Healing Waters explores the significant contributions of women to the water-cure movement of nineteenth-century New York. During this transformative era, water-cure—a set of therapeutic treatments using water for healing—gained popularity as an alternative to conventional medicine. This practice offered opportunities for more accessible and empowering medical care, particularly for women, who played pivotal roles as practitioners, patients, and advocates.
In a time when women's opportunities in the medical field were severely limited, water-cure establishments offered a unique avenue for female healers to emerge and thrive. These women not only advanced the practice of hydrotherapy but also challenged societal norms—advocating for reform in health, hygiene, and women's rights. Their efforts laid the groundwork for future generations of women in medicine and public health.
Through materials from the Edward C. Atwater American Popular Medicine Collection, this exhibit sheds light on the water-cure establishments women helped to found, grow, and maintain, and their involvement in the connected realms of health and social reform.
“Woman's sphere cannot be very much elevated, until she learns and claims her first great right—the right to health.”
Harriet N. Austin
The Water-Cure Journal was the principal organ of the hydropathic movement in America. Throughout the serial’s lifespan (1845-1862), it was edited by two of the most influential hydropathic advocates in the United States: Joel Shew (1816-1855) and Russell Thacher Trall (1812-1877). This mass-circulation monthly proved that hydropathic literature was an effective vehicle for health reform and a variety of related, and unrelated, causes: temperance, dress reform, vegetarianism, women’s rights, abolition, etc.
Water-cure physicians, such as Trall and Shew, as well as the movement’s followers, were discouraged by the allopathic medical school’s reliance on powerful drugs—“poison”, according to hydropaths—and copious bleeding. The literature and teachings of American hydropathy taught that allopathic doctors were to be feared and water-cure doctors to be trusted, as seen in the displayed cartoons.
Russell T. Trall opened his first water-cure on Manhattan’s west side in 1844. Soon after, he moved to 15 Laight Street where this advertised institute operated under various names until 1867. (Trall moved to New Jersey to run another water-cure and college at that time.) The Institute operated as a water-cure and maintained a School Department for the training of “physiological teachers” and “health-reform lecturers.” In 1857, Trall’s Institute became the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College, chartered by the state. The College trained hydropathic physicians and was notable for admitting female students on equal footing with men.
The system of hydropathy originated with Vincent Priessnitz (1799-1851) with his discovery of the healing benefits of pure water and his establishment of Gräfenberg in the Silesian Alps in the mid-1820s as the first and most famous hydropathic center. His treatments were based on the application of cold water, using baths, douches, wet bandages and sheets, and rubbing combined with drinking large quantities of water, plain diet, abstinence from alcohol and other stimulants, and rigorous exercise.
As developed by Trall and Shew in America, hydropathy came to be more than a transatlantic exposition of Priessnitz’s practice. It became a comprehensive system that placed as much stress on the prevention of disease and maintenance of health as it did on theory and practice of water-cure.
Shew was one of American hydropathy’s earliest practitioners. Within 12 years, he operated several water-cures and published 11 books. Shew married Marie Louise Shew in 1843. Soon the couple were receiving water-cure patients in their Manhattan home. In this book, Shew provides an account of his 1846 visit to Priessnitz’s water-cure in Austria followed by a description of the therapeutic benefits of drinking water, enemas, every variety of bath, wet sheets, air baths, and vapor baths. He also addresses the importance of hygienic factors, such as air, clothing, light, and sleep to the hydropathic treatment. Part two is devoted to the description and treatment of diseases.
In 1854, Shew published Hydropathic Family Physician and stated, “it is the duty of the physician, as far as he is capable, to teach the people the prevention of disease.” Hydropathy’s appeal to so many Americans at the mid-19th century probably stems from the public’s perception that “processes of water cure, skillfully directed are never painful and seldom disagreeable…they may be gone through in all seasons…many of the best cures are made by patients who apply the water cure at home” (Mary G. Nichols, Experience in Water-Cure 1850, 15).
