The whale hotel for rheumatism

Blubber bathing for your aching joints in late 1800s Australia

If you suffered from rheumatism in the late 1800s, there was a unique treatment option for you in Eden, Australia.

You could bath in a whale. A dead whale, that is.

The Whale Cure for Rheumatism in Australia, published by The Graphic, illustrator William Ralston, 31 May 1902. Courtesy the Australian National Maritime Museum collection.

Fishermen caught whales close to shore in Eden Bay at that time, dragging the carcasses back to the beach to strip. Paying patients had plenty of opportunities to take the plunge before the men got to work.

Like a steam room

It was believed that the practice worked somewhat like a steam room. Climb in, let the gases from decomposition, the warmth, and the blubber itself work their magic and voila! Rheumatism relieved.

Digging a patient sized hole

According to a reporter for Australia's The Graphic, writing in 1902, patients were stuck in the whale like birthday candles in a cake:

"When a whale is killed and towed ashore and while the interior of the carcass still retains a little warmth a hole is cut through one side of the body sufficiently large to admit the patient, the lower part of whose body from the feet to the loins should sink in the whale’s intestines, leaving the head, of course, outside the aperture. The latter is closed up as closely as possible, otherwise the patient would not be able to breathe through the volume of animoniacal gases which would escape from every opening left uncovered."

Accidental discovery or grounded in tradition?

News spread to the U.S., and The Florida Agriculturalist had a field day with it in this 1896 article, reporting on the rumored origins of the cure:

"It was discovered by a drunken man, who was staggering along the beach near the whaling station at Twofold Bay, and who, seeing a dead whale cut open, took a header into the decomposing blubber. It took two hours for him to work his way out, but he was then not only sober but cured of his rheumatism. Now, a hotel has been built in the neighboring town of Eden, where rheumatism patients wait for the arrival of a whale in order to take blubber baths."

This piece from the Australian National Maritime Museum suggests what may actually have inspired the idea:

"R.H. Mathews in his 1904 Ethnological notes on the Aboriginal tribes of New South Wales and Victoria. (Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales. Vol 38:252-253) observed the Aborigines of Eden undertaking the whale cure for rheumatism. After the meat and blubber were removed from a whale carcass, he wrote, the Aboriginal people would lower themselves into the body and cover themselves with whale fat to treat their pain...It was not long before knowledge of this treatment was transferred and Eden’s local businesses were more than happy to accommodate those willing to pay for the experience."

The end of an era

The whale hotel slowly emptied out as fishermen caught fewer whales, and by World War I the practice had come to a halt.

There may be another reason for the practice falling out of vogue: emerging from the whale, patients smelled absolutely horrible.