The Brattleboro Hydropathy Establishment, better known as the Wesselhoeft Water-Cure, was the poshest medical 'spa' of its time, a celebrated mecca for mid nineteenth century writers, statesmen and advocates who flocked to 'the healing waters of Brattleboro' and guidance from one Dr. Robert Ferdinand Wesselhoeft. Among its many famous visitors were Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin), Francis Parkman (The Oregon Trail), Helen Hunt Jackson (A Century of Dishonor) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose experiences in Brattleboro inspired their writings. In just seven years, from 1845 to 1852, the highly cultured Dr. Wesselhoeft left an indelible impression on the town and all who knew him. The episode begins with a synoptic overview of the Wesselhoeft Water-Cure and a later Lawrence Water-Cure across the street. At 7:52, we learn Dr. Wesselhoeft's fascinating origin story - son of a publisher, student of Goethe, lawyer and political prisoner in pre-Germany - who remade himself into a physician when he came to the U.S. to join his brother William (Wilhelm) Wesselhoeft who helped found the first school of homeopathy in the US. The two would eventually move to the Boston area to open a successful clinic serving noted 'Trancendentalists.' At 9:32 we learn that Nathaniel Hawthorne disliked Dr. Wesselhoeft so much he created at least two repellant characters in his fiction reportedly modeled after him. Hawthorne joined forces with another 'Boston Brahmin' Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (father of the famed jurist of the same name) to humiliate Wesselhoeft and drive him out of town. Dr. Wesselhoeft escaped to Brattleboro where he found the cleanest water on east coast. Starting at 11:55 Wesselhoeft, in his own words as interpreted by actor Ned Childs, describes details of his treatments. Outcomes were meticulously noted in his regular newspaper Green Mountain Spring. Dr. Wesselhoeft describes how 'our water-cure' addressed the sad state of Americans' 'perverse and unnatural habits of life' society, diet and health and answers his detractors. The episode closes with descriptions of the elaborately landscaped paths the Dr. created around the Whetstone Brook and along the Connecticut and West Rivers that define Brattleboro. At 20:05 we hear a vivid historical account from then Brattleboro High School student Elery Loggia as the voice of Abby Estey Fuller recalling Abby's childhood fascination with the 'gloriously beauteous' paths and scenes with Wesselhoeft clients and expresses her gratitude for Dr. Wesselhoeft and the 'brains' that created enchanting settings that formed a sort of wonderland for local children.
This episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast was written, narrated and produced Lissa Weinmann. Audio Editing was by Sally Seymour. The Voice of Dr. Wesselhoeft is Ned Childs. Voice of Abby Estey was Elery Loggia. Mastering was by Guilford Sound with final podcast editing by Alec Pombriant.
Wesselhoeft quotes were taken from Wesselhoeft comments in various editions of his ‘Green Mountain Spring' newspaper. Abby Estey Fuller quotes were from her ‘Daughters of the American Revolution’ speech published in 1928.
Info on Wesselhoeft’s early life was thanks to Starr Willard Cuttings’ “The History of Robert Wesselhoeft’ original manuscripts in Brooks Memorial Library rare documents division.
This podcast was supported by a Digital Capacities Grant from the VT arts council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Abby Estey's description of the various watercure paths is from an address to the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1912 which was published in 1928.
Jerry Carbone created a database of Wesselhoeft clients over a three year span, see: https://dbnews.americanancestors.org/2019/01/29/new-database-brattleboro-vt-wesselhoeft-water-cure-1845-1848/
The Enchanting Wesselhoeft Water-Cure, Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast Transcript
HOST LISSA WEINMANN: Welcome to the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast
NARRATOR: At the edge of downtown Brattleboro, a forgotten spring bubbles beneath the basement of the central fire station. It sings of a time long ago when this place was home to the Brattleboro Hydrotherapy Establishment, more commonly known as the Wesselhoeft Water-cure. (Bach music rises) Using water therapies to cure disease was a popular practice in the mid-1800s. Water cure spas abounded in the Northeast. Wesselhoeft’s was one of the first and certainly the most exclusive. Not just because of the fresh air, clean water and general beauty of Brattleboro – attributes we still enjoy today – but because of the establishment's founder and chief physician, a German emigre named
WESSELHOEFT VOICE BY ACTOR NED CHILDS Dr. Robert Ferdinand Wesselhoeft
NARRATOR:(new music) Wesselhoeft’s intelligence, sophistication and magnetic personality attracted a who's who of the era to Brattleboro. Wealthy business people, southern plantation owners, politicians and especially journalists and writers flocked to Wesselhoeft for treatment. They came to take what were called ‘the healing waters of Brattleboro.’
