The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong

For That Healthy Glow

7/2/2019

In the early 1900s, people finally figured out what made water so healthy: radiation! This week we’re looking at some of the hundreds of terrifying products meant to give you that healthy glow, and the story of one of the most terrible mistakes in medical history, and the brutal way it got corrected.

Music by:
Blue Dot Sessions
Lee Rosevere
Kevin MacLeod

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2 Comments

Jennifer F.

7/2/2019 12:50:17 am

Great episode, but I think you meant to use the word "hydrotherapy", meaning therapy using water, rather than "hydropathy", which...isn't a word, but if it were it would mean there were a pathology of water, nor "hydrology" which is the study of the earth's bodies of water.

The Constant

7/2/2019 06:23:23 am

You'd think! In the 19th and early 20th century, the term was "hydropathy". Today we say "hydrotherapy", but it's not entirely fair to call them one and the same: although hydrotherapy has some questionable hangovers from the days of hydropathy, there are actual, legitimate uses of hydrotherapy. Hydropathy, on the other hand, was pretty close to pure bunko. The "pathy" part came from "allopathy" rather than "pathology."