When the Baths were first established the notion of taking a bath was heavily promoted as of medical benefit rather than simply for cleansing as we think of it today. For the purposes of this museum, the bathing sections will generally refer to wash baths – later called slipper baths – and the medical section will generally refer to more obvious treatments, although there will be some inevitable overlaps.
Self-administered enemas
An apparatus consisting of an elastic tube and pipe was attached to the water closet (toilet) of the original building of 1807 to enable patients to administer to themselves enemas of warm saline water merely by turning a stopcock in a descending pipe. The stopcock, it was claimed, also allowed the patient to regulate the quantity and force of the fluid with precision.
Dr Jameson, in the second edition of his Treatise on Cheltenham Waters (1809) stated that this apparatus would prove ‘extremely useful in obstinate bowel cases sent to Cheltenham from all parts of the kingdom’. It is not mentioned in the text of the third edition of the Treatise (1814) which may suggest it is no longer being used by this time.
Sudatory/hot air bath
The sudatory was a very small room in the original building of 1807 that was used to induce people to sweat which was supposedly useful for ‘obstinate chronic cases’. The room was lined with sheets of tin and could be filled with heated dry air or with vapour – in effect, one room that could be used as either a sauna or steam room as required.
The sudatory is clearly marked on a floorplan in Dr Jameson’s Treatise on Cheltenham Waters (second edition, 1809) but although the room is still present on a floorplan in the third edition of the Treatise (1814) it is no longer labelled as a sudatory. Neither is it referred to in the text which may suggest it is no longer being used by this time. Vapour baths were available throughout the 1820s-1850s and a hot air bath appears on the tariff lists from the 1830s onwards.
Cupping
We don’t know when this practice started at the Montpellier Baths but its first mention comes in an advert in Griffiths’ New Historical Description of Cheltenham (1826) and that mention is the single word cupping. This was once a very common process of bloodletting, dating back hundreds of years. Dry cupping involved placing warm glass cups on the skin to draw blood to the surface using a vacuum effect but the blood was not withdrawn. In wet cupping, the skin was punctured first to allow the vacuum or suction effect to actually draw out the blood. Unfortunately we have no idea whether we offered dry, wet, or both forms of cupping but dry seems more likely.
The cupping set seen here dates from the same period and the label reads ‘Weiss, Patent Cupping Apparatus And Surgical Instrument Maker To The Royal Navy And Army, No 62 Strand, London’.
The treatment is still available according to an advertisement of 1837 but not in 1839 although no tariff is ever given unlike other treatments.
Galvanism
Medical galvanism is defined as the therapeutic use of a direct current of electricity especially when produced by chemical action (as in a storage battery) and by the mid-1800s such electric treatment was being used almost as a routine cure for all ailments. The amount of electricity involved would have been relatively low. In some respects, it was the precursor to electric shock therapy which is still occasionally used today.
William Ruck was born in either 1812 or 1813 (depending on which census you believe) and was living in Sandford Street at the time of the 1841 census where he gave his occupation as a male servant. Five years later he appears in the 1846 Cheltenham Annuaire directory of advertisements as a medical galvanist at the Montpellier Baths, which means he must have been practising there from at least some point in 1845. The 1851 census shows him now living at the property with his wife, one son, and two servants; by 1861 he has three more sons and a daughter.
Many general practitioners abandoned ‘normal’ medicine and turned to galvanism as a great way to make more money but Ruck was not, and never had been, a GP. How did a male servant suddenly become an expert in providing electric treatment? What training, if any, did he undertake and how would he have afforded not only such training but also the expensive equipment needed to administer treatments at the Baths? No more information on the precise nature of the services Ruck offered has been found but his business must have been relatively successful as at some point he became yearly tenant and manager of the bathing establishment (but not the bakery, steam mill or salt works) and by 1855 lived in a large furnished house directly opposite the Baths.
A severe flood in July 1855 following two storms (shades of June and July 2007 here) swept across much of central Cheltenham put an end to the practice of galvanism at the Baths. In a complaint to the Sewerage & Drainage Committee in October Ruck stated that following the second storm on 26 July the water was four feet deep in his premises and that his furniture and property were greatly damaged.
He attributed the cause to the damaged state of the new sewer in Wellington Street following the first storm on 13 July but this was rejected by Henry Dangerfield, the borough surveyor: ‘I attribute it to the bursting of the culvert in the garden against the turnpike road at Charlton Kings. This being of area too small, pent back the waters above the road, until a lake of considerable depth and capacity was formed there, the waters accumulating until the pressure was sufficient to burst the culvert and caused the destruction that may be seen there. Once freed, the waters swept down the valley like a wave, clearing away the obstructions in its course, and shortly the Chelt had risen four feet, and the Bath Road for 100 yards on each side the entrance to the Baths was a river. But for this outburst it is probable that we should have had no flood at all, or it would have been of a very limited kind.’ In response, Ruck declared that Dangerfield was totally incapable to discharge the duties of his office and threatened to sue the council. He spent quite a bit of time in court over sewers for the next three years!
Indian medicated vapour and shampooing baths
Griffith’s Guide to Cheltenham of 1826 included an advertisement for the Baths which claimed that ‘The Indian Medicated Vapour & Shampooing Baths & The Turkish Bath are fitted up in every respect similar to those of Mr Molyneux & Mahomed at Brighton’. Yet while there are repeated references for years to come – and tariffs – for vapour baths and shampooing baths there is never a tariff listed for a Turkish bath. The only other references to Turkish baths are repeated suggestions, many years later, that these facilities should be added to the establishment.
Sake Dean Mahomed – whose own history is fascinating and well worth reading about – referred to his medicated vapour bath as a type of Turkish bath so it is possible that the mention in this one advertisement was a bit of puffery or PR spin. The shampooing bath was a therapeutic massage of the hair and scalp using different oils or formulations of herbs.
A vapour bath or shampoo bath cost 5s in 1826 and were still available at that price in 1839.
Medicated water baths
A patron could request that a variety of salts or other elements be added to the water in their ordinary wash bath for supposed medical benefit. These varied over the years and it is impossible to say when some of these were introduced or ceased to be available. Saline baths became available circa 1817/18 while a sulphur bath was certainly available in the 1820s and 1830s and a chlorine bath was added to the tariff list in the 1830s.
TO READ ABOUT MEDICAL FROM 1856-1899 CLICK HERE