This text offers a modern approach to hydrotherapy— the use of water, ice, steam, and hot and cold temperatures to improve or maintain health— as performed by massage therapists. Authored by an experienced massage therapist, this book presents clear, uncomplicated explanations of how hydrotherapy affects the body, and then demonstrates a wide variety of hydrotherapy treatments. The book suggests how massage therapists may use hydrotherapy treatments before and during massage sessions, or give these treatments to clients to do between sessions for faster and better results. The author presents real-life examples and case studies obtained through interviews with massage therapists, athletic trainers, physical therapists, naturopathic doctors, aquatic therapists, and medical doctors treating patients in a medical hydrotherapy setting.

This book covers the history of for-profit institutions for the treatment of drug and alcohol habits which were established prior to the Repeal of Prohibition, as well as a number of miscellaneous entities such as mail-order opium cures. These include the famous Charles B. Towns Hospital and its notorious belladonna cure. Although many people know that Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson was treated with the belladonna cure at the Charles B. Towns Hospital, few are aware that Towns was an insurance salesman with an eighth grade education and no medical training who lied about inventing an addiction cure that he got from someone else, that Towns had also been a stockbroker who was convicted of grand larceny after embezzling money for his clients, and that Towns only decided to make a buck in the addiction cure business after being banned from stock trading. Furthermore, in the 1910s, Towns proposed that state government should force drug addicts to take his cure against their wills, and that death camps should be built to exterminate anyone who relapsed after taking his cure. This book also tells the story of Harry Hubbell Kane, who founded the De Quincey Home for the cure of drug addicts in 1881. After the De Quincey Home failed in 1883, Kane invented and marketed a notorious patent medicine named Scotch Oats Essence. Scotch Oats Essence was comprised of one third alcohol and each ounce contained about a half a grain of morphine. It seems that Kane had decided that if he couldn't make money by curing drug addicts, he could make a lot of money by creating them. These are only two of hundreds of addiction treatment facilities which existed prior to the founding of AA: some good, some bad, and some indifferent. These stories and many more can be found in this book.

NATUROPATHIC PHYSICAL MEDICINE provides a philosophical naturopathic perspective, as well as practical clinical applications, for manual and physical approaches to health care. A wide range of bodywork and movement approaches and modalities are evaluated in relation to their ability to be appropriately used in naturopathic treatment and rehabilitation settings. The model of care emphasised in this text recognizes that naturopathically oriented therapeutic interventions usually focus on achieving one or all of the following: enhancement of function so that the person, system or part, can better self-regulate in response to adaptive demands; modification or removal of adaptive load factors; and symptomatic relief without creation of significant additional adaptive changes.

Mark Twain has always been America's spokesman, and his comments on a wide range of topics continue to be accurate, valid, and frequently amusing. His opinions on the medical field are no exception. While Twain's works, including his popular novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, are rich in medical imagery and medical themes derived from his personal experiences, his interactions with the medical profession and his comments about health, illness, and physicians have largely been overlooked. In Mark Twain and Medicine, K. Patrick Ober remedies this omission. The nineteenth century was a critical time in the development of American medicine, with much competition among the different systems of health care, both traditional and alternative. Not surprisingly, Mark Twain was right in the middle of it all. He experimented with many of the alternative care systems that were available in his day--in part because of his frustration with traditional medicine and in part because he hoped to find the "perfect" system that would bring health to his family. Twain's commentary provides a unique perspective on American medicine and the revolution in medical systems that he experienced firsthand. Ober explores Twain's personal perspective in this area, as he expressed it in fiction, speeches, and letters. As a medical educator, Ober explains in sufficient detail and with clarity all medical and scientific terms, making this volume accessible to the general reader. Ober demonstrates that many of Twain's observations are still relevant to today's health care issues, including the use of alternative or complementary medicine in dealing with illness, the utility of placebo therapies, and the role of hope in the healing process. Twain's evaluation of the medical practices of his era provides a fresh, humanistic, and personalized view of the dramatic changes that occurred in medicine through the nineteenth century and into the first decade of the twentieth. Twain scholars, general readers, and medical professionals will all find this unique look at his work appealing.

The definitive reference book for alternative medicine, health and healing, nutrition, herbs and herbal medicine, and natural health care is fully updated in this third edition. First published in 1985, Better Health through Natural Healing has become one of the most successful and authoritative resources of its type, with more than 1.5 million copies sold worldwide. Since the original publication of this comprehensive guide, alternative therapies have become more and more accepted by the mainstream, and patients and practitioners of the wider medical community are embracing complementary medicine as an effective treatment option for a range of medical conditions. This third edition has been fully revised by Dr. Ross Trattler with the assistance of his son, osteopath Shea Trattler, to encompass recent developments in holistic medicine and healing. The first part of the book clearly explains the principles of natural medicine, including diet, osteopathy, naturopathy, botanical medicine, hydrotherapy, physiotherapy, and homoeopathy. The second part offers practical advice for the treatment of over 100 common diseases and ailments that individuals and families face. The A-Z compendium ranges from acne and alcoholism to menstrual disorders and migraines to warts and whooping cough. A comprehensive self-help guide to natural medicine, Better Health through Natural Healing is an essential reference book for health care practitioners and for anyone seeking to heal illness effectively with natural treatments.

This book examines alternative healing practices in American popular culture. From traditional folk approaches to more recent developments, it discusses the rise and fall of more than 100 popular approaches to addressing both physical ailments and mental health needs. Offering insightful accounts of everything from aging prevention to voodoo & Santería, Alternative Healing in American History: An Encyclopedia from Acupuncture to Yoga situates each popular approach in the history and culture of health and wellness in America. Moreover, the book shows that "orthodox" medicine and unconventional approaches may have more in common than many people think, because both are subject to the changing nature of the medical understanding and the strength of their appeal to consumers. While the main focus is on remedies lying outside the medical mainstream, the book also highlights how many widely accepted therapeutic treatments of the past—for example, "the water cure" (hydrotherapy) or lobotomy (psychosurgery)—fell out of favor and were quickly forgotten. Besides examining popular healing techniques, the book also explores the changing nature of the medical marketplace and how once-standard treatments (e.g., leeching, psychoanalysis) have had their ups and downs. The book comprises five chronological sections covering time periods from pre-1900 to the present.

Modern spas are wellness resorts that offer beauty treatments, massages and complementary therapies. Victorian spas were sanitariums, providing "water cure" treatments supplemented by massage, vibration, electricity and radioactivity. Rooted in the palliative health reforms of the early 19th century, spas of the Victorian Age grew out of the hydrotherapy institutions of the 1840s--an alternative to the horrors of bleeding and purging. The regimen focused on diet, rest, cessation of alcohol and foods that upset the stomach, stress reduction and plenty of water. The treatments, though sometimes of a dubious nature, formed the transition from the primitive methods of "heroic medicine" to the era of scientifically based practices.