. The organisers of Claridge's lectures in
Glasgow in August 1842 were the same who had planned Father Mathew's
visit some weeks earlier. In the audience were the leading temperance
figures such as Robert Kettle, then President of the Glasgow Abstinence
Society, and later secretary to the United Presbyterian Total Abstinence
Society, and on the committee of the Glasgow Hydropathic Society
formed as a result of the visit were temperance men. Indeed, the
overlap lent itself to the obvious pun: in December 1842 the local
correspondent of the Scottish Temperance Journal from Thornhill
reported on the 'progress of the cold water movement in this place'12.
The leading English temperance propagandist, F.R. Lees, launched
in 1845 a journal called the Truth Seeker, The Temperance Advocate
and Journal of the Water Cure. Quite when the temperance movement
first became aware of hydropathy is not entirely clear. Dr Rowland
East, who ironically became a hydropathic doctor in the mid 1840s,
was sharply criticised in 1842 for his failure to condemn the use
of alcohol in a work on liver complaints entitled 'Advice to the
Bilious.' But certainly Claridge's tour was reported, and on the
platform for his lectures in Glasgow, as already noted, were several
well-known temperance enthusiasts. The Committee of the Glasgow
Hydropathic Society was chaired by William Campbell of Tilliechewan
and included the Congregational minister - later Evangelical Union
- Robert Simpson, and the Baptist James Paterson. The strongest
support for the temperance cause at this time came from the smaller
denominations, and this was to hold equally true for hydropathy.
In August 1850 The Scottish Temperance Review published a paper13
by their chairman, the Rev T.C. Wilson of Dunkeld (himself Church
of Scotland), in which that he stated that the overall membership
of the Temperance League was 2,000. It was reckoned that 360 ministers
in Scotland were abstainers, divided thus:
| Denomination |
No of abstainers |
| Church of Scotland |
24 |
| Free Church |
71 |
| United Presbyterian Church |
140 |
| Other bodies EU, Baptists |
125 |
| Total |
360 |
It has been remarked by Logan14, that the early temperance
movement in Scotland was largely a 'UP affair', and UP figures were
certainly well represented in the hydropathic movement, notably
the Meikles of Crieff, but, given the total strength of the denomination,
the Evangelical Union was proportionately most committed to the
twin causes. The temperance movement was later to broaden its denominational
base, and to make it much less of a minority impulse, just as the
hydropathic cause was greatly to increase its presence, but in the
first phase the possession was nearly total.
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5 Hydropathy and temperance: their relationship
The relationship between the temperance cause and the hydropathic
movement was close. Temperance people, it can be suggested, were
highly significant in four main ways.
a) As promoters and financial supporters; of whom John Davie
is a key example. Davie was a stalwart of the Chalmers Street UP
Church in Dunfermline for over 70 years till his death in 189115.
He was active in the foundation of the temperance cause in 1830
there - the Dunfermline Total Abstinence Society in Scotland was
held to be the first of its kind in Scotland. He was a man of many
causes of which temperance and hydropathy were but two; vegetarian,
anti-tobacco, anti-vivisection, anti-compulsory vaccination, Chartism,
peace, early closing movement, and advocate of women's suffrage.
But temperance was his first and abiding love. 'The great denominations,'
he said, 'must follow the example of the Evangelical Union in Scotland
and the Bible Christians in England...Temperance is essentially
the cause of Christ.' Hydropathy was another cause which he adopted.
In the 1860s Davie put his money into Waverley Hydro at Melrose,
and its associated satellite venture at St Helens. This was a visionary
scheme, which included the provision of a school for children undergoing
prolonged hydropathic treatment, and run by William Crombie, minister
of the local E.U. church16; his second son, was to qualify
as a physician at Edinburgh and became resident physician at the
Waverley, aged 24 in 1881.
There were many other lay supporters of hydropathy. Richard Ross,
owner of an engineering works in Greenhead, and longtime member
of Dowanhill UP church, was one of the group of Glasgow businessmen
who put up the funds to enable Hunter to move from Gilmorehill to
Bridge of Allan in 1866. Another Glaswegian, Robert Wylie of the
long-established firm of Wylie & Lochead was also an enthusiast.
