There is a misconception that in the Middle Ages, people in Europe were dirty and cared little for their health and wellbeing. In Mediaeval Europe, bathhouses were situated next to bakeries, and going to a bathhouse to bathe, feast, drink and relax seems to have been quite common, even a weekly occurrence. Medieval people believed that both the environment (particularly the air) and lifestyle (diet, sleep, and exercise) had an impact on health. Despite the fact they knew nothing of viruses, bacteria and how diseases spread, they did understand that people could contaminate one another, therefore quarantining was common in times of plague. They were extremely superstitious; sickness was often seen as an indication of turbulence in the soul or an intervention by God and they believed in a link between the zodiac and the parts of the body. Like the Greeks, they also believed in the four humors and that sickness was the result of imbalance, which could be cured through bleeding or blood being sucked out by leeches. Interestingly, leech therapy is being used again today, not only in wellness treatments but in medical therapies too. Hospitals were set up, many next to religious institutions such as abbeys or monasteries where physical healing was combined with spiritual faith and prayer.
The Renaissance inspired an interest in medicine and wellness, and transformed how people viewed sickness and bodies. This was the age of the body snatchers, the era when syphilis erupted and plagues were common. At the end of the 15th century, after the outbreak of syphilis, public bathing was banned in many parts of Europe for both disease containment and puritanical reasons.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, while people did visit spas, Taking the waters (drinking mineral water) was regarded as a medical discipline. This was also when the word wellness first made its appearance and dates back to the 1650s in a diary entry of a Sir Archibald Johnston who spelled the word wellness as “wealness”.
The 18th century in Europe was known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, where logic and knowledge were prioritized over superstition. Thinkers and philosophers across Europe questioned traditional authority and it was believed that through science and knowledge, the world could be improved. Revolutions such as the American and French saw the end of monarchies, republics and democracy began to replace the old order. From a wellness perspective, inventions and scientific discoveries (particularly focusing on medicine and health) emerged and numerous books and pamphlets from the 17th and 18th Centuries covered topics such as conduct, lifestyle and health recommendations. The 18th century was when the vaccination for smallpox was introduced into England by Lady Wortley Montagu, public health and hygiene were given more attention, more hospitals were established, the stethoscope was invented and it was discovered that by eating fruits and vegetables, sailors could avoid scurvy. Visiting spa destinations became a trend, and Queen Anne’s visit to the town of Bath in England at the beginning of the 18th century transformed it into a popular wellness, leisure and health destination. Samuel Hahemann of Leipzig (1755 – 1843) developed the concept of homeopathy, which consisted of the ingestion of small doses of substances, whose effects resembled the diseases being treated. Homeopathy is still practiced today, even though there is scientific skepticism about its effects.
In addition, in the 18th century, both in England and France, the health benefits of seawater attracted attention. In Britain, this was initiated by a British doctor Richard Russel who prescribed bathing in seawater and even drinking seawater, and in 1791, John Latham founded the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary in Margate for this purpose. Thalassotherapy, originating from the word Thalassa meaning sea, promoted the concept that repeated exposure to sea air, baths in seawater, mud, clay and algae help to heal the body. By the middle of the 19th century, Brittany in France was a well-established Thalasso health resort and sea bathing became widespread and popular. This was also the case in England where Queen Victoria was a proponent of the trend.
This interest in hygiene and treatments with water continued into the 19th century with renewed vigor. It was in part driven by outbreaks of hygiene-related diseases such as cholera in the rapidly expanding urban areas and through the subsequent laws introduced to improve public health. This was the age when Louis Pasteur discovered pasteurization and Florence Nightingale established a training school for nurses in London, understanding that unhygienic conditions and disorganization could lead to mass infection. Spas situated around mineral and thermal mineral springs expanded into fashionable resorts all over Europe. Similar resorts in hot spring locations were also established in America. Essentially, these health resorts were treatment centers next to which hotels and entertainment facilities were developed. The upper classes and aristocracy would visit such resorts for weeks at a time, mixing medical treatment and relaxation with social activities. Spas at the time claimed to be able to cure all diseases, even STDs, and patients were put through rigorous physical, dietary, and hydrotherapy regimes. Charles Darwin took his daughter, who was dying of tuberculosis, to a spa in Malvern where the quackery treatment regime of steaming and cold wraps promptly killed her. Darwin’s experience in Malvern contributed to his theory of survival of the fittest, the fittest in this case, unfortunately, being the tuberculosis bacteria.
This was the era that also saw the popularization of physical exercise as a form of health promoted by Per Henrik Ling from his institute in Stockholm entitled Swedish Gymnastics which had four categories: pedagogic, military, medical and aesthetic. The Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who was renowned for her beauty and who had something of an obsession with physical appearance, had her own gymnastic equipment installed in the palace in Vienna. In short, fitness for health and body image was born. The 19th century saw the printing of numerous books with advice on weight loss, marriage, etiquette and self-medicine.
