A Treatise on the Healing Properties of Bathing on Earth (1790) – The Public Domain Review

Long before “earth mats” became a pseudoscientific health trend and Japanese “cedar enzyme baths” went viral, James Graham (1745-1794) encouraged his readers to bury themselves alive in the name of health. He called the practice EARTH BATHS or “animal purification,” and explained its benefits with the breathless, clause-dense enthusiasm of eighteenth-century syntax: “to immerse or place the naked human body, up to the chin or lips, or rather covered over the head, but leaving the eyes and nose uncovered, so as to see and breathe freely, in freshly dug earth, or in the sand of the seashore, for three, six, or twelve hours at a time, and repeatedly has been recommended and actually put into practice, with constant, and with infallible success, both among seafaring foreigners and among the natives of Great Britain…” It was a supposed cure for everything: spasms, convulsions, or nervous disorders; leprosy, rheumatism, binge eating; a nasty condition that causes ‘stiffness of the whole body’ – all could be cured by a few hours in the mud.