It was said of Wylie; that 'hydropathy was his hobby' and he opened
his own hydro at Ardvullin in 1865. Another entrepreneur was Andrew
Philp, who like Davie, was another Dunfermline man, and also with
strong temperance connections. Born in 1808 into a UP family, he
began his business career as a tea merchant, but moved into the
temperance hotel business, starting with the Balsusney Railway Temperance
Hotel at Kirkcaldy. He built a chain of Cockburn Temperance hotels
and added to them in the 1880s several hydros: Glenburn, Dunblane
and Conishead. He was a life long friend of Thomas Cook, who, it
will be remembered, started his career as an excursion organiser
as Secretary to the Leicester Temperance Society. The Coats family
were also supporters of hydropathy: Thomas took 100 shares in the
Athol, an investment which turned out disastrously, not that the
loss would have hit a super wealthy man like himself anything like
as hard as it did many small investors. There were many who took
only a handful of shares: at Skelmorlie, while most of the capital
came from the Currie family, amongst the investors were the brothers
Jeffrey, both UP ministers, who lived in adjoining houses in Denniston
with a connecting door knocked through! An interesting question
is whether these people invested for profit or for principle? Did
they hope to serve both God and Mammon?
b) As practitioners, the list of those who came from the
ranks of ministers heavily involved in the temperance cause includes
Alexander Munro of Aberdeen, Forres and Melrose and John Kirk, who
first experienced hydropathy as a patient of East at Dunoon, and
himself was to set up a small establishment at Seamill. Alexander
Stewart, minister of the E.U. congregation at John Street since
1864, was a figure of much praise for his hydro at Heathcot near
Aberdeen, at which he became Medical Superintendent in 1877, having
attended some medical classes at the University of Aberdeen. His
brutal experimental regime in the early summer of 1879 using Peruvian
bark for drying out hopeless drunks in June 1879 was much reported17
but it was in another area that he achieved more recognition: the
value of hydropathy in easing the strains of mental overexertion.
His Hints on Health to the Overworked first published in 1885 was
much read. In England there were people such as Kenworthy at Stockport,
Smedley of Matlock who set up his own branch of Independent Methodists,
Grindrod at Malvern18 and Thomas at Llandudno.
Only one hydropathic practitioner, by contrast, went the other
way. East, founder of the hydro at Dunoon, left medicine for the
Anglican ministry in the early 1850s. In Independency, it can be
suggested that the charisma of the preacher/pastor - as much perhaps
as his theology - was a key element in his success (under God),
and in medicine it can be argued that the personality of the physician
as much as his skill was central to his effectiveness. It remains
a truism of the medical world that if people believe in their physician,
and that what he is prescribing is good for them, then that alone
- as much as the objective/scientific virtue of their treatments
- is a very positive curative asset. The resident doctor was at
the heart of the success, or otherwise of the early hydro. And those
who were established pastors carried over into their medical work
some of the skills and standing of their religious position. Others
of the early hydropathists, who were not ministers, nevertheless
had a strong church background in either the UPs or the EU such
Archibald Hunter, Dr John Becket19 and of course the
Meikles of Crieff. Thomas was a staunch UP and took a warm interest
in the Temperance cause (according to his obituary in the Strathearn
Herald). What is significant is that even when they acquired heavy
responsibilities at their hydros, where they had practices to service
and patients to see, they kept a very live interest in temperance
affairs at the local level.
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| Advertisement
for Dr Munro's Waverley Hydro at Melrose, c. 1871 (From
Piggot's Commercial Directory of Scotland, 1873). |
c) As staff. The staff - bathmen, masseurs, cooks and maids
- of the hydros had a part, if much less publicized than those of
the principals, to play. The wives of the practitioners were also
very important in supervising the running of the household and of
the ladies' medical departments and some were very significant figures
in their own right: Mrs. Hunter for one, was a passionate advocate
of vegetarianism. Regular visitors preferred familiar faces, and
John Hope became so reliant on the bathman he always used at Ben
Rhydding on his many visits there that he sent for Emmott during
what proved to be his final illness. James Newbiggin at Seamill
who had followed his pastor James Kirk there from Edinburgh, was
a joiner turned bathman who became manager and from 1887 sole proprietor.
