ABSTRACT
Balneology was an early and successful example of the reinterpretation of medical science on the mechanical model, a part of the experimental programme advocated by Francis Bacon as the only way out of the well-worn sophistry and contradictions of medieval lore. The science of physiology was integral to the dialectical discourse of popular health; and it is quite legitimate to argue that physiology remained public property in the first half of the nineteenth century, into the early years of the sectarian and sanitarian movements. According to Samuel Brown, 'physical puritanism' referred to a cluster of therapies which all in their way related to ascetic belief, but which historians have tended to treat as separate entities. If utility was one strand of the democratic polemic, immaterialist thought was definitely another: the right to manage the body for personal salvation was a special preoccupation closely associated with classical and Christian philosophic traditions and earlier magical practices.
