Episode description

In the 1700s, hydrotherapy was the panacea. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, wrote in his book that cold water plunges could cure asthma, malaria, blindness, leprosy and even cancer (wait, did that say blindness?).

But by the beginning of the 19th century, well-informed physicians wanted to get more precise about curing the insane. It was believed that one of the causes of mania was ‘hot brain’, a violent heat that boiled the blood and dried out the brain. 

Cooling the brain seemed an obvious solution. 

And so throughout the 19th century, various apparatus that harnessed therapeutic forces of water emerged to aid in “curing” the insane. And here we find the less relaxing and more barbaric origins of the shower.

As we’ve discovered in many cases from that period of history, some people took it way too far. 

One guy who went to extremes was Dr Patrick Blair. He helped ‘cure’ a woman who was declared mad (for not wanting to have sex with her husband) by stripping and blindfolding her, tying her to a chair in a bathtub under a 35-foot high water tower, and submitting her to intense water pressure over her head, face, neck and breasts until she swore to become a loving, obedient and dutiful wife.

So basically, torture.

There was also Dr Benjamin Rush who made what he called a ‘tranquillizer chair’. This is where he’d strap down a patient, put a box around their head, and then begin to fill it from above, threatening them with death. He considered this a very effective strategy for resistant cases.

This led others to come up with the brilliant idea of building asylums with built-in showers for administering treatment. Prisons quickly followed suit.

Now, showers have come a long way since then. They became much less a torture apparatus and more of a convenience over the bathtub. The English Regency Shower, an invention far closer to our modern showers, came about in the early 1800s and by the 1870s, many houses began to have hot water pumped in through the fenestrated fixtures. 

But things really took off in the early 20th century, largely due to the advertising and soap industries, which capitalised on social anxieties about body odour and bad breath. Classic corporate greed preying on the dirty folk. 

But in the age of the microbiome, have we taken cleanliness too far? Could it be that we’re showering too much? 

Dermatologists will tell you that water alone strips away the oils in our skin that help to preserve moisture, leaving us susceptible to irritants and allergens.

Is it time we rethink our daily cleansing rituals?

Perhaps we should quit showers altogether! Like one guy in Iran who didn’t shower for over 60 years. His neighbours finally convinced him to wash and the poor guy died shortly after. 

Although there is one American President who had a special shower to keep him happy and healthy. It had nozzles to blast him like a fire hose in the dick, balls and butt. An odd interpretation of his second amendment rights but whatever wakes you up in the morning man!

SOURCES:

• Australians are (nearly) global leaders in the shower stakes, in WA Today, by Ray Sparvell
• Bathing Habits by Country 2023, World Population Review
• Compulsive showering and marijuana use – the cannabis hyperemisis syndrome, in American Journal of Case Reports, by Fawwaz Mohammed, Kirby Panchoo, Maria Bartholemew and Dale Maharaj
• Cure-All: John Wesley throws some cold water on, well, everything. Lapham’s Quarterly.
• I Quit Showering, and Life Continued, in The Atlantic by James Hamblin
• L.B.J. Demanded White House Shower Be Fitted with Nozzles Aimed at His Nether Regions, According to New Book, in Vanity Fair, by Kia Makarechi
• Showering Has a Dark, Violent History, in The Atlantic by Sarah Zhang
• Showers: from a violent treatment to an agent of cleansing, in History of Psychiatry, by Stephanie C Cox, Clare Hocking and Deborah Payne
• You’re Showering Too Much, in The Atlantic by James Hamblin

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