He was attached to the Evangelical Union church in Ardrossan. There
was a presentation in May 1878 at the Melrose EU church to Mr. MacPherson,
the manager who was moving to take charge of Philp's Cockburn Hotel
in Edinburgh. A 'sterling soldier in the temperance army' he had
been for many years chief representative of the Good Templar Order
in Roxburghshire as well as treasurer to the E.U. Building Fund
at Melrose.
d) Temperance people as clientele. What is evident from
even the most cursory scan of the lists of visitors staying at the
hydros, which were published on a weekly basis in the local press,
is how often clergy and their family feature. The Red Clydesider
and alleged revolutionary David Kirkwood was sentenced to a form
of internal exile, he found himself for a period at Crieff Hydro
where he found that the place was 'fu' of ministers.'20
This was no new feature. A visitor to the Glenburn Hydro at Rothesay
in early 1862 noted that amongst the patients undergoing treatment
by Dr Paterson were several clergymen: 'they were all very intelligent,
indeed extra so, and we were all most agreeable amongst ourselves'.21
This was not, perhaps unique to the hydros: the clergy were great
holiday takers, and to be found in disproportionate numbers at any
select health resort. But the hydros certainly encouraged them by
offering special terms, in return for which they might be expected
to lead morning prayers or a Sunday service, and, of course there
were special funds, the Smieton and the Paton, at Crieff to subsidise
their stay. James Morison, principal of the EU Theological Hall
in Glasgow and leading light of that denomination, numbered amongst
his library several works on hydropathy, including Hunter's Health,
Happiness and Longevity (1885).22 Morison was a regular
patient at various hydros, a six-week stay at Lochhead in Aberdeen
in 1852 being the first of many such visits. Norman Macleod was
another clerical supporter: an endorsement from him was included
in the prospectus for Clunyhill issued in 1869, he having spent
two weeks there 'when seeking healing rest, and good for body and
mind'. The charges were exceedingly moderate and all its servants
and officials extremely civil and moderate, he reported: 'no drawbacks
of any kind' was his verdict.23 The ranks of the clergy
were swollen by church workers, missionaries and others of the same
ilk. Many of these, one imagines, were not paying for their stay.
Amongst those staying at Gilmorehill Hydro on census night in March
1861 was one Euphemia Carmichael, described as a 'missionary in
connection with the U.P. church'. John Hope, the Edinburgh temperance
promoter, regularly sent at his expence some of his temperance agents
who were in need of recuperation either to Crieff or Ben Rhydding.
The churchy atmosphere appealed to some and it is not surprising,
therefore, to find hydros advertising in Life and Work and offering
'special liberal terms to clergymen'24. If Protestants
of the UP, UF, or EU persuasion were over-represented, Catholics,
Episcopalians, and Jews were in a tiny minority, although as the
house steward Caw points out25, not unknown - to the
great inconvenience of the catering.
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6 Alexander Munro
Understandably, in the examination of hydropathy in Scotland, there
has been a tendency perhaps to focus too much on Crieff, which was
quite an exceptional business in its size and staying power, or
on Professor Kirk, whose Seamill venture was really a quite small-scale
venture. Stewart of Aberdeen, who came to hydropathy in its second
phase of development, and rather later in life than was true of
most of the pioneers, would merit more attention. But a person whose
career is well worth following is Alexander Munro, (1814-1883) a
figure without question of major importance to the hydropathic movement
in Scotland. According to Richard Metcalfe, himself a very experienced
hydropathist, Munro was 'One of the most famous names connected
with hydropathy in North Britain'. According to another authority
- admittedly his son-in-law, the Rev Bowman - Munro was 'the Priessnitz
of Scotland'.26 But, even allowing for some degree of
family enthusiasm, there is no doubt as to the very important part
that Munro played in the hydropathic movement for over thirty years.
Munro was the son of a Banffshire Congregational minister, John
Munro of Knockando, and himself went to college in Glasgow and to
the University in 1834. He ministered at Fraserburgh and at Banchory,
and attended Aberdeen University in 1838-1839 while he was minister
in charge at Blackhills E.U. Church, where he continued as pastor
for the next quarter of a century. Munro was a loved pastor, by
all accounts, but probably rather stronger as a writer. Tributes
in Christian News were genuine: 'he was always genial and
kindly in manner.... wise physician, penetrating thinker and writer,
tender and loving preacher.' But, they added, 'perhaps our late
venerable friend's brain power was greater than his elocutionary
power...' Munro wrote on a whole range of matters - theological,
hydropathic, temperance, medical and scientific. He cut his teeth
as a disputationalist in the fierce debates that raged in and around
the Evangelical Union in the mid 1840s over Calvinism; he himself
reacting strongly against his father's orthodox and rigid views.