In 1850, Thomas L. Nichols (1815-1901) contributed his opinions on the state of medical education with a paragraph about the “great want of educated and qualified women, in the practice of the Water-Cure.” He continues, “a class of women would be permitted the lectures of either of our colleges… should there be any trouble about this, I will undertake to provide them the means of pursuing all the necessary branches of a thorough medical course.” That he did, along with his wife, Mary S. G. Nichols, when they established the American Hydropathic Institute one year later in New York City. The couple were the sole instructors during the school’s three terms. Its first class (1851) graduated 20 hydropathic physicians, nine of which were women, and included Harriet N. Austin.
Mary Sargeant Gove Nichols (1810-1884) began employing water-cure practices in cases of “female weakness” in 1832. Together with her husband, T. L. Nichols, she operated several water-cure and alternative medicine establishments throughout her life, as well as being a regular contributor to The Water-Cure Journal and running a co-ed medical college in New York City. By 1852 though, the couple had become alienated from other hydropathic leaders in the New York area because of their increasing interests in spiritualism, free love, and social utopianism.
The Nichols’ had been managing a water-cure in England for about 8 years when this book was published. Nichols believed “woman in her nature is eminently qualified to heal the sick.” Yet, she was still a woman of her time in saying, “woman has great quickness in understanding principles. I do not say in discovering them. The first and more rugged processes of intellection belong to man.”
Marie Louise Shew’s (1821-1877) treatise is devoted to elements of hygiene, i.e. bathing, diet, sleep, exercise, clothing. In Shew’s first chapter, “Great Mortality of Infants and Children,” she states the purpose of this text as “giving hydropathic or water-cure advice to mothers, on the health and management of themselves and their offspring.” Her entry regarding “water-cure processes” for pregnancy and childbearing concludes:
“We do not believe that it was ‘ordained’ that woman should suffer any thing like what she now does, in her present state of knowledge. We do believe, we do know, that woman might so understand the laws of her system, and so live, that in this period of suffering, and often fatality, there would be a comparative immunity from those dangers and evils now so terrible.”
Shew was married to Joel Shew and, in 1843, they jointly opened and operated a water-cure in their home at 47 Bond Street in New York City.
Mary S. G. Nichols acknowledges that there are many fine water cure manuals on the market, but notes that her book “has more particular directions to women, than are found in any other work on the subject that I have seen.” At the end of the preface, she writes, “With regard to the education of women as Physicians, I can at this time take but few students…Our Colleges must soon be opened to women, or a College must be instituted for them exclusively.” Within the same year of this book’s printing, the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania was founded as the first American medical college dedicated to teaching women medicine and allowing them to earn the Doctor of Medicine degree. Unfortunately, this would not have fallen under her definition of “our Colleges,” as it was based in allopathic medical training.
Located on the southern shores of Skaneateles Lake, Glen Haven, New York, became a renowned destination for the water-cure movement under the leadership of James Caleb Jackson, his wife Lucretia Jackson, and their adopted daughter Harriet Austin. Founded in the mid-19th century, the Glen Haven Water Cure offered holistic treatments based on hydrotherapy, combined with vegetarian diets, exercise, and rest.
The water-cure movement disrupted traditional medical practices and empowered patients to take charge of their own health. While its prominence declined by the late 19th century, hydrotherapy significantly shaped modern wellness trends, paving the way for contemporary spa culture and holistic health methods.
James Caleb Jackson and the Glen Haven Water-Cure James Caleb Jackson (1811-1895) was a hydropathic doctor and health reformer who ran the Glen Haven Water-Cure in New York. He believed in natural healing through water therapy, fresh air, and a healthy diet. In his book The Gluttony Plague, Jackson warned about the dangers of poor eating habits and overeating, promoting a diet of whole foods and moderation. His ideas influenced later health movements and the way we think about wellness today.
