Hydrotherapy

• Pressure jet showers, lightning fonts
• Kinotherapeutic

• Balneology

Hydrotherapy (Greek ύδρο, idro, " water ", from Ancient Greek ὕδωρ, hydor, "water" and θεραπία, THERAPIA, " therapy " ) is the methodical application of water to the treatment of acute or chronic pain, for the stabilization of body functions ( Resilience ), prevention, rehabilitation and / or regeneration. Above all, the stimulus temperature of the water is used, less the pressure, or buoyancy as a therapeutic stimulus.

Water is used in all three states: ice, cold / temperate / warm water and steam. Hydrotherapy is part of the " classical" naturopathy.

Application forms

• Washings
• Wraps, dressings and compresses, packs
• Fonts
• Bathrooms ( full and partial baths) with and without additives
• Sauna, steam baths

Treatment methods

• Treading water: the patient through trudge a basin with about knee high, cold water.
• Kneipp fonts or fonts Flat: low pressure aimed a jet of water on arms, legs, back, face or entire body of the patient standing.
• Pressure jet fonts or fonts flash: a water jet with moderate or heavy pressure directed on the body (up to 3 bar).
• Wraps and packs: on a damp cloth interior that covers either only individual parts of the body or more than 50 % of the body surface is covered with a dry cloth interior and exterior.
• Rubbings: a damp cloth is placed on the affected body part and rubbed by hand to stimulate blood circulation.
• Kinotherapeutic: be with spinal disorders or fractures in the water gymnastic exercises, sometimes performed in combination with underwater jet massages.
• Bathrooms: one distinguishes partial baths, which are exposed arms and legs cold and / or hot water, and brush baths, in which the patient is massaged with the brush, or the Stanger, in which the water passes in the tub DC. The gentle current stimulus relieves pain and improves circulation.
• Continuous shower: Hot water is applied through a shower head or a shower cap up to an hour.
• Vapors: the patients are exposed to hot steam, which is possibly mixed with herbs, even in saunas or Turkish baths ( hammam ).
• Arm baths: cold for nervous heart problems, hypertension; warm ( 36-37 degrees) until hot (38 - 42Grad ) in rheumatic complaints, and poor circulation.

Thermally defined Badformen: cold <33 ° C - thermoneutral - 38 ° C> hot

Effects

The application of cold water first cause local vasoconstriction (narrowing ) of the skin vessels, then vasodilation (vasodilatation ) with reactive warming. Assume an analgesic and anti-inflammatory effect in acute inflammatory processes. A general circulatory and respiratory excitation is supposed to be another consequence of the prolonged use of a cold water application. In the application of warm water it will only be dilatation of the cutaneous vessels and thereby to an increased blood flow to the muscles.

Historical

Water treatments have been around for millennia part of the bathing culture. So already the Greeks believed that water possesses healing power. The Romans built public baths, which developed for recreational and social centers of the cities ( = forerunner of today's spas ). As a father of hydrotherapy, the Roman freeman Antonius Musa is considered, which is reported that he has cured 23 BC the Emperor Augustus with cold baths.

As actual founder of the " water treatment " or hydrotherapy in Germany the Lower Silesian Medical Siegmund Hahn apply (1664-1742) and especially his son Johann Siegmund Hahn (1696-1773), whose book of 1738 only - 100 years later - in 1849, the then philosophy student Sebastian Kneipp (1821-1897) found in the Munich court library and it later developed his own therapy. Both " taps " were Stadtphysikus in Schweidnitz.

Vincenz Prießnitz (1799-1851) treated his own discomfort with cold compresses and succeeded. He founded a treatment center, where he tried to toughen his patients with drastic methods. For example, he strapped it firmly on iron chairs and let icy water from 6m height shower down on them.

Father Sebastian Kneipp turned to less violent methods of Resilience. He had also successfully tested for the first time cold water treatment to yourself. To treat his tuberculosis, he went every day into the ice-cold Danube. Its hydro- therapeutic measures, he added by the herbal medicine.

In addition to medical laymen as S. Kneipp and Heinrich Friedrich Francke ( Pseodonym JH Rausse ) in ( Bad ) Stuer in Mecklenburg were then doctors as "water doctors" as Theodor Hahn in St. Gallen, inter alia, William Petri Bad Laubach am Rhein, August Friedrich Erfurth Feldberg ( Mecklenburg ) and Josef Schindler in Tiefenbach / Bohemia, Christoph Hartung of Hartungen ( 1849-1917 ), a hydropathic establishment Dr.v. Hartungen in Riva / Lake Garda and later in the Silesian Bad Grafenberg who were acquainted with their water cure successes. This therapy was based on the assumption that many disease states have their cause in the effeminacy and would counteract by Abhärtungsmaßnahmen of effeminacy.

The decisive breakthrough helped the hydrotherapy in Germany on a practical basis Karl Friedrich Ferdinand Runge (1835-1882) in his water - hospital in Nassau ad Lahn and in Austria - Hungary on scientific and theoretical basis of the spa doctor and herbalist Wilhelm Winternitz, who himself had a water - cure establishment in Kaltenleutgeben in Vienna and became professor of hydrotherapy as a full professor at the University of Vienna was the first physician in the German-speaking countries in 1899.

Quotes

From: Sebastian Kneipp, Thus you shall live! Hints and counsels for the healthy and the sick. 4th edition Kempten 1897, pp. 351ff. ( Facsimile edition: ISBN 3-88140-066-4 )