'That God is willing that all should be saved' was one of
his first publications (Edinburgh 1846) and there were many other
sermons and addresses published.27 He was a frequent
contributor to the Christian News and to the Evangelical
Repository. But he never took just a narrow focus on matters
of doctrine; emphasis on the wider issues of the health of society
and was long an advocate of the role of the pastor as physician,
or at least equipped with some diagnostic and curative skills, 'We
are not recommending that a minister of the gospel should become
a general medical practitioner, but a safe adviser in every ordinary
case of disease that would come his way in the discharge of ordinary
ministerial duties.'28
A good example of his style is to be found in The Letters to
Her Majesty, (London and Edinburgh 1864)29, which
carried the significant subheading Possibility and Responsibility
in Relation to National Health. The first letter (of the nine)
starts by observing how few live to a full ripe old age, even in
Speyside where the writer had been brought up, and which the Queen
had just visited. This state of affairs is not, however, to be accepted
passively. Disease and premature death, are not foreordained, but
indeed anti-scriptural (p.14). What is needed is far more instruction,
especially amongst mothers and nursery maids in sanitary knowledge,
advice which he was shortly afterwards to develop further in his
publications The Nursery Hydropathic Guide, and The Ladies
Guide to Health.30 Munro challenged the view held
by some of the ultra-orthodox that providence is to be accepted,
and outcomes are given. Man can, he argued, and should make a difference.
Agriculture is now much more productive than it used to be, not
because the Creator has become more generous, but because of better
management ['we have become more enlightened and painstaking receivers
of his every ready bounty']. So it should be with health; what was
once accepted, can now be improved, and premature deaths avoided.
Key improvements would include better ventilation, better diet,
play for children and exercise for all. Munro believed that good
health would be to the benefit not just of the individual but to
all society;' a perfectly healthy man is rarely a disobliging neighbour'.
His analysis shows his rejection of determinism, and an ability
to argue clearly and sensibly. In the preparatory note he said that
he had thought of the letters being published anonymously, as the
arguments about the sanitary question might be weakened by his known
and controversial position on hydropathy31, he having
recently been involved in a sharp debate of the value - or otherwise
- of his M.D degree. The Letters raise a range of issues,
including the need to take care of, and keep in balance, the health
of body and mind, a theme to which Munro often returned. One of
his last publications was on this topic; entitled Mental and
Bodily Health: Their Interdependence (Glasgow 1882).
Parallel to his interests in hydropathy and health ran his commitment
to temperance. Munro was a frequent lecturer in the 1840s and the
1850s to the Aberdeen Temperance Society, a simple, clear and thorough
speaker who insisted on abstinence from alcohol in all its forms.
According to Cook32, himself a leading light in the temperance
cause, amongst the speakers at the New Year temperance soirees in
Aberdeen were Munro and Blackie, who at that time was another enthusiast
for hydropathy. 'No one was more willing or acceptable as a lecturer
to the Aberdeen Temperance Society during its earlier years than
the Rev. Alexander Munro. Dr Munro was early identified with the
Temperance Movement and did much for its promotion. As a lecturer
he was simple, clear and thorough. As an authority on health and
the care of the body he insisted on abstinence from alcohol in all
its forms. His appearance at once secured the confidence of his
hearers. The open pleasant face, lit up with a smile... a happy
temperament..' Despite the other demands on his time, this interest
remained a continuing priority. On his move to Forres, where he
took charge of the new Hydro there, Munro very quickly became involved
in temperance work there, becoming chairman of the local total abstinence
society.
