Water and health: a forgotten connection?

There are frequent and doom-laden messages concerning impending water shortages but the consequential negative effects on the availability of waters for healing and the factors underlying the decline in the use of water therapies in some parts of the world are ignored. This article reviews the evidence for the medicinal uses of water, past and present, showing how ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Celtic and Hebrew societies all used water for medicinal purposes, sometimes in conjunction with herbal medicine. Water treatments consisted of hydrotherapy (techniques of therapeutic bathing and use of water), balneotherapy (therapeutic bathing in medicinal and thermal springs) and thalassotherapy (the therapeutic use of ocean bathing and marine products) and these treatments continue to be used to the present day although their use in the Anglo-Saxon world is diminised.