Talk:R. T. Claridge

First vandal attack? Maybe, maybe not
This article has had its first vandal attack. The current result is that it no longer has the links to it that it previously had. The same editor who created an erroneous redirect has now tagged the article as an orphan, given the link stuff-up that has occurred. I have considerable experience with human behaviour in some of it's less salutary forms, and none of this behaviour looks like that of good-faith editing. Wotnow (talk) 03:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Update: There has been a resolution of sorts, which probably benefits the article overall anyway. I should also concede that I could be wrong regarding a vandal attack. The original renaming was made without any discussion beforehand, making it look somewhat arbitrary, and the return to place a tag which would not have been justified before the renaming made it look suspicious (there are people in Wikipedia who do that sort of thing as we all know), it is quite possible the amendments were made in good faith, just with poor etiquette. We can all be guilty of that. Wotnow (talk) 13:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Misleading orphan tag removed
The same editor who created the erroneous redirect conveniently returned and placed an 'orphan' tag in the article. Prior to this vandalistic-looking behaviour, the article was in fact linked from other articles, and they all worked. Articles with links include: Hydrotherapy; Vincenz Priessnitz; Asphalt; Frederick Walter Simms; James Manby Gully; Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, 2nd Baronet; James Currie; Water cure (therapy); Rotunda Hospital (authorlink); Sebastian Kneipp (authorlink). Wotnow (talk) 04:34, 28 January 2010 (UTC) Other links found: Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton; Cubitt Town; Spa. Wotnow (talk) 07:18, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Update: I have amended the links in the articles so they link directly to this article once again. Ironically, the net effect of all the above is probably beneficial to the article anyway, with a bunch of redirects to take care of various spellings. Wotnow (talk) 13:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Retired references
After saving this comment, I will save a change to the article, in which I have removed a citation for an article on a website that appears to be either defunct or for some reason inaccessible. The article may or may not become available online again, but regardless, it still physically exists, having been originally delivered as a paper in 2007.

Rather than simply removing the reference so that casual readers or future editors don't know it ever existed without checking earlier versions, I am 'retiring' the reference to this page.

Should other online citations become unavailable in future, editors are requested to try one of two things first: (a) attempt to update the url if it is something as simple as that; or (b) find another source for the information, which should always be possible. Editors experienced in content research for articles should be able to do either or both. If a link can't be fixed, please 'retire the reference to this section after finding an alternative source. Every citation in this article pertains to information that physically exists, and existed pre-internet. That won't change unless society/societies collapse completely (by which time Wikipedia will be the last thing on anyone's mind).

If citations placed here subsequently become available via another link, they can always be replaced with the new link. Wotnow (talk) 03:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Off-topic material removed
I have removed the following from the article, as it appears to pertain to Hydropathy in general or other practitioners rather than R. T. Claridge, and thus, lest this become a coatrack or WP:OR, is better off omitted or perhaps added to other articles (if not present already). --Animalparty! (talk) 21:41, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Hydropathy in the United States of America
In the United States of America, the first hydropathic facility has been attributed to Joel Shew (1816–1855), in 1843 or 1844, and to Russell Thacher Trall ('R.T. Trall'. 1812–1877) in 1844. Metcalfe credits Dr Charles Munde with the first facility, although this is not supported by Munde himself, or by historical evidence now available. Munde describes himself as becoming familiar with Priessnitz' methods around 1836, and later migrating from Germany, where he treated scarlet fever cases in Dresden during the winter of 1845–46. Munde's son recalls that the family went to the area now called Florence, Massachusetts "in the early fifties", after his father had struggled "for nearly a year in New York in search of a practice". A blind colored man named David Ruggles had previously set up a water cure practice, and after his death in 1849, Charles Munde learned "of the opportunity to take up his favorite method", which led him to pick up where Ruggles left off, thence to the naming of Florence, and accordingly, the name of the Florence Water Cure, also called the Munde Water Cure.

Following its introduction to the U.S., hydrotherapy, as it later became known, was employed by John Harvey Kellogg at Battle Creek Sanitarium, which opened in 1866. However, "the crude, but thoroughgoing methods of the original system of Priessnitz, which prospered among the hardy mountaineers of Austrian Silesia, were much too strenuous for more delicately organized and pampered American invalids. This fact, together with the crass empiricism which characterised the use of water in the first half of the last century, when water-cures were for a time almost a fad, brought water into general disrepute as a curative means, and greatly hindered the scientific development of this invaluable agent".

Hydropathy marketing disputed, not its principles or mechanisms
Kellogg's comments echo that of earlier medical commentators, who took issue not with the underlying principles hydropathy, nor the mechanisms which were not yet fully understood, but with the way in which it was promoted, and indeed, marketed. For example, in November 1881, the British Medical Journal noted that hydropathy was a specific instance, or "particular case", of general principles of thermodynamics. That is, "the application of heat and cold in general", as it applies to physiology, mediated by hydropathy. What was at issue was "that the application of such rules having in general received so special a form has led to forms of treatment called by certain special and almost sectarian names, and too often associated with certain places", and worse, "with the use of certain special, though quite common, waters". Indeed, while the underlying principles of hydropathy "certainly do belong to the general practice of medicine" it had, through the advertising of public companies and other even more objectionable practices, come to be associated in the public mind with so much mysticism as almost to justify the accusation of quackery and delusion. Yet this is happily dying out; and, no doubt, as the education of the public increases, it will tend to disappear altogether, especially if broad principles be kept steadily before the public rather than narrow and isolated details".

One writer noted that "it is manifest that a great remedial power lies unutilized in a genuine hydropathy, and it calls urgently for earnest study and research", and "Not, be it observed, that hydropathy is a water treatment after all, but that water is the medium for the application of heat and cold to the body". Its utility in that application was not in dispute. Rather, there was a lack of data from reliable scientific investigation into physiological mechanisms, and the means "by which the effects of hydropathy can be measured and controlled". Probably however, nothing has done more to repel earnest research than the suspicion of quackery which taints the practice that ordinarily goes by this name. Huge establishments can only be made to pay by full houses well kept up, and this is found as a rule to require that their calling be magnified in ways which are at once too special and popular to be scientific and genuine. The British Medical Journal concurred with this writer on all counts, noting that there were "simple generalisations" that could be deduced regarding the effects of heat and cold on physiological processes, and lamenting the lack of such generalisations by "therapeutical authorities", let alone scientific investigations.

Since then, there has been considerable research and advances in the understanding of underlying physiological mechanisms, including those of circulation and thermoregulation,  and their application to hydrotherapy.