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| Moffat Hydro in
its heyday, c. 1910. |
But it is as a figure in the hydropathic movement that Munro deserves
the most recognition. Quite when or where Munro first came across
hydropathy is not known, although he was certainly familiar with
the circle at Glasgow around the Hydropathic Society there. During
the typhus epidemic there in the winter months of 1847 and the following
spring, when the Society campaigned for the Fever Hospital to adopt
hydropathic therapy, Munro came at their invitation to deliver several
lectures. And Munro was to maintain a monthly surgery in Glasgow
for many years. It may have been their support that encouraged him
to become the editor of a new publication, cheap and practical,
in August 1848, the Journal of Health, in which, according
to his introductory address, hydropathy was to be the chief topic.33
It ran for two years, and was reasonably successful, the circulation
rising from an initial 800 to over 2000. But as he lacked medical
training, the medical queries that readers sent in, or so Munro
said, were referred by him for a professional opinion to a practitioner
in England, who was probably Macleod of Ben Rhydding. That this
was a deficiency, he recognized, and in January 1850 he informed
his readers that 'the Editor is at present in attendance on a course
of medical study, with a view to being able to exert a greater influence
in the promotion of health, and this with the cordial consent and
co-operation of his congregation.'34 The record shows
him to have attended courses at Marischal College over the next
few years in Chemistry and Anatomy (1849-1850), Surgery, Practice
of Medicine, and Midwifery (1851-2 and 1853-53) but he did not take
the full degree. The true extent of his medical qualifications,
and the value of the M.D. which he acquired from a New York College
of somewhat uncertain standing - the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic
College - was to be a serious issue during the early 1860s. Significantly,
as part of the desire for respectability, his son Alexander Begg
Munro was to qualify as a doctor at Aberdeen in 1870, and to assist
his father as physician in residence at both Waverley and Cluny
Hill.35 This was a pattern which was general: amongst
other hydropathic pioneers whose sons obtained a recognised medical
qualification were Archibald Hunter, Andrew Philp and William Crombie.
However much he had achieved in the hydropathic field with the
launch of his journal in 1848, Munro was not to remain merely a
medical journalist and home practitioner as his starting to undertake
the academic study of medicine showed. In early 1850 he opened a
hydropathic establishment at Angusfield, a small-scale venture.
At the opening dinner held on the 23 Feb 1850, Professor Blackie
was in the chair. Just back from Dunoon, about which he had written
a well-received series of articles in the Aberdeen Press,
he may well have been the person who induced Munro to take this
bold step. Blackie had persuaded Dr. East to make some exploratory
visits to Aberdeen, but East's eyes were turning elsewhere (he shortly
thereafter went to Leicester), and Munro was the man on the spot
to take charge - with his wife as Matron - of what was a small venture.
Better-off patients stayed in the hydro but what were described
as 'persons of limited means' could be accommodated at Skene, with
either Munro or some of his congregation on a reduced tariff of
12s 6d to 15/- a week as against 25/- to 30/- at Angusfield.36
The Census of March 1851 shows him still resident there, and described
in the enumeration schedule as Superintendent Minister Blackshields
and Conductor of Hydropathic Establishment.37 The initial
reception was sufficiently good for Munro to remove in the spring
of that year to Lochhead, Woodhill Road, which was a much larger
undertaking, being able to accommodate up to forty (later 60) patients.
Munro was behind the addition of Turkish baths, a feature which
a number of the most progressive hydros had. These opened early
in 1861 and the 'bulbous domes and gilded minarets' that the architect
was required to deploy must have made a strange contrast with the
normal style of Aberdeen buildings. This Loch-Head establishment
was to be highly influential. There were a few failures - the editor
of the Aberdeen Herald died there in November 1862 while
undergoing treatment - but there were many more cures and recoveries.
An Aberdonian emigrant resident in Australia, when describing his
successful treatment for fever in April 1891 at the Wickham Terrace
Hydro in Brisbane, traced his conversion to hydropathy to a stay
thirty-nine years previously in 1852 as a patient at 'Dr Munro's
hydropathic establishment'38. The expansion of business
required support for Munro and he was joined by a newly qualified
doctor from Edinburgh, Dr William Meikle, in 1857. Sadly, he died
there in November of the following year but the family connection
was not to lapse; his younger brother Thomas, taking his place,
who secured his M.D. from Aberdeen in 1861. The latter 1850s and
1860s was a period of tremendous activity on all fronts; Munro edited
a revived journal of hydropathy called the Aberdeen Water Cure
Journal and Sanitary Reformer, issued a series of well-regarded
hydropathic pamphlets, and compiled a Family Hydropathic Guide:
A Practical Water Cure Manual, which appeared in 1870. His address
on the title page was given as 'Melrose', Munro having moved on
twice from Aberdeen since the Nursery Hydropathic Guide and
its partner, The Ladies Guide to Health (otherwise known
as the Maternity Hydropathic Guide).