WESSELHOEFT VOICE: Here the water is the purest I could find among several hundred springs I have visited and tested from Virginia all the way up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The most beautiful natural walks lead to each spring within one mile. Hills and green woods invite the patient on every side.
NARRATOR: He bought a place on Elliot Street in 1845 and began extensive renovations himself. (Music rises) Clients started pouring in. Many interesting people were drawn to the doctor and the cultural mecca he created. Several writers who convened and co-mingled there would go on to create works that helped shape the nation.
Francis Parkman is said to have dictated parts of his The Oregon Trail to his brother while soaking in a Wesselhoeft tub. That bestseller from 1849 advanced the vision of manifest destiny that drove the nation westward.
Harriet Beecher Stowe stayed for almost a year before writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, the novel President Lincoln said sparked the Civil War.
Helen Hunt Jackson would go on to write A Century of Dishonor, the first serious book about U.S. policy toward Native Americans.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem called ‘Summer Rain’ while a patient at Wesselhoeft.
Horace Greeley, the ‘New York Tribune’ editor, was a frequent client who became a good friend to Wesselhoeft.
Long walks and exercise were vital components of the treatment. Wesselhoeft brought in another German doctor, Charles Wilhelm Grau, to help. Grau designed, landscaped and named various paths and drew maps to guide patients along the Whetstone Brook over the Connecticut River along Mount Wantastiquet, beyond the Brattleboro Retreat hospital to the West River, where a small grotto marked the terminus of that long walk. Bathhouses at various springs provided different categories of douche. Along these routes, benches for quiet contemplation were carved from trees along the way, creating an enchanting effect. Treatment was rigorous.
WESSELHOEFT: I examined each patient carefully and often. All bathing was conditioned upon such diagnosis and prescription. Meals were simple and wholesome.
NARRATOR: Wesselhoeft knew how to promote his business. He published his own regular newspaper, ‘The Green Mountain Spring’, printed in Brattleboro but distributed widely. He published meticulous annual reports that detailed patient histories and outcomes. He felt he had a mission to educate Americans.
WESSELHOEFT: In no country will the water-cure be found to prove more useful than in America to the multitude who have gotten themselves into a wholly perverse and unnatural state of body by their perverse and unnatural habits of life.
NARRATOR: Wesselhoeft created a refined and relaxed cultural atmosphere at the water-cure. There was an ample library and discussions on many different topics. There was dancing with big orchestras at community balls. A musician named Christian Schuster wrote a ‘Water-cure Polka’ dedicated to Dr. Wesselhoeft. Men and women bowled and played lawn games. Women enjoyed independence and a rare sense of equality with men while they were there. When demand for treatment at Wesselhoeft exceeded its space, Dr. Grau helped open and staff what would be called the Lawrence Water Cure just across the street at the current site of 118 Elliot. The Lawrence Water Cure also had its own newspaper, the ‘Brattleboro Hydropathic Messenger’, but it didn't last long.
High times began to wash away when Dr Wesselhoeft suddenly died of apoplexy during a visit to Germany in 1852. Today we'd call it a stroke. He was 57 years old. A new chief physician was named, but it didn't last. The Civil War had cut off the flow of southern clientele and without Dr. Wesselhoeft, things just sank. In seven short years, Wesselhoeft left a strong watermark on the town of Brattleboro, and although all that remains of the water-cure is a small and somewhat ironic spring bubbling beneath the fire station, the waters remain and creativity still flows here. (music ends)
RobertWesselhoeft was born in 1795 in Jena, an early university town in the East of today’s Germany. His father was a printer and publisher. The Wesselhoeft home was a lively gathering place for noteworthy artists and intellectuals of the day. Germany’s most revered writer, Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, is said to have tutored Wesselhoeft and his younger brother Wilhelm.
