American hospitals

Continuous bath, Bloomingdale Hospital. Photo courtesy of the Medical Center Archives of New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine.

From this beginning, use of hydrotherapy in American psychiatric hospitals grew rapidly in the first two decades of the 20th century. It was an era with few successful treatments for mental disorders, so in many instances prolonged baths and wet packs, considered therapeutic by psychiatrists, replaced physical restraints for agitated patients.

Student nurse adjusting cover on prolonged bath, Payne Whitney Clinic, New York Hospital. Photo courtesy of the Medical Center Archives of New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine.

Bloomingdale Hospital records illustrate the rise and decline of hydrotherapy: in 1921, 3,226 prolonged continuous baths were given to 126 patients. By 1929 the figure had increased to 8,181 prolonged baths given to 206 patients. However, by 1944 the annual report of Westchester Division, New York Hospital (formerly Bloomingdale Hospital) noted that 3,907 prolonged baths were given to 137 female patients, but few to male patients. It noted, 'packs and prolonged baths were used to a substantially smaller degree for the men patients who in general are not as disturbed and difficult to care for as the women patients,' and that 'the pack room in the men's physical therapy building has been especially equipped and utilized for electric shock treatment of the men patients.'