Both of these guides were published in 1864, bearing the address
'Hydropathic Establishment, Lochhead, Aberdeen'. But that year was
to see his partnership with Meikle dissolved, with each going his
own way to a new venture. Meikle moved to Crieff, and Munro, giving
up all his pastoral duties, to Forres, to a new purpose built hydro
where he was to be full-time as the doctor in charge, Loch-head
being abandoned. Munro had been interested in a move some years
before, and had been exploring possibilities at Bridge of Allan
in December 1861. What drew him to Forres was an exceptional financial
deal, combined with the lure of a purpose-built hydro, rather than
the adapted buildings of Loch-head. The local promoters of Cluny
Hill reckoned on Munro's 'magnetic influence'39 drawing
visitors from all over Scotland. From there he was later to move
to the very large and new Waverley Hydro at Melrose for a few years,
at the invitation of John Davie, and then back again to Forres.
He then had a final phase of peripatetic hydropathic lecturing,
though there was talk of a venture at Gilsland, before moving south
to Devon and a new hydro at Bishop's Teighton (near Dawlish) where
he died suddenly in January 1883 at the age of 70. His writings
alone would have justified his high place in the hydropathic movement,
and the reality is that his life is a template of the movement,
illustrating as it does the close connection between temperance
and hydropathy. Important though he was, it is necessary, however,
to stress that Munro was no isolated figure: Kirk and Stewart were
two other figures from the same mould in the Evangelical Union forge.
It is an interesting question as to what was it that made EU and
Congregational ministers so susceptible to hydropathy: a willingness
to take unconventional lines in matters of health, as well as of
church order and theology? They were certainly people of extraordinary
energy, and mostly very good advertisements for what they preached
and practiced, living to a ripe old age.
While undoubtedly Munro, and others like him were interested in
hydropathy for its financial advantages to them through the successful
operation of hydros as businesses, Munro was firmly convinced of
the curative value of hydropathy for all, regardless of their income
or class. (As well as for horses!) Munro, and he was not alone in
this, time and time again showed an uneasiness over the de facto
rationing of provision to those with the means to pay for the lengthy
treatments required. He made repeated attempts either to get official
funds for hydropathic treatment for the poor, and repeatedly called
for hospitals to recognise hydropathy or to fund a hydro hospital
for the poor as John Smedley had done at Matlock. Others felt the
same: we need less palatial hydropathics40 was the way
that it was put by one authority. It was an argument that played
well with many of his wider constituency41, but aroused
less enthusiasm from the investors whose dividends he threatened.
Munro's obituary42 noted that he was 'constantly advertising
cheap rates for ministers of the Gospel and professional men generally,
and if ever he differed from his Directors, it was generally on
the question of liberal terms for invalids of limited incomes'.
Some response there was in the emergence at Rothesay and elsewhere
of hydropathic boarding houses but it was a theme to which Munro
returned time and time again, as he did to the cost - in his view
needless - of unnecessary deaths through bad health practice. There
were other causes which he held dear, and, for example, the question
of women and medical education was another on which he and others
of his circle expressed radical views. Munro had his degree from
an American college at which Lydia Fowler was professor of physiology
and which turned out a stream of lady graduates. Munro firmly approved:
'it must be admitted that for their own sex at least, and for young
children, women are better qualified for the duties of physician
than men'.43
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7 Conclusion
While, there was, as has been shown in this study, a very close
connection between temperance and hydropathy, it does not do to
overdraw the connection. The relationship between temperance and
hydropathy was a two-way street, but not a closed system. There
were those in the temperance movement who continued to place their
faith in orthodox medicine, or at least only flirted with hydropathy
as one of a series of alternatives. The Christian News gave
room for advertisements relating to homeopathy, and even mesmerism.
Not all hydropathic supporters were teetotal and temperance, nor
were they only UP, UF or EU. Robert Brown of Paisley, a firm patron
of hydros, was staunchly establishment, elder in the Old Kirk in
Paisley and not averse to a glass of whiskey. The connection was
strongest in the first few decades when there were only a handful
of hydros, and these were mostly small curative centres. But the
expansion of the 1870s, concurrent with a growing support for temperance
more widely anchored in denominational terms, ironically coincided
with a dilution of the original bedrock beliefs of the movement.
Many of the new hydros were much more centres of leisure and pleasure,
with baths, but not the same old strict medical regime. The infectious
sick were actually discouraged and the place of the doctor, once
central, became subordinate to the rising role of the resident entertainer.
