Talk:Florence, Massachusetts

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Ruggles, Munde, the naming of Florence, and the water cure movement

Thanks User talk:Betsythedevine, for taking the initiative with the Florence, Massachusetts article. I was hoping someone else would pick up the ball and help sort it out a bit after my additions. Good improvement.

And yes, I concur that Munde doesn't belong in the opening sentence anymore. I originally placed him there on 7 December, when I came across the New York Times citation that he'd founded Florence. What I was really trying to find, was something dating Munde's water cure, given that Metcalfe's (1898) Life of Vincent Priessnitz credits Munde with the U.S.' first water cure. Then I came across Strimer's article on David Ruggles in Florence, Massachusetts, which led me to Charles Sheffeld's, History of Florence, and the quote about the meeting. This changed things. I tend to think of the 'founding' of a place as the establishment of a continous settlement, but Munde joined an existing community, and contributed to the naming of it, which is not really the same thing.

However, I was a bit jaded by this point, and trying to find a way to move back to the main articles I'm working on, while still doing some justice to the Florence article, and I was hoping someone else would pick up the ball. You did that, and good on you. I do think the article can be further fleshed out from the Sheffeld reference and others, but I leave that to someone else.

One thing that intrigued me was Ruggles involvement in water cure. I see Hodges (2000) attributes Ruggles with establishing the first U.S. water cure hospital, but this seems unlikely. From my readings, it looks like the credit for this goes Mary Gove, who teed up with Joel Shew and subsequently married him, with the dates for their establishment being circa 1843/1844. Shew was - as far as I can tell - also the first editor of the Water Cure Journal, followed by R.T. Trall, all of which fits with Gove/Shew's establishment preceding Trall's. But we still don't - or at least I don't - have a specific date for Ruggles establishment. It looks to me like circa 1844, and I begin to wonder if he encountered Shew or especially Gove.

In terms of the chronology of hydrotherapy/water cure as we have come to know it, the chronology for establishment in the U.S. appears to go something like this: R.T. Claridge kicks off the populist movement in the U.K. in 1842. Soon after, there are writings in the U.S. by people like Shew and Trall (who credit Claridge with popularising Priessnitz' methods), and then water cure houses, or establishments, start appearing in the U.S. Metcalfe's claim of Munde opening the first U.S. hydropathy establishment initially had possible credence, given his experience with Priessnitz circa 1836, and migration from Europe to the U.S.

But Munde never made the 'first' claim himself - or not that I'm aware of - and his own chronology made Metcalfe's claim hard to figure, made all the more difficult by competing claims re Shew and Trall, and lack of any acknowledgement by them of Munde. It was possible that hydropathy promoters didn't want any credit to go to a German immigrant, and just ignored him. But how could this be, if he was significant enough to be credited with founding Florence? Someone must mention him somewhere. And sure enough, they do, but after good old Ruggles. A neat turn of events indeed.

So there you go. There is much more to the Florence article than meets the eye, and both Ruggles and Florence's part in the water cure movement is a small piece of their own history, and of the history of the movement itself. Yet it is a significant piece of the jigsaw, without which other pieces don't quite fit.Wotnow (talk) 21:42, 16 December 2009 (UTC)Wotnow

Thanks so much, Wotnow, for your hard work on this article -- you really improved it! betsythedevine (talk) 13:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Cheers Betsythedevine. There is more that can be done. But a start has been made, with some resources which others can draw from. Wotnow (talk) 17:04, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

A belated self-correction. Mary S. Gove didn't marry Joel Shew, she married Dr Thomas L. Nichols. I add this having had reason to review that which I've wrtten on Mary S. Gove. Not significant, but it can help any readers to know that it was an error, rather than cause confusion. Wotnow (talk) 01:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)