Lucretia Jackson’s (1812-1890) role as manager at the Glen Haven Water Cure, allowed her to help promote the water cure to improve physical and mental health. With her assistance, Glen Haven became renowned for its relaxing atmosphere and rejuvenating therapies including providing simple meals featuring fresh vegetables, fruits and grains as presented in her book, The Reformer’s Cook Book.
James Caleb Jackson’s The Gluttony Plague was a groundbreaking critique of 19th-century dietary habits and their impact on health. In this work, Jackson condemned overindulgence in rich, processed, and meat-heavy diets, linking them to chronic illness and societal decline. He championed a simpler, plant-based diet, emphasizing whole grains, fruits, and vegetables as the foundation of health and longevity.
Jackson’s insights not only influenced the health reform movement but also laid the groundwork for modern nutrition science. His advocacy for dietary discipline and balance remains a powerful reminder of the connection between food and well-being.
This illustration is from O.S. Fowler’s book denouncing the common 19th century women’s fashion. While corsets and tight lacing were used to create a desired silhouette of a woman’s body, O.S. Fowler’s book showed that women who wore tight laced dresses were wreaking havoc upon their bodies. He and other hydropathic doctors of the time condemned the practice citing the detrimental effects on breathing, the internal organs and overall well-being of women. He and others such as Harriet Austin advocated for dress reform, urging society to prioritize one’s health over restrictive beauty standards.
The women in this image are wearing an outfit referred to as the "American Costume," a style associated with mid-19th-century dress reform movements. This outfit typically featured a shorter dress over trousers, designed to provide more freedom of movement compared to the restrictive women's fashions of the time (like corsets and long skirts). The simple design of the attire aligns with the practical, utilitarian principles of the reform movement. These costumes were part of an effort to challenge societal norms about women's roles and clothing.
Harriet Austin’s views on the American Costume as seen in her book, The American Costume:
“If the present style of dress is tasteful or graceful, then all the eulogiums which have been passed upon the human form are silly nonsense, and woman would have been much more fitly proportioned, if, from her waist downward, she had been built in the form of a hay-stack. The truth is, the taste of our women is as sickly as their bodies. Hence, I feel that we do no wrong when we take the liberty to outrage it. Our dress, while it answers perfectly to every demand of decency, modesty, and propriety, allows the spectator to have a just idea of the outlines of the form, and, at the same time, to take cognizance of, and admire the real gracefulness which the person possesses, rather than to have all his admiration expended in admiring the ‘wavy, graceful motions” of the dress.”
Dansville’s “All-Healing Spring” and its supposed curative properties made the village an ideal site for a water-cure. Rochesterian Nathanial Bingham opened an institute in 1853, but the establishment changed ownership and closed its doors several times before former Glen Haven physician Dr. James C. Jackson and his wife Lucretia Jackson purchased the property.
When James C. Jackson opened Our Home on the Hillside in 1858, his adopted daughter and longtime collaborator Harriet Austin became one-third partner in the new venture. While Austin was the “ladies’ department” physician at Glen Haven, she treated both male and female patients at Our Home.
Austin was a frequent contributor to The Water Cure Journal and edited the health reform periodical The Laws of Life for over thirty years. She also published numerous books, pamphlets, and periodicals on health reform. This pamphlet describes in detail the types of baths used in hydropathic treatment—from “The Plunge” to “The Dripping-Sheet”—and serves as an advertisement for Our Home.
In addition to her advocacy for dress reform, Austin wrote about the medical needs of women and her experience treating “female diseases.” This article from June 1859 illustrates how she saw issues of dress and domestic life as deeply connected to women’s health.
“Outside of the ranks of Health-Reformers, never were women so contracted in their exercise of freedom. They are the devotees of Fashion, the victims of Etiquette. The House is their World.”
This publication highlights how the Jackson’s approach to health and wellness was guided by their religious and moral convictions. Principles 7 and 8 on the following pages address the issue of equality between the sexes most clearly, acknowledging “woman’s right to use whatever powers and faculties belong to her” and explicitly advocating for “such reformation in our Government as will place woman in all respects on an equality with man before the Law.”