Nor were all hydros dry, especially those established in the later
nineteenth century. Nor were all the clientele quite as teetotal
as they might have been, a change at which some administrations
actually connived. When the Atholl Palace Hydro at Pitlochry was
taken over in December 1914 by a school evacuated from Yorkshire,
the girls were surprised to find the basement lockers in which they
were to stow their games equipment full of empty whiskey bottles.
But it is noticeable that the older hydros, with their conservative
regime, fared much better than the rash of new ventures of the mania
in the later 1870s. The EU group of Forres, Aberdeen, Seamill and
Melrose (and the related ventures at Bridge of Allan and Crieff)
all continued to be financially successful, whereas most of the
new failed, to the subsequent advantage of Andrew Philp. The teetotal
clientele were loyal.
That the temperance cause and the hydropathic movement were closely
linked - Haughton's twins - has been the thrust of this study. It
is confirmed in the experience of Ireland, where the collapse of
the temperance movement there after the Famine, and the death of
the Apostle of temperance, Father Mathew, was reflected in the weakness
of the hydropathic cause thereafter. Not for Ireland, despite as
good a start in the 1840s, any expansion to match that in Scotland,
or the North of England. Temperance was, to adjust the metaphor,
more mother of hydropathy than sister; without that firm base hydropathy
as a movement could not develop.
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Footnotes
1 Letter dated 26th October 1847 and published in the The Water
Journal, and Hygienic magazine, Vol. 1., p.188.
2 Macleod's career, and the place of Ben Rhydding in the hydropathic
movement is discussed in A. J. Durie, 'The Business of Hydropathy
in the North of England, c 1850-1930,' Northern History,
Spring 2002 (forthcoming).
3 A good general introduction to hydropathy is E. S. Turner, Taking
the Cure, (London 1967) especially chapters 10-13. More recent
work has included Susan E. Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed. The Water
Cure Movement and Women's Health (Philadelphia 1987), and Robon
Price, 'Hydropathy in England 1840-70', Medical History,
Vol. 25., (1981) , pp. 269-280. Specifically on the movement in
Scotland, see A.J. Durie (with J. Bradley and M. Dupree) Water
is Best. The Hydropathic Movement in Scotland, 1840-1940 (Tuckwell
Press, East Linton, 2002, forthcoming).
4 Balbirnie was an authority on lung complaints, and published
amongst other works The Philosophy of the Water Cure (Bath,
1845).
5 John Gibbs, Letters from Grafenberg, (London 1847), pp. 229-230.
6 Matthew's letter to Claridge, from Cork and dated the 22nd September
1842, was reproduced facsimile in the Fifth edition of Claridge's
Hydropathy or The Cold Water Cure, (London, 1853). See also
Colm Kerrigan, Father Mathew and the Irish Temperance Movement
1838-1849, (Cork 1992).
7 Note the advertisement in The Athenaeum in March 1843
that a middle-aged physician was about to visit Mr. Priessnitz's
establishment in order to make himself personally acquainted with
the water treatment ... happy to take charge of a Patient desirous
of proceeding there.'
8 Chamber's Journal, 7 September 1878. P. 561-563 "Hydropathic
Establishments'.
9 Healthy Life, January 1895, Correspondence and Answers,
p.8.
10 Healthy Life and Hydropathic News, May 1890, p. 62.
11 Guy Christie Crieff Hydro 1868-2000, (Second revision,
Aberdeen 2000) p.144.
12 The Scottish Temperance Journal, December 1842, p. 204.
13 The Scottish Temperance Review, August 1850, p.354: report
of the Public Meeting held in Glasgow on the 8th of July.
14 Daniel Logan, 'Drink and the Temperance Movement in Nineteenth-Century
Scotland', University of Edinburgh Ph. D thesis, 1976, p.38.
15 See The Dunfermline Journal of 4th May 1889, 'Sketch
of the Life of a Worthy Citizen'. See also Reminiscences of Dunfermline
Sixty Years Ago by Alex Stewart (Edinburgh 1886), 'The Temperance
Cause and Mr. John Davie,' pp.102-105.
16 W.D McNaughton, The Scottish Congregational Ministry,
1794-1993, (Glasgow 1993), William Crombie.
17 See For example, The Christian News, 'The new cure for
intemperance', 21 June 1879.
