Many of us started this year planning to be healthier whether it is dieting, exercise, or mental wellness. But knowing how to achieve our goals can be confusing amid a myriad of often conflicting health advice, results, and testimonies. In terms of competing for the best solution, the present is not far from the past. Syracuse in the 19th century was home to various types of public baths: mineral baths, sulphur vapor baths, electro thermal baths, and Turkish and Russian baths all of which claimed to be the solution to improving one’s health. 

On May 15, 1851, The Standard stated, “By long continued wearing of heavy clothing, which many do not change once a month during the winter, the pores of the skin become coated over with matter that is, according to a law of nature, exuding from the system. This needs to be removed, and by the best of means for effecting it, is of course the free use of cold water.” At the time a quick cold bath, rather than a warm or hot bath, was viewed as the solution to curing and preventing disease. The column then lamented that Syracuse had only one bathhouse: Bendall and Heller’s bath.

Bendall and Heller’s bath opened in 1850 at Brintnall Hotel on the corner of Warren and Fayette streets. The bathhouse offered cold and warm baths. Despite Bendall and Heller’s likely being the only bath in Syracuse, a writer for The Standard wrote in June 1851 that it seemed that not enough people knew about the baths. The writer pressed that a bath is crucial during the summertime and prevents illness. Luckily for the writer, more bath businesses appeared in the city throughout the rest of the century. Many of these establishments touted the healing properties of their baths.

In addition to a water bath or shower, many proprietors in the 1850s and 60s supplied patrons with sulphur vapor baths. These baths differed from a bath in the terms we think of today. Guests of the vapor bath sat naked in a box that would surround each patron from the shoulders down. Sulphur gas would pass through pipes connected to the box.

Advertisements for the sulphur vapor baths attested to remedying against rheumatism, bronchitis, hydrophobia, and other ills. In 1855, The Chronicle stated that these baths were not a common professional healing method, however insisted the baths were worth trying. Eleven years later, Mrs. H.M. Duell’s ad claimed that the gaseous bath was now professionally approved as beneficial to one’s health. Bath companies’ ads often provided long lists of diseases that their baths cured. Dr. George Buchner was no different, but he added statistics on bathing and illnesses.

Buchner and his wife owned an electro thermal bath on 35 Montgomery St. It was “not administered elsewhere in the State of New York” in 1865. They reported that the combination of heat, electricity, and water cured diabetes, rheumatism, “nervous afflictions,” “remove vegetable and mineral poisons,” and other ailments. To further his legitimacy and entice more customers, Buchner was also precise in his cure. For example he claimed that a bad common cold was cured with two baths and “acute rheumatism cured with fifteen to thirty baths.” Turkish baths were another common bath business in Syracuse, especially in the late 19th century.

Some Turkish bath companies such as La Concha offered Turkish and Russian baths. Turkish baths in America had pools of cold water, a dry heat room, and a washing room. Russian baths were, and continue to be, much like a sauna. Dr. T.C. Pomeroy’s Turkish bath ad claimed that his bath improves the complexion, relaxes the nerves, helps relieve asthma, rheumatism, malaria, and other ailments. William P. Dower, M.D.’s Turkish bath ad, hawked to “try it [Turkish bath] on a hard cold, or a rheumatic joint, or general debility of the system, and if it isn’t the most palatable ‘medicine[‘] ever taken, we miss our guess.”

Like any good business people, bathhouse owners saw the demand for health and cleanliness and honed in on those aspects — perhaps creating further confusion on the public’s part. Bathhouses in Syracuse no longer exist today, having been traded in for spas, and gyms that have saunas. And while spas and gyms do not boast to be the remedy for a long list of diseases, they still compete to be a solution toward one’s health.

Jordan Scott is assistant archivist at the Onondaga Historical Association (OHA) (www.cnyhistory.org), located at 321 Montgomery St. in Syracuse.