In 1864, Katharine “Kate” Johnson (1841-1921) married James H. Jackson (1841-1928), the youngest son of James C. Jackson. From the beginning of her marriage, she was engaged in the operation of Our Home on the Hillside: serving as overseeing matron until 1873, when she and her husband went to New York to pursue medical studies. In 1877, Jackson received her medical degree from the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, headed by Emily Blackwell. After returning to Dansville, she joined the medical staff at Our Home. When its new building opened in 1883 and the institute was renamed “The Sanatorium,” Kate and James H. Jackson became managing physicians.
This pamphlet was sent by Joseph B. Bowman to a relative after his stay at Our Home in the summer of 1860. Although there is no evidence that Lucretia Jackson ever acquired a formal medical degree, she is listed here as both a physician and matron, “widely and estimably known.” Running the “matronly department” alongside her was Mrs. M.J.M. Hurd, the wife of family friend and original proprietor F. Wilson Hurd. The Mrs. Emily Austin Hawke listed as an assistant physician is Harriet Austin’s sister, who at one point served as the institute’s house physician for women.
In 1903, the Jackson Sanatorium was again renamed, becoming the Jackson Health Resort. It is described here as not simply a pleasure resort, but a “distinctively Health Institution” with opportunities for rest. The strict diets and schedules of the original water-cure institute were gone, and health resort visitors could instead enjoy tennis, golf, and massages alongside a variety of baths.
The Jackson family’s interest in reform meant that Our Home on the Hillside was host to well-known names in religious, social, and public health movements. In 1876, soon-to-be American Red Cross founder Clara Barton visited Our Home after suffering from exhaustion. She chose to stay in Dansville for ten years, and was said to have formed a close friendship with Harriet Austin. In this brochure for the institute, renamed to Jackson Sanatorium in 1890, Barton is quoted as owing it “all that I am.”
The Gleason's Water Cure in Elmira, New York, opened in 1852, was a notable hydrotherapy facility run by Dr. Silas Oresmus Gleason (1818-1899) and his wife Rachel Brooks Gleason (1820-1905). Rachel was one of the first women in the U.S. to earn a medical degree.
This facility, like the other water cures, treated various ailments, promoting overall health and wellness. Notable patients like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton also visited the establishment for treatment. Dr. Rachel Gleason later published a progressive book on women’s health, Talks to My Patients, which addressed topics like pregnancy, menstruation, and birth control.
Rachel Brooks Gleason said she wrote this book in response to the numerous letters she received from patients far and wide to, “aid the young wife when there is no experienced mother or intelligent nurse at hand; to advise in emergencies, or to guide in those matters of delicacy with which woman’s life is so replete.”
Different styles of baths offered for men and women including Turkish and Russian style baths.
Different styles of baths offered for men and women including Turkish and Russian style baths.
The Clifton Springs Water-Cure, located twenty-nine miles east of Rochester, was founded in 1850 by Henry Foster, MD (1821-1921). The original medical staff of six physicians included two women: Rachel T. Speakman and Mary Dunbar. This collection of addresses celebrates the institution’s expansion only six years after opening; it would continue to successfully expand its health offerings as interest in the hydropathic movement declined following the Civil War.
Under Foster’s direction, the Water-Cure was able to successfully transition to a Sanitarium in 1871. This brochure describes the facilities, emphasizing that “while all kinds and forms of medicine are here employed; the scientific and multiform use of water, plain, medicated, and mineral, is a prominent feature of the Sanitarium practice.”
This bath ticket gives an idea of the range of treatments available to visitors at the Sanitarium. Options included Turkish baths, electrotherapy, and even massages. The ticket is signed by a Dr. Lichty, which could refer to either John Lichty or his wife Cora Stoner Lichty, who received her MD from the University of Michigan in 1893. As was the case with many establishments, it is more likely that female patients would have been under the care of the latter.