Robert became a lawyer and activist in the struggles that later led to the creation of Germany in 1871. He spent several years in jail as a political dissident where his health deteriorated. He sought help from Vincent Preissnitz, a farmer in the Alps, and one of the founders of hydrotherapy. Preissnitz’ treatments restored Robert’s health and aroused him toward a whole new direction in life.
At the age of 45, Wesselhoeft sailed to America, determined to bring the curative properties of water to the United States. His brother William lived in Allentown Pennsylvania where he had helped start the first American school of homeopathy in the US. Wesselhoeft got medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Basel in Switzerland. The brothers decided to start their own clinic in West Roxbury just outside Boston.
The Wesselhoefts rapidly gained friends and clients in West Roxbury, which at that time was the epicenter of the Transcendentalist movement. Among the area celebrities treated were poet Emily Dickenson, writer and feminist Margaret Fuller and Sophia Peabody, wife of famed ‘Scarlet Letter’ author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
It was Sophia in particular who caused problems for Wesselhoeft.
Hawthorne resented Sophia’s relationship with the doctor and the nature of his treatments. He joined with his influential friend, Harvard-educated doctor and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes. He’s not to be confused with his son, Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior, who would become a famous Supreme Court justice. The two publicly humiliated Wesselhoeft with accusations of quackery.
Holmes delivered lectures directed at the Wesselhoefts entitled “Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions.” For his part,
Hawthorne appears to have used Wesselhoeft as inspiration for two dastardly characters appearing in his fiction: Dr. Westerwelt appears in the 1852 novel ‘‘The Blithedale Romance,’ and the strange Dr. Rappaccini appears in an 1844 short story entitled ‘‘Rappaccini’s Daughter.”
Dr. Wesselhoeft never answered these charges publicly, but he did express his resentment in the course of seventeen letters to a personal friend. These letters were later privately printed as "Some Remarks on Dr. O.W. Holmes' Lectures on Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions; Communicated to a Friend by Robert Wesselhoeft, Homeopathic Physician in Cambridge."
In short, these powerful ‘Boston Brahmins’ drove-out the charming ‘foreigner’ who would go on to find a new home in Brattleboro.
(Music comes up…)
WESSELHOEFT: I have been bought a house here in Elliot Street in the town of Brattleboro, Vermont and fitted it up in new ways unheard of then, as plumbing had barely been started. Several ample bathrooms were provided. Tub baths, sit spots, shower baths and sprays with hot and cold water could be turned upon any part of the body in the strength required, all regulated by faucets and nozzles, according to the needs of the patient. In addition (sound of water splash), I installed a large swimming or plunge bath on the first floor with hot and cold water pumped in from Whetstone Brook.
NARRATOR: As mentioned earlier, Wesselhoeft was convinced that Americans’ ‘perverse and unnatural habits of life’ made them excellent candidates to benefit from watercure treatment. Recall this was the height of the industrial revolution where pollution and disease ran rampant in the cities. Getting people out into the country with fresh air and water and time to rest in itself likely led to some of the remarkable health outcomes Dr. Wesslehoeft so carefully documented in his newspapers and annual reports.
WESSELHOEFT: (triumphant music comes up) When we look about us and see the frightful extent to which ignorance of the commonest laws of health prevails and the havoc which is yearly made by unwholesome habits, we feel a lively desire to add something towards spreading a knowledge of human physiology and the nature of diseases among the people of the United States.
In no country will the water-cure be found to prove more useful than in America, to the multitude who have got themselves into a wholly perverse and unnatural state of body by their perverse and unnatural habits of life. (organ music)
Our water-cure offers a safe and certain to return to health: to the merchant man of business, with his nerves all shattered by the world of competition; to the student doomed by Yankee customs to become a finished scholar and profound lawyer, preacher or teacher before his beard has even grown; to the mother pent-up year after year in the pestiferous air of furnace heated houses; to the child poisoned by molasses, cakes and candy; to the grown-up victims of badly done vegetables and meats, hot breads, pies, coffee, tea, pork, spirited liquors, spices and all the other abominations of the popular diet.
