This is a repost of an article originally published in the Rutland Herald/Times ArgusWeekend Magazine on September 23, 2023.
Pus-filled boils, anyone? Brattleboro’s Wesselhoeft Hydropathic Institution was once a favorite of New England’s literary elite despite its questionable treatments.
Horace Greeley, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Beecher, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow… undoubtedly some of the most famous progressive and creative thinkers of the 19th century. As well as all knowing each other, they have something else in common: they spent time here in Vermont getting plunged in cold water multiple times a day, wrapped in wet sheets for hours, and eating bland food — willingly — at the Brattleboro Hydropathic Institution founded by one Dr. Robert Wesselhoeft…
Vermont When... 