Wash and Be Healed

Reviews / Votes

"[Cayleff] is eloquent and convincing in her demonstration that water cure presented an alternative to the prevailing view of the inherent weakness of female physiology.... [This] richly textured book is a welcome contribution to the growing body of literature on gender and medical practice and should be read by all students of nineteenth-century American medicine."
-Bulletin of the History of Medicine "Cayleff has written a lively, thought-provoking account of the water-cure movement and its special meaning for mid-nineteenth-century women.... [She] has provided a valuable new perspective on a fascinating epoch in American health reform."
-American Historical Review

"A major contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century reform impulses.... Cayleff is so deft at describing the appeal of the water-cure to overwrought Victorian women and men, so able at letting her subjects speak to the reader, that the hydropathic propaganda is not only comprehensible, but persuasive.... An excellent addition not only to the history of American medicine, but to nineteenth-century social and intellectual history in general."
-Medical Humanities Review