18 Awarded an honorary M.D. by the Archbishop of Canterbury for
his services to temperance.
19 The Christian News, (2 April 1881) in congratulating
Dr John Becket on his new appointment at Windermere Hydro, (having
previously been at Dunblane), noted that his father was 'an old
Evangelical Unionist, and at present a devoted member of the E.U.
Church, Cathcart Road, Glasgow.'
20 Christie, Crieff Hydro, pp 18-19. To his disgust, they were
playing cards all evening.
21 Provost Brown of Paisley, Autobiography, (forthcoming), ed.
F. Hay.
22 Mitchell Library. See William Adamson, The Life of the Rev.
James Morison, D.D., (London, 1898).
23 The Cluny Hill Hydropathic Establishment, [Prospectus], (Elgin,
1869).
24 I owe this reference to Mrs. Elma Lindsay.
25 James Caw, Reminiscences of Forty Years on the Staff of a
Hydro, 1873-1913 (Crieff, 1914), p.28.
26 This section draws on a variety of primary sources; obituaries,
and the biography by his son-in-law, Dr Bowman, published in the
Evangelical Repository Vol. 1, 1883, pp 203-216. See also
Richard Metcalfe, The Rise and Progress of Hydropathy in England
and Scotland (London 1912), chapters 12 and 13, 'Introduction
into Scotland' esp p. 58.
27 See for example, Aberdeen Public Library, 'Discourse delivered
in the Congregational Chapel, St Paul Street, by the Rev A. Munro,
Pastor of the Congregational Church, Blackhills, Skene, (in reply
to the Rev Davidson of the Free Church, 25 Jan 1853)'. Also see
A drop in the ocean of theological controversy. A discourse in
reply to a lecture on Morisonianism. (24pp Aberdeen, 1853).
28 The Aberdeen Water Cure Journal, vol.1, (1859), 'Correspondence
and comments,' pp.59-60.
29 It was significantly printed at the Christian News Office, Trongate,
Glasgow.
30 Both of these, by the Rev Alexander Munro of the Loch-head Hydropathic
Establishment, were published in 1864.
31 'The public relation sustained of late years to the 'Water Cure'
at Aberdeen, [might] prejudice the minds of any against what was
to be advanced on the sanitary question'.
32 A. S. Cook, Pen Sketches and reminiscences of Sixty Years
(Aberdeen, 1901), pp. 89-90.
33 Mitchell Library, The Journal of Health, Introductory
Address, p.3. Munro insisted that the journal's attentions would
be wider than just hydropathic treatments: '"Hydropathy - including
as the term has of late come to be understood, such matters as Air,
Exercise, and Mental repose, will be the chief topic. But no topic
will be overlooked that has an important bearing on the great question
of health. The field over which the editor will have to travel,
is therefore wide.'
34 The Journal of Health, vol.2 1849-1850, Incidental Matters,
p. 99.
35 Born at Skene on 6 April 1846, Alexander was educated at Aberdeen
Grammar School, and then at the University of Aberdeen in Arts 1862-1865;
graduating M.B.C.M., in 1870 and M.D. in 1872.His career took him
to Waverley and Cluny Hydros before moving after 1874 to Bradford
where he died in February 1894.
36 The Aberdeen Journal, July 3 1850.
37 Aberdeen Public Library, census 1851, 144, Book 5, District
38, p.4. I am grateful to Ms Rhona Jack who tracked down and deciphered
this reference.
38 Healthy Life, August 1891. P.E. Gordon, 'Hydropathy in
the Treatment of Typhoid Fever.' (from the Brisbane Courier, 7 May
1891.)
39 The Forres Gazette, 16 August 1865. Extract from the
Speech of the Chairman of the Cluny Hill Hydropathic Company, at
the official opening of the hydro.
40 Healthy Life, August 1887, p. 96, citing The Reformer.
41 A letter writer to the Elgin Courier, 10 June 1864, concluded
a letter in support of hydropathy by urging his readers that they
should give thanks that the 'The philanthropic Dr Munro is so near
our vicinity'.
42 The Evangelical Repository (vol. 1., 1883), p. 215.
43 The Water Cure Journal, Vol. 3., (1861); pp. 153-158
'Medical education for ladies'. See also in similar vein pp. 186-190
'Lady Physicians'.
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The sitz bath, a standard treatment at the
hydros.