The Hydro-Electric Bath

During the 1930s the use of electricity for body treatments was quite prevalent, especially in England. A number of books were written between 1928 and 1938 on the subject of medical electricity. One of these, by Hugh Morris, M.D., Medical Electricity for Massage Students, draws upon his experience as an examiner for the Chartered Society of Massage and Medical Gymnastics and from many lectures given at the School of Massage at the Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester. His book is an excellent source of information about this very technical subject.

The use of electricity in the treatment of muscle and nerve conditions was based on the premise that stimulation of this sort helped maintain good circulation of blood supply, as well as prevent adhesions in tendon sheaths. In cases where voluntary movement was not possible - fractures, for example - electrical stimulation of the muscles provided the necessary movement to keep circulation going and prevent adhesions. There were several views about whether muscle contractions needed to be seen when applying electrical current, but most experts believed that they did not because the fibrils were moved by the current without shortening the muscle fibers as a whole, and this was sufficient to provide the needed therapy.

Hydro-electric bath treatments are not so common today in Europe, and are now virtually unknown in North America; they are a lost art. In the great bath-houses of America, represented by those on bath-house row in Arkansas' Hot Springs National Park, however, they were once quite common, as evidenced by the relics left from the bygone era of the post-Victorian age (1902-1920).

The main purpose of the hydro-electric bath was to provide "a very useful method of applying the electric current to large areas of the body," Morris wrote, adding that, "[i]t allows ... the painless application of much larger currents than is possible with the use of pads and electrodes." There were two kinds of electric baths: local and general. The local provided for treatment of smaller areas, such as the legs or arms only, while the general allowed for full-body treatments, or treatments of the upper or lower torso.

Electrical current transmitted through the medium of water also allowed the patient to be kept warm, and eliminated the need for spending a lot of time putting on bandages and removing them, which was often the case with local treatments. (In applying electrical current to the body without using the medium of water, bandages were applied to the afflicted area to be treated so that electric probes or pads could be applied within the bandage to help control voltage and prevent electrical burns on the skin.) And water, being an excellent conductor of electrical current, provided an uninterrupted contact with the body to which the voltage was applied.

Your body, which is made of 70 percent water, is also an excellent conductor of electricity. Since electricity seeks the shortest pathway to the ground, if you come in contact with an electric current it will jump to you, causing a painful, and sometimes fatal, shock. Bath tubs used for full-body hydro-electric treatments were specially designed to prevent the electricity from grounding into the earth and thus causing fatal electric shock to the patient. The legs were set upon rubber pads. The water pipes came from the ceiling or under the floor so the patient could not inadvertently touch them and become grounded. Water was placed in the tub prior to the patient entering and no additional water was allowed in the tub after the patient was immersed in it. Even the drain pipe and often the inlet water pipes had breaks in them so that no contiguous metal was running from the tub to an earth ground. And finally, the operator giving the bath was not allowed to touch the tub or the patient once the electrical current was turned on.

The electric current used in the hydro-electric baths was of several kinds: surging faradic, surging sinusoidal, constant current, interrupted galvanic current, or a combination of two types of current. The faradic is an alternating current, flowing for a time in one direction, then in the opposite direction, but it is an unequal phase of current that distinguishes it from the equal phase of alternating current, which is sinusoidal. Constant current is one in which the electrons flow in one direction between two points in a constant stream. The galvanic current is synonymous with constant current, except that it is interrupted or surged depending on the application.

Treatment using electrical current applied through the medium of water consists of using 100 degrees Fahrenheit tap water. The amount of water is important. Too much water reduces the flow of current to the patient's body, and too little water does not allow the affected areas to be treated. A milliammeter or the formation of bubbles of hydrogen at the cathode (the electrodes inserted into the water to provide the proper current) indicate the proper flow of current to the patient. Treatments last about half an hour, during which the electrical flow is gradually turned down until it is at zero when the treatment ends. The patient is then taken out of the tub and given a brisk rub with a towel. A cooling-down period is required to prevent chills. Treatments are usually given once a week or more, depending on the case. Tiredness or depression afterward indicates too much electrical current was applied.

This type of full-body bath was not widely used because of the dangers involved. So, other methods were devised for more local and safer treatments. One of these was the Schnee Four-Cell Bath. Control of current to each tub allows this hydro-electric bath to provide specialized treatment to each extremity. It also allows the patient to remain dressed. Current flowing through one arm may be exited through the leg or other arm, depending on the desired effect for the condition being treated.

Robert Noah Calvert is the founder and CEO of Massage Magazine. The material for this column comes from the World of Massage Museum's collection and Calvert's book, The History of Massage, published in February 2002 by Healing Arts Press.