KNEIPP, Sebastian. – Physician and priest, b. at Stephansried (Bavaria) on 17 May 1821, d. at Wörishofen on 17 June 1897. From the age of 31 he was parish priest of this Bavarian locality, situated 600 m. above sea level; there he developed and made famous the hydrotherapeutic method which took his name.
Crowds of sufferers came from all parts seeking relief for their various ailments; lodged in the village houses, they were inspected daily by K., assisted by four doctors in a large room of the parish house. After a simple informative and external examination, he prescribed various hydrotherapeutic treatments (jet douches, compresses with pure linen cloths soaked in cold water, walking barefoot on wet ground or snow) and decoctions of herbs (wormwood, fennel, juniper, mistletoe, hayflower, horsetail, etc.) for compresses or drinking. In the parish there was also a bathing and shower establishment and a hospice for children.
Kneipp had arrived at his method through the study of the hydrotherapeutic system of Priessnitz, a farmer who in 1832 had founded on the Gräfenberg, 608 m. above the Baltic, an establishment for the treatment of diseases using only water externally and internally; he himself, as he recounts (*Thus You Must Live* [V. BIBLICA.], p. viii), having reached “the brink of the grave” in 1847, recovered his health with the help of water.
From a critical point of view, examination of the works written by K., translated at the time into the principal languages and widely disseminated, shows—especially in light of present-day knowledge—a scarcity of medical knowledge, erroneous explanations of pathogenesis, diagnoses not based on serious objective examinations but rather intuitively arrived at, presumably. For this reason, the sometimes undeniable good results are to be attributed less to the alleged healing of organic lesions admitted by K. than to the disappearance of functional disorders linked to unnatural and unhealthy ways of living, achieved through a healthy diet, life in the open air, the beneficial stimulating effect of water applications, the purifying action of herbal teas, the serene tranquility of the environment, and the moral influence exerted by the kindly interest of the good parish priest.