While many water-cure practitioners were resistant to the invasive and drug-based treatments of conventional medical practice, anatomy and physiology were still foundational to their understanding of the body and the treatments used in water-cure.
Addressed to physicians and medical professionals, this publication highlights the degree to which the Sanitarium incorporated conventional medicine alongside its water-cure treatments. A unique feature of Clifton Springs was its School of Nursing, which offered a three-year course in traditional nursing skills along with special training in massage, electricity, and dietetics. The school was affiliated with the New York Nursery and Child’s Hospital of New York City, so that pupils could also receive training in obstetrics and pediatrics. The chartered status of the school is emphasized here, another indication of the institute’s willingness to work with the medical profession.
This promotional brochure for the Sanitarium offers an overview of its expansive services; the establishment offered leisure activities ranging from tennis to metal working, and by the 20th century had surgery, dental, and obstetrics and gynecology departments. The staff of graduate and full-time nurses from the Sanitarium and Clinic School are pictured here.
Cordelia A. Greene’s (1831-1905) first exposure to water-cure came at age eighteen when her father gave up farming to form a water-cure in Castile, New York and she became his nurse and assistant. In 1853, she graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and continued her medical education in Cleveland before returning to New York. Greene worked at Clifton Springs Water-Cure for six years, serving as Henry Foster’s assistant. Following the death of her father in 1864, she assumed control of the Castile Sanitarium—where she would serve as physician and proprietor for the next four decades.
This biographical sketch of Greene in her book describes a lively meeting between her, Susan B. Anthony, and Frances E.C. Willard. Greene was a vocal participant in both the temperance and suffrage movements, and first met Susan B. Anthony while working at Clifton Springs. She served as president of the Castile Sanitarium’s Political Equality Club and honorary president of the Wyoming County Suffrage Association—and reportedly refused to pay her taxes one year, declaring to the Castile Town Board that “taxation without representation is tyranny.”
When Greene took over management of the Castile Sanitarium, its focus shifted to specialize in the treatment of women’s diseases. Like other water-cure and hydropathic establishments in New York, Castile survived by transforming itself into a health resort that utilized a range of treatments alongside its “hydriatic measures.”
Between 1843 and 1900, 213 water-cures opened in America. Sixty-four of these operated within a hundred miles of Rochester—and by 1851, the city had two water-cures of its own.
The Halsted Medical Institute was founded in 1844 by “magnetic physician” Hatfield Halsted, who advertised Rochester’s “pure rock water” and “never-failing sulfur spring.” Halsted changed the name in 1851 to Halsted Hall and introduced a new treatment—motorpathy, or calisthenics—which he claimed to be particularly effective for women’s diseases. He published several editions of this text on motorpathy in the following years, and temporarily closed Halsted Hall to tour the northeast promoting his treatment. Halsted left Rochester permanently in 1854 and purchased the Round Hill Water-Cure in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The Lake View Water-Cure was established north of the city in 1851 by local businessman and politician Pliny M. Bromley. Charges were high for the time (the weekly rate was several dollars more than at Clifton Springs) and less than fifteen months after opening Lake View was advertised for sale. The water-cure was purchased by homeopath Dr. Lorenzo D. Fleming, who added daily horseback riding to the list of treatments. Only a month after its reopening, the building burned to the ground—marking the end of water-cure in Rochester.
While not directly involved with water-cure, pioneering local physician Sarah Read Adamson Dolley had ties to the field of eclectic medicine—which expanded alongside hydropathy in America as part of a larger movement against harsh and invasive conventional medical practices. Dolley received her medical degree from the eclectic Central Medical College in Syracuse in 1851 and later that year became the first female medical intern in the United States at the Blockley Hospital in Philadelphia. In 1852, Sarah married Lester Clinton Dolley, MD, a professor at Central Medical College (which had by then moved to Rochester under the new name Eclectic Medical Institute). The associated Eclectic Journal of Medicine was published out of Rochester and co-edited by L.C. Dolley.