Our water-cure offers refuge and restoration.
The patient is waked about four o'clock in the morning and wrapped in thick woolen blankets almost hermetically. Only the face, sometimes the whole head, remains free. All other contact of the body with the air is carefully prevented.(dreamy music)
Soon, the vital warmth streams out from the patient and collects around him more or less, according to his own constitution and the state of the atmosphere. After a while, he begins to perspire and he must continue to perspire until his covering itself becomes wet. During this time, his head may be covered with cold compresses and he may drink as much freshwater as he likes. Windows and doors are opened in order to promote the flow of perspiration by the entrance of fresh, vital air.
As soon as the attendant observes that there's been perspiration enough, he dips the patient into a cold bath, which is ready in the neighborhood of his bed. (water sounds) No doubt the first sensation of this bath would be disagreeable if the skin of the patient were not in a high glow, so as to make him desirous of cooling. (water sounds stop)
(Dreamy music rises quietly) As soon as the first shock is over, he feels a sense of comfort as the surface of the water becomes covered with a clammy matter which perspiration has driven out from him. The pores, which have been opened by the process of perspiration, suck up the moisture of its avidity. This is the moment when the wholesome change of matter takes place by which the whole system gradually becomes purified. (music stops)
After leaving the bath, the patient takes a short walk or exercise (footsteps) and drinking several tumblers of water. He must, however, carefully avoid any excess in drinking, which occasions a disagreeable aggravation of the stomach. Habit produces miracles in this respect. Persons who in the beginning had a great dread of water learn to drink from 20 to 30 tumblers a day.
NARRATOR: In reference to the bad treatment he got from Hawthorne and Dr.Holmes and other detractors, Dr. Wesselhoeft responded this way:
WESSELHOEFT: Our opponents sneeringly declare that our system is nothing but air, diet and exercise. Well would it be if their treatment could be said to be half so simple?
Their remedies are only palliative and superficial, infected with the very evil they pretend to cure. (music rises up) All we claim for our system is that a large class of diseases and disorders of the system are cured more certainly, more safely and more perfectly by it than they are by any other means.
(Soft guitar music begins)
NARRATOR: Exercise and outdoor walks were key components to Dr. Wesselhoeft’s treatment at the Brattleboro Water-cure, prescribed walks in carefully landscaped forest footpaths inspired the revelry and relaxation only nature can provide.
Named paths with stone seating areas, showers and natural pools meandered all along the Whetstone Brook. More robust walks led east up Mount Wantastiquet and west to a lovely stone grotto that still exists today just past the Retreat Farm leaving Brattleboro. Maps detailing the paths were drawn by Dr. Charles Grau, a Wesselhoeft associate.
But water-cure patrons weren't the only ones who enjoyed the paths. Local school children (sounds of children come up) delighted in the special playground the paths created right there in the heart of town.
Abby Estey was one of those children. Abby was the first child of Jacob Estey, the thoroughly forward-thinking founder of the nearby Estey Organ factory, whose proud ‘made in Brattleboro’ stamp on organs and advertising, put the town's name out to the far reaches of the globe. (organ music comes up)
Abby married Levi Fuller, another Brattleboro polymath, whose contributions include establishing the standard musical pitch musicians still tune to it today. (sound of universal pitch tone plays) Like her father and husband, Abby helped shape Brattleboro culture and identity.
In the passages that follow, she describes the wonderland students enjoyed, thanks to the water-cure landscapers, during recess at the old red Canal Street School. These excerpts are borrowed from a series of lectures Abby gave late in life, starting in about 1912, to the Brattleboro chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. They were published in 1928. They are sweet memories of a time not so long ago.
