Pliny. In his book “Natural History” refers to “ferruginous springs”, describing its taste and curative characteristics.

Vitrubio divided the springs in sulphurous, with aluminium, salted and bituminous and he also said the thermal springs to have medicinal virtues given by the ground, that warmed the water giving the minerals a strength different from the usual one.

The Middle Ages

Mohammed attached much importance to hygiene and body cares with water. Rhazes and Avicena, considered the best doctor in Arab language, developed hydrotherapy as a technique of application through baths, drinks and local applications. In Christian Europe there is a backward step, body cult and the hygiene are abandoned, and the acquired knowledge in all these years before are locked up in the monasteries and forgotten.

15th – 16th Centuries

Juan Miguel Savonarola, in 1498 publishes "De Balneis et Thermis" considered the first treaty about thermal therapy and balneotherapy. In 1571, Andrea Bacius depicts in his book "De Termis" the characteristics and effects of medicinal waters, and it’s considered one of the most important works about this topic.

17th – 18th Centuries

Many doctors that study and develop hydrotherapy arise. The most remarkable ones are the German doctors Ovelgün y Hoffmann. With their studies and publications, gave a major boost for hydrotherapy. At the end of the 18th century the doctors Sigmund and Johann Hahn, so-called tap-doctors, defended hydrotherapeutic applications, not only as a preventive method, but also as a therapeutic treatment to several diseases that continue to be used nowadays.

19th Century

A new generation of doctors began, who cause a backward step in the hydrotherapy culture, due to their eagerness to discover new techniques and indications for each pathology. With Priessnitz, hydrotherapy re-emerges again. The day he breaks his ribs, he decides to use compresses with cold water, after having seen his farmers neighbours use them for curing the injured animals. Kneipp created one of the most important techniques in hydrotherapy: the "Kneipp-Cure", based in partial or total cold water jets. In Spain, in 1816, hydrotherapy is regulated by a Royal Decree, in which it’s said that there must be a professor versed in hydrotherapy and medicine in all the most important baths of the kingdom, to indicate its application and use.

20th Century

Hydrotherapy is introduced as a subject in some universities, the first of them in Austria. Medicine studies in this time help to understand and make the techniques better, the understanding of human body working, diagnostic improvement, everything contributed to a new splendor age. Studies about water itself rise. Geologists begin to teach us the reason why the waters are this way, and their classification depending on their physical or chemical characteristics. Several years later hydrotherapy is subjected to scientific experiments and to rational and critical clinical observation, producing results because of being this a science. Not only the hydrotherapy advances, but also traditional medicine does.

End of the 20th Century

Modern life rate, stress, work, the insane life that we live makes us stop for a moment to watch and we discover that we need calm. Hydrotherapy re-emerges with spas, modern installations built on the Roman ancient ones, areas for calm and rest, anti-stress treatments, anti-smoking ones...etc... a return to nature, to Hippocrates’ teachings.