The 19th century also saw an interest in the occult, spiritualism, healing and hypnotism. Out of this developed the metaphysical New Thought movement. It drew its approach from a variety of sources, from the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers to Asian philosophies and religions, focusing on the connection between the power of thought and consciousness, and how these can manifest themselves in life. Its message resonated, inspiring movements such as Christian Science founded by Mary Baker Eddy, who preached that sickness could be cured by prayer alone. With its mind-over-matter approach, this belief in the power of manifestation became the founding principle of many self-help books today.
In America at the same time, the establishment of the Seventh-Day Adventist movement was a key contributor to the development of wellness. Ellen G White, one of its founders, promoted a healthy lifestyle and vegetarian diet (otherwise known as the Edenic diet which concentrated on fruits, grains, nuts, and vegetables). She referred to meat as “flesh” and proclaimed the body could be destroyed or defiled through ingestion of harmful substances such as alcohol, insufficient exercise and overwork coupled with insufficient relaxation. Today, Loma Linda in California is a district where many Seventh-Day Adventists live and is one of the world’s Blue Zones (places in the world where people live the longest).
By the end of the 19th century, the popularity of the health farm or health sanatorium grew both in Europe and in America. Following the publication of his book Back to Nature, Adolf Just (an Austrian naturist and also anti-vaxxer) promoted a natural way of life, which included a plant-based diet, fasting, exercise combined with more unusual practices such as clay compresses, nudity and open-air sleeping on the ground. Just’s theory claimed that healing was best brought about through nature and that science could only assist nature. He wrote “Return to a natural diet, allow water, light and air to influence your system and all ailments will disappear…”. In short, the nature cure was born and he established his sanatorium in Jungborn in Germany. His lifestyle recommendations influenced prominent people such as Mahatma Gandhi.
Following the success of his sanatorium, an American version of Jungborn was founded in New Jersey, the nature cure trend also being the inspiration for the first Champney’s resort in Tring, Hertfordshire, now a well-known spa chain in the UK. While spas and nature cures mirrored each other on both sides of the Atlantic, wellness concepts in America (and to some extent in Britain) were more prudish because of their Anglo-Protestant Puritan influences. In the USA, John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the breakfast cereal and also a Seventh-Day Adventist established a sanatorium at Battle Creek, it included a mind, body and soul approach, exercise, a healthy diet and abstinence from coffee, alcohol and sex. He promoted chewing (40 times before swallowing), enemas, vibrating chairs and even masturbation cures. On the contrary In Central Europe, nudity and sunbathing steadfastly remained part of the culture, particularly in Germany, where naturism, known as Freikörperkultur (FKK; Free Body Culture) is still commonplace.
At the end of the 19th century, water was not seen as the only panacea for disease, electricity and even radon gas were also believed to have miracle health and healing benefits. Electrotherapy treatments were promoted in spas as super cures and radon gas treatments in mineral water and caves were prescribed as a treatment for diseases. Bad Gastein in Austria was visited by the likes of Elizabeth Empress of Austria, Schubert, and Otto von Bismark, and still offers treatments with radon gas in its caves today. Before its dangerous effects were realized, manufacturers produced glowing radon clocks, radon toothpaste (which gave cancer of the mouth to its victims) and even radon cocktails. The manufacturer George A Scott patented bizarre electrical devices, including an electric corset, a hairbrush that claimed it grew hair on a man “whose head was as bald as a bladder of lard” and electric belts aimed at men’s sexual health.
The late 19th century to the mid-20th century also saw a demand for fasting or detox cures. Dr. Bircher-Benner in his popular sanatorium in Zurich promoted raw food diets and muesli as a breakfast cereal, which helped to change the unhealthy eating habits of the late 19th century. Similar to Kellogg in America, alcohol and stimulants like coffee and tobacco were forbidden in his treatment regime, and sunbathing, physical exercise and water treatments were promoted. Later, Dr. Franz Xaver Mayer in Austria promoted his diet and cure, which is still popular in Austria today, and which, like Kellogg’s, focuses on mindful eating, chewing food properly and eliminating certain foods to enhance digestive health.
While advice in the form of articles, pamphlets and the occasional book had been around for a few hundred years, the self-help movement had its birth in the publication of the book Self Help by Samuel Smiles (published at his own expense) in the middle of the 19th century, a book which propagated that those at the bottom of the social ladder should take responsibility to improve themselves through hard work, education and personal development. A guru of his time, he advocated that every person, regardless of whether they could afford it or not had the obligation to educate and improve themselves and he is credited with the saying “Heaven helps those who help themselves”. The book’s message of personal responsibility inspired the staunchly conservative prime minister of Great Britain in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher, who wanted to give the book as a present to every child in Britain.
This period from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19th Century has given the wellness industry a number of enduring benefits; the word wellness itself and products such as the classical European thermal and thalassotherapy spa resorts, to therapies such homeopathy, detox cures and even leeches and naturism. More poignantly it saw the birth of the self-help movement, and the belief in the power of the mind to change a person’s life for the better.
More information about the origins of wellness can be found in our book entitled “Wellness for the 21st Century, thriving in a post pandemic world”, now available on Amazon.