(sound of children’s voices playing)
VOICE OF ABBY ESTEY: As I look backward to my childhood, I can be thankful that the children of the Old Red School House on Canal Street had such lovely playgrounds. We could walk or run from our spring along Gardner's Path as far as the beginning of the canal, cross over on the stone top to a narrow footpath on the farther side of the canal and go back to the spring and up the path to the schoolhouse before the bell called us in from recess. (Bells ring)
The paths, the drinking of pure water and the walk around ‘the circle’, as it was called, from the Wesselhoeft Water-cure establishment on Elliot Street to Main, across the Mechanics Bridge up Canal Street to Birge Street, up Birge to Elliot and back to the starting point were the order. But during the heat of the day, lovely Gardeners Path was the route. (haunting music)
I could say it was beauteous, gloriousness. As I look back, it seems to me that it must have been the work of a skilled landscape artist – who the gardener was, I never heard. From the Cold Spring, the path kept close to the bank opposite the canal, the trees met overhead. The path was smooth as a floor. Seats were placed by the path side cut out of old trees. Some, like easy chairs with arms and others without. Some of these chairs were reached by stone steps in the bank.
By the side of the path were patches of forget-me-nots, ladies ear jewels, Jack-in-the Pulpit and more than 57 varieties of ferns. There was a level spot above the main spring with a long setee for the patients of the water-cure to sit on and rest. The spring was walled-in by moss-covered stones. There were two wooden spouts, one larger than the other, with a circular tube below and a seat at one side, and a wooden floor to keep one's feet from the dampness. (flute and water sounds) Also, a pint tin cup fastened with a chain to a white birch tree that spread its limbs over the spring. You may rest assured that there were various initials cut into that tree trunk. This tin cup was for us schoolchildren to drink from.
A large square reservoir received the water from that spring, and it was carried to a douche house near the canal. Farther on, over the canal was a ladies’ bathhouse (water sounds).
Still another spring and bathhouse over the canal with a large reservoir was near the trout hole. A comfortable house across the canal was for patients to rest in when not employed. This spot was, to me, like enchanted ground. There we children saw the noted people of our day. They were, as I remember them, gentle-mannered folk.
And what a change when one emerged from it to the open road and past the brick woolen factory (sounds of machinery) with its noisy machinery, then crossed the woolen factory bridge, so-called, and entered another path up a hill called Cave Bank Hill. (sound of footsteps, birds singing) This path was named Aqueduct Path. It was shady and with a spring of water near the end.
Here was the crowning work of the artist: The Eagle's Nest, a beautiful, rustic arbor, circular in shape with seats around it and a roof thatched with straw, old-country style. Trees cast their shade around it. In the near distance, one could see the brook below and hear its murmur as it fell over the dam, thus providing power for the factory looms. It was a shorter path and the entrance was less attractive, but no doubt the two paths were designed by the same brain.
These memories will remain as the most pleasant memories of a very happy childhood. And I shall always have a feeling of gratitude towards the Wesselhoeft water-cure proprietors for allowing us to enjoy these paths with their patrons. (music ends)
NARRATOR: Although the enchanting Wesselhoeft paths Abby Estey described have been absorbed into the landscape today, the spirit of Dr. Wesselhoeft and his famous water-cure lives on in Brattleboro. Indeed, the Dr. and his brother would go on to sire generations of Wesselhoefts who made their medical mark across the US. We wonder what the Dr. would say about the ‘perversions’ and ‘unnatural habits’ of life today and wish he were here to set us straight.
CREDITS:
This episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast was written, narrated and produced by me, Lissa Weinmann. Audio Editing was by Sally Seymour. The Voice of Dr. Wesselhoeft is Ned Childs. Voice of Abby Estey was Elery Loggia. Mastering was by Guilford Sound with final podcast editing by Alec Pombriant. Wesselhoeft quotes were taken from Wesselhoeft comments in various editions of his ‘Green Mountain Spring' newspaper. Abby Estey Fuller quotes were from her ‘Daughters of the American Revolution’ speech published in 1928. Info on Wesselhoeft’s early life was thanks to Starr Willard Cuttings’ “The History of Robert Wesselhoeft’ original manuscripts in Brooks Memorial Library rare documents division.This podcast was supported by a Digital Capacities Grant from the VT arts council. Thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you on the Brattleboro Words Trail.