Writer Harriet Beecher Stowe discovered the wonders of the water cure on her visit to the Brattleboro Hydropathic Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont. Suffering from the death of her brother, a recent miscarriage, chronic mercury poisoning (from previous medical care), and cholera, Stowe described herself as reduced to a state of “uselessness”. So she travelled to Brattleboro in 1846 to try the water cure. She liked it so much, her husband Calvin feared she might never come home.