Bathtub

Great Old Bathtub - I want that one in my house.

what's up with the bar around the tub? i wonder what that was used for.... looks like the tub was actually rivetted to the floor.

I think those pipes were actually hooked up to empty water directly into the tub, but I have been wrong before (well, three hundred times already today, and that was just before lunch). I worked at a place once with similar old tubs and that is how those worked. These could be totally different, of course.

motts, i thought of that too, but then i figured that it would probably be just as easy lugging the thing around by the rim. the bar looks less sturdy, to me anyway, to move the tub around with, but, then again, i haven't actually seen it or felt it so i can't really tell from here.

lynne, if you click on the next image you can see the inside of this tub and someone mentioned that the knobs on the inside look like jets. and they seem to be in exact placement to where the bar connects to the outside, so it might be a pipe after all. lynne, i've read many of your posts and you are a great authority on many types of therapies. is there any reason why there would be jets in a makeshift spa (of sorts) in an establishment such as this? if it is indeed a water pipe and not simply a bar, would it have any connection to the hydrotherapy treatments that were once used on patients?

motts, i LOVE the mystery of your photographs! makes the pictures all that much more interesting.

~angel~

angel,

There are several possibilities about why the jets were placed at the sides and you can't see any water controls. One is that staff can control the amount and temperature of the water this way. I have had many a client who has gotten EXTREME joy out of flooding the bathroom. I have also had several clients who have accidentally gotten into the bathtub and scalded the hell out of themselves and had to be hospitalized with pretty serious burns. Many places now require a scald-guard device on all hot water heaters before they will license you for a group home or foster care.

Another idea is that the bather can't hit his or her head on the faucet/tap if the metalwork isn't poking out. We have had problems with that from people being intentionally self-injurious, from people having poor motor control and slipping, or from people having seizures, although obviously we don't have that many folks who have seizure conditions who also have bathing programs. At least, not without a safety strap system like I was commenting on earlier somewhere else. Easiest and safest solution if a seizure condition exists is to use a shower instead of a bath, unless you need the bath for therapeutic reasons.

OK, as you noted, they also used to have hydrotherapy. There were several different types of hydrotherapy. It was initially used where they doused ice-cold water on a person's head to "shock them out of their madness." This was back in the 1700 to 1800s. The idea was to "cool the hot blood in the head" and force a "return to sanity," insanity supposedly being caused by too much hot blood in the brain.

Then there was a period of time where they believed that running cool water over pulse points would help calm an agitated person. It's like we do today if someone is having a heat stroke.

Next, after bathing became a more usual occurrence than several times a year, they observed that many people seem to relax after a warm bath. So they put people in bathtubs in a canvas sling that kept them in the tub and piped body-temperature water in continuously. The idea was to use continuously flowing warm water to calm down and relax the more manic folks, and it actually worked with a number of people. This is before antipsychotics were invented, so again if you look at being placed in a straitjacket, 4-point restraint, or seclusion versus being in a tub, well, I am going to go for the tub. However, sometimes the folks were in the tubs for hours at a time, and in some cases, for several days in a row. The water was continuously cycled through the tubs - current water out, clean water in - so if someone had to relieve themself, the water washed out the tub fairly quickly. Don't ask me how sanitary this was - I have never actually seen it used. I did read somewhere that using hydrotherapy in this form actually reduced the overall percentage of patient hours spent in seclusion or restraint by a third or more, so this was a pretty impressive situation before any "scientific" treatments were discovered or tried.

I am going to hazard a guess that this was the purpose of this particular tub. On the next page you can see the large drain toward the bottom of the far wall of the tub, which was probably where the water drained while clean water came in slightly higher up on the bathtub walls. I don't know if the inverted metal section is a soap holder, but I know that where I work we are only supposed to have soap holders that go into the shower wall, as protruding soap holders are a constant source of accidents and injuries when clients trip or slip and hit them.

