author

R. T. (Richard Tappin) Claridge

1799–1857

Best remembered for championing the 19th-century "water cure," this energetic English writer helped turn hydropathy into a public craze in Britain. He also had an earlier career in asphalt and road-making, giving his life an unusual mix of industry, medicine, and reform.

1 Audiobook

Every Man His Own Doctor The Cold Water, Tepid Water, and Friction-Cure, as Applicable to Every Disease to Which the Human Frame Is Subject, and Also to the Cure of Disease in Horses and Cattle

Every Man His Own Doctor The Cold Water, Tepid Water, and Friction-Cure, as Applicable to Every Disease to Which the Human Frame Is Subject, and Also to the Cure of Disease in Horses and Cattle

by R. T. (Richard Tappin) Claridge

About the author

Richard Tappin Claridge was an English writer, lecturer, and businessman active in the first half of the 19th century. Sources describe him as a captain in the Middlesex Militia and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and note that he is especially remembered for promoting hydropathy, or hydrotherapy, in Britain.

Before that campaign, Claridge was involved in the introduction of Seyssel asphalt to Britain in the 1830s. He is associated with patents and business ventures connected with asphalt paving and road-making, so his reputation reaches beyond health reform into early industrial innovation.

His lasting literary importance comes mainly from his writing on hydropathy and from the lecture tours he gave in the 1840s after visiting Vincenz Priessnitz's establishment at Gräfenberg. Those books and lectures helped popularize the "cold water cure" with British readers and audiences, making him a notable figure in the early history of hydrotherapy.