BRUCE THOMPSON, THERMOTHERAPY NOW
BAppSc-Physiotherapy, Sydney University 1978
My history with thermotherapy began as a physiotherapy student in Sydney, Australia in the late 1970s. I was taught how to safely apply heat therapy. “Safely” basically means, “not burning people”. Over the 40 years since then, I have personally applied and supervised thousands of packs and pads with, thankfully, very few burns. Along with ice packs, these heat treatments are used mainly to relieve local pain and swelling.
Early in my career, I was introduced to traditional hydrotherapy (as opposed to aquatic therapy). This was at the physiotherapy rooms, part of the spa area of a health centre in Warburton, Victoria. Most of the patients I saw had been prepared for treatment with whole-body heat treatments such as spa baths, steam baths or saunas. Even the hot fomentations were huge packs, wrung from boiling water and changed frequently, covering the back from the top of the legs to the neck! Often the heat treatments were followed by a mercifully brief shower or spray with brisk Victorian cold water.
Pain Relief
The relief of pain, swelling and muscle spasm from these treatments seemed to be a step above the heat therapy. The real surprise was the array of diseases that the “bath attendants” said that the treatments seemed to help with.
I took the opportunity to learn as much as I could from the attendants. This experience, backed by a US textbook for nurses from the 1940s and a 1970’s textbook originally for physical therapists, became the basis of hydrotherapy departments that I set up in Thailand in the 1980s.
My history with thermotherapy began as a physiotherapy student in Sydney, Australia in the late 1970s. I was taught how to safely apply heat therapy. “Safely” basically means, “not burning people”. Over the 40 years since then, I have personally applied and supervised thousands of packs and pads with, thankfully, very few burns. Along with ice packs, these heat treatments are used mainly to relieve local pain and swelling.
Early in my career, I was introduced to traditional hydrotherapy (as opposed to aquatic therapy). This was at the physiotherapy rooms, part of the spa area of a health centre in Warburton, Victoria. Most of the patients I saw had been prepared for treatment with whole-body heat treatments such as spa baths, steam baths or saunas. Even the hot fomentations were huge packs, wrung from boiling water and changed frequently, covering the back from the top of the legs to the neck! Often the heat treatments were followed by a mercifully brief shower or spray with brisk Victorian cold water.
Pain Relief
The relief of pain, swelling and muscle spasm from these treatments seemed to be a step above the heat therapy. The real surprise was the array of diseases that the “bath attendants” said that the treatments seemed to help with.
I took the opportunity to learn as much as I could from the attendants. This experience, backed by a US textbook for nurses from the 1940s and a 1970’s textbook originally for physical therapists, became the basis of hydrotherapy departments that I set up in Thailand in the 1980s.
There are few side effects from Hydrotherapy
It was a privilege to travel to the US in the late ’80s and meet some of the authors of these books (Dr Fred Moor and Dr Charles Thomas) and get copies of medical textbooks that formed the basis of the very rewarding years of hydrotherapy practice at Bangkok Adventist Hospital. Equally important, I summarised these books for my website, Traditional Hydrotherapy. (Scroll down to Sources on the opening page for the reference books used)
My respect for the doctors who wrote these textbooks grew as we tried out as many of the prescriptions as we could on the many diseases and problems that were listed. Our conclusion was that the treatments had few side effects and the patient generally improved much as the books indicated.
While in Thailand we had quite a bit of experience treating fevers and chest infections with hydrotherapy. The consistent and rapid improvement of patients with glandular, dengue, influenza and malarial fevers over three days of hydrotherapy seemed to indicate that somehow the therapy was enhancing cell-mediated adaptive immunity.
On returning to Australia in the early 90’s I assembled Traditional Hydrotherapy and my wife and I taught courses on “Hydrotherapy for the Home”. I also worked on pop-up health retreats as the hydrotherapist. I was not aware of much interest in hydrotherapy. The infectious diseases that hydrotherapy treated 100 years ago were now generally well-controlled with medication.
I wasn’t aware of anything new happening in hydrotherapy. The lack of traffic on the site made it obvious that even the few who knew about it weren’t interested in learning more. So the Traditional Hydrotherapy website remained a sleepy backwater on the internet until COVID-19 appeared, but before I get to that I want to make something clear:
Traditional Hydrotherapy is all about looking back to what people did in the past, and my previous experience. Thermotherapy Now is what people are doing now and looking forward.
My experience with fevers became important when COVID-19 became the first pandemic since the Spanish flu of 1918/1919.
From Hydrotherapy to Thermotherapy
I checked my sources and updated the Spanish Flu page on the website when COVID appeared. This was what hydrotherapists in the US had used during that pandemic. They didn’t have the stats but reported lower death rates with treatment. I think that was probably because treatment seemed to prevent pneumonia.
Through Dr Roger Seheult’s Youtube channel, I was able to contact a whole group of people with an interest in hydrotherapy who had a lot of more detailed information on the treatments from 1918/1919 than I had previously seen. With finer details of treatment and, a GP friend, we were able to draw up a COVID treatment protocol.
Through the people around COVID-19 I was introduced to what is happening now in hydro/thermotherapy. Thermal medicine is much more interested in the physiology behind the therapy and uses far more sophisticated machines and measurements than anything I had been aware of.
The biggest surprise was the research around the sauna. Evidence is showing sauna may benefit high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, dementia, type II diabetes, tension headache, and rheumatoid arthritis.
In other diseases, high-temperature thermal therapy shows promise. Cancer has the most research. Lyme disease seems to improve using the cancer treatment procedure as cancer treatment.
These tantalising preliminary research results, are now spurring me to gather all the information into one place as I did with traditional hydrotherapy. Except, this time the area is actually advancing so, I hope that Thermotherapy Now not only records the advances but encourages more research and the application of findings to treat the chronic diseases that now kill most of us.