Dolley became the first female physician in Rochester, and practiced medicine with her husband until his death in 1872. She was also active in the formation of the Practitioners' Society, one of the earliest women’s medical societies in the United States; the Women's Medical Society of the New York State; and the Rochester chapter of the Red Cross. The booklet here contains the text of an address given by Dolley in Rochester at the second annual meeting of the Woman's Medical Society; she acknowledges the work of pioneers such as Emily Blackwell and provides advice to female medical students.
Originally founded by Russell T. Trall as the New York Hydropathic and Physiological School, the College was notable for being one of the first in the country to accept women. In 1857, in addition to its name change, the school was authorized by New York State to confer a Doctor of Medicine degree to graduates. By the time Sarah M. Bond was a student, Trall had relocated the school to Florence, New Jersey.
This article includes a description of how to create vapor baths at home when one's house or water-cure establishment is without water pipes or heat--a "cheap and convenient apparatus." Although water-cure establishments are the focus of much of this exhibit, the practice was intended to be accessible to all, even those who could not afford or access stays at institutes.
This cartoon illustrates the disdain that many water-cure practitioners had for patent medicine, along with those who sold and used it. The man on the right, a reader of The Water-Cure Journal, has of course "never been sick a day in his life."
M. L. Holbrook (1831-1902) received his medical degree in 1864 from R. T. Trall’s Hygeio-Therapeutic College. In the same year, he assumed long-term editorship of The Herald of Health and Journal of Physical Culture (which became the Journal of Hygiene in 1893).
Holbrook's influence on public’s conception of personal hygiene and health reform extended beyond articles with authorship of 10 books written for general audiences. He was an important publisher of popular medical and hygiene literature, viewing it as a mechanism to raise public awareness of health issues.
In this article, Holbrook states that the objections of men against women working in medicine “come from ignorance," and that “it is in this field that we hope to see woman labor; and here we bid her a hearty welcome. And will say and do all in our power to help her to achieve a useful destiny.”
Harriet Austin's American Costume is contrasted here with a fashion plate of the "French Costume." The author of this piece states that "woman cannot be free or great, with limbs swathed in long skirts, the vital organs compressed to half their size, and bound in stays, and a grievous weight hanging upon them and dragging down the whole form."
The front page of this advertisement is notable for its rhetoric around the use of medications, or “drug-poisons”—before it transitioned to a health resort, Our Home was guided by the Jacksons’ staunch belief that medicine was unnecessary, and more often than not harmful to patients.
Bowman’s correspondence here describes a lifestyle clearly influenced by the water-cure regimen at Dansville: including two simple and unseasoned meals and daily washes—“not very cold!”
In 1868, James C. Jackson formally resigned from his position as Ordained Pastor at Our Home on the Hillside. This statement expands on his reasoning: in addition to physical difficulties speaking, he explains some of the antagonism and suspicion he faced over his outspoken views on anti-slavery, dress-reform, and equal rights for women.
In 1868, James C. Jackson formally resigned from his position as Ordained Pastor at Our Home on the Hillside. This statement expands on his reasoning: in addition to physical difficulties speaking, he explains some of the antagonism and suspicion he faced over his outspoken views on anti-slavery, dress-reform, and equal rights for women.
This selection of advertisements for the Jackson Sanatorium gives a sense of how the institute was marketed following its transition from a strictly water-cure to a health resort.
This menu gives a sense of what guests would have eaten during their stay at the Sanitarium—with much of the dairy and produce coming from the farmland owned by the institution.
Rochester and the Water-Cure / Edward C. Atwater and Lawrence A. Kohn [read online]
Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women’s Health / Susan E. Cayleff
“Hydropathic Highway to Health”: Women and Water-Cure in Antebellum America / Jane B. Donegan
Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine / Regina Markett Morantz-Sanchez [read online]
Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols / Jean L. Silver-Isenstadt
The Healer: The Story of Dr. Samantha S. Nivison and Dryden Springs, 1820-1915 / Samuel A. Cloyes