Another technique that was sometimes included under "hydrotherapy" was wet sheet packs, where they wrapped cold wet sheets around an agitated person and "cocooned" them in the sheets and restrained them until they warmed up the sheets. I believe this had to do again with the idea that someone who was agitated and manic needed to be "cooled off" physically, so even though this is NOT how I would choose to spend an afternoon, it wasn't initially started as a cruel practice to torture people - there was an initial therapeutic reason behind it - don't know what it was, so I'll probably go look it up later.

Finally there is hydrotherapy as most of us know it today, where the person voluntarily goes into lovely warm or hot water, but it is usually part of physical therapy of some sort for a physical injury or to help with muscle spasms or cramps.

OK, that was definitely WAY more than you asked for. :-)

thank you, lynne. honestly, between you and me (and i guess the millions who surf the net), i was kinda hoping for a more or less "unabridged" explanation for hydrotherapy, so your post was perfect. you must have read my mind. is this treatment archaic or is it still in some form of use today, modernized, of course?

as for restraints, i realize the need for them. i, myself, have woken up in a hospital bed in them while on life support. it seems a head injury can cause the body to act in a bizarre way involuntarily which is not only potentially dangerous to both subject and attentants, but also prevents critical treatment from being administered in a timely manner and, as you know, even a very short amount of time can mean the difference betwen life and death. is that what they call "posturing"? anyway, they took them off as soon as i was aware i had them on. obviously, i remember nothing before that, but if it weren't for restraints i might not be posting today at all. but i have to agree with you... i'd rather be in a tub too. :)

you're probably right about the bathtub in the picture. it makes perfect sense, though i can't imagine anyone relieving themselves in the water they're soaking in regardless of fresh water constantly cycling through. this isn't someone else's swimming pool. (j/k)

the chronicle behind the use of this special tub makes me wonder why it (and other artifacts like it) is not being preserved in a museum somewhere for history's sake. i've never seen anything like it, and i would not have been aware that such a thing existed, much less it's purpose, if it weren't for motts and his trusty camera.

Is that a LIGHT fixture on the other end of the tub, towards the window??? Not the kind of shock therapy they'd expect, if the seal went.....(I know it can''t be a soap dispenser...sorry HAD to interject THAT...)

the bar around the tub is almost certainly to used as an anchor for the canvas cover.

I just read about this recently . Sad to say but this is what happened. In hydrotherapy the person was put into a tub a canvas i believe under them and one on top streched sp tight up to the neck. the paient then was then inmersed in cold water the jets going this could go for hours or days. Many paitents died from this form of treatmant that is why it didn't last for a long time like ect and other treatments have. If they had a BM while in the tub it stayed in the tub no fresh water.

Not cold water - tepid water. That was the entire point of the treatment. With "true" cold water people die quickly from hypothermia. Some people called it cold because the temp is lower than that used in bathtubs, which is normally quite warm/hot.

"Many patients died from this form of treatment." Some people died, as always happens with any treatment, but from a review of all records and literature I could find, the majority of people appear to have died because the treatment was done incorrectly - i.e., the neck piece was not adjusted and the person slid in the water and drowned (especially if a seizure was involved) or someone actually did screw up and put cold water in. I see people saying "a lot of deaths" but I haven't seen any real numbers - just people quoting other people's reports.

"No fresh water." Also incorrect. The water circulated through continuously with fresh water coming in and old water draining out on a continual basis.

A large number of people benefitted from this form of therapy before psychotropic medications were developed.

All i know, is that the tub was made to wash you thoroughly, and god when i mean thorough i mean it.

I like the colors and the intact window cool !!!

Hi Lynne,
Your posts are amazing to read.
Did you ever think of writing a book on this stuff? You know so much!
Also do you have a PhD in patient care? I'd love to see a copy of your dissesection (final paper for the PhD, sorry but I can't spell). :-)

I really do not understand hydrotherapy ? what was the purpose?

I actually lived in a house that had one of these tubs. Lordy, I loved that thing. Could lie full length and just bathe. The bars around the outside are water pipes carrying the water to four jets on the inside which is how the tub fills. The square thing is a water outlet in addition to the one in the bottom. Around the outside of the tub, above the bar, but below the lip, there were pegs that one could attach a canvas cover to.