Radioactive Mud: Treating Rheumatism in the 1920s
You come across all sorts of unexpected and unusual things when you handle a lot of medical rare books, but there are always more surprises in store if you keep your eyes open.
‘MUD VERSUS RHEUMATISM’ was, for example, not precisely what I’d expect to see heading an advert in a 1920s medical journal. It only got more startling as I continued to read, for this wasn’t just any old mud: the advert commands the reader to ‘apply for full particulars of the PISTANY radio-active MUD’.
Radioactive mud? Well, colour me intrigued.
Advert for Pistany radioactive mud on the back of Archives of medical hydrology issue 4, January 1924.
The mud, we are told, will arrive in ‘dry, compressed form … sterile and absolutely odourless’. It was suggested as a treatment for a range of rheumatic, ie joint, conditions including sciatica, gout, arthritis, neuritis, and back aches, all of which could certainly benefit in the short term from the application of a warm compress. Whether contents of the compress actually emitted enough radiation to have any effect – positive or negative – is unknown today.
The advert contained testimonials from anonymous doctors and a quotation from an article in The Lancet which gave a succinct analysis of the product and a description of its use.
The Lancet, 30 September 1922, p. 744
The Lancet explained that the mud was supplied in the form of cubes large enough to deliver a 2.5-5cm layer of mud to a hand, foot or elbow. The mud had to be worked into a warm paste that could be spread on the body and then covered wit a waterproof sheet and woollen blanket, and left in place for half an hour daily over the course of a month. The temperature of the poultice was gradually increased from 40 °C to nearly 50 °C over time. Pleasingly, the report noted that the mud had no bad smell and was easy to remove after treatment.
It seems that the mud was also supplied in a form somewhat easier to prepare and use. Lucy Jane Santos, the curator of the Museum of Radium, has tracked down a surviving Pistany mud compress that came ready-made. A flat linen cover – stamped with the product name and patent number – was filled with the dried mud, and sewn into columns to make a foldable corrugated compress. Patients were instructed to soak the compress in warm water and then to mould it to the affected part(s) of their body.
A Dr Garry wrote positively about the mineral waters and mud at Pistany in the British Medical Journal of 17 April 1920, noting that both water and mud possessed a ‘high degree of radio-activity’ and that treatment involved drinking the water, taking baths in both water and mud. He recommended it for cases of arthritis and gout, and also for stiffness, pain and loss of function after injuries and fractures.
Pistany: Wheeled Sedan Chair, from ‘The spas of Czechoslovakia: a medical tour of Pistany and the High Tatra health resorts’, British Medical Journal, 4 June 1927, pp. 1015-6.
An article on the ‘Spas of Czechoslovakia’ from 1927 noted that ‘the radio-active sulphurous mud is dark greenish-grey, and butter-like to the touch. It is scooped up in wooden buckets, cooled to the prescribed temperature, and clapped upon the skin by deft hands. … The clinging mud is presently rinsed off with hot sulphur water, and, after a sweat and a rest and a bathe in the hyperthermal pool, those who have any distance to go are taken back to bed in a wheeled sedan chair’.
All sorts of radioactive treatments were en vogue in the early decades of the 20th century. Among those, an interesting subset were mineral waters and spa bathing treatments marketed as being beneficially radioactive, such as those at Bath, Matlock, and Buxton. Mud, however, was mentioned less frequently, though it was sufficiently well-known to warrant an entry in Martindale and Westcott’s Extra pharmacopoeia from at least the 15th edition of 1912 until the 21st edition of 1936.
William Martindale and W. Wynn Westcott, The extra pharmacopoeia (1912), p. 703
Martindale and Westcott was a standard reference book listing available pharmaceutical preparations, their uses and dangers. The book concluded that radioactivity was key to the effectiveness of the mud, but – contrary to the claims for Pistany Mud to use at home – that it could ‘only be used at source’.
The Pistany mud compresses were initially supplied to British buyers by Chr. Hansens Laboratory near St Thomas’ Hospital in London. Hansens was much better known as a European and US supplier of rennet and other chemicals and cultures used in preparing cheese and other dairy products. Hansens advertised the compresses in the specialist press such as Archives of medical hydrology, and also in the Chemist & Druggist, the leading magazine for pharmacists, throughout 1923 and 1924. At that point the adverts disappear from view, until in 1929, McClure, Young & Co., of Barnes, south-west London, announce themselves as sole agent for Pistany mud alongside their usual trade in disinfectants and other domestic and industrial chemical preparations. They continued as agents until at least 1934.
In 1937, a separate Pistany Agency was set up, with offices at 310 Regent’s St, London, and from 1938 their adverts pivoted away from selling the mud based on its radioactivity, to encouraging patients to travel to the spa in ‘Sunny Pistany’ themselves by train or by air.
Pistany (today known as Piešťany, pronounced PEE-esh-chany) is a spa town in modern Slovakia, about 50 miles north-east of the Slovak capital Bratislava, and about 70 miles from Vienna. It lies on the river Váh, in the middle of which is Spa Island: the site of several hot springs producing sulphurous water at around 68°C. The site has been used as a spa since the Middle Ages and is still a popular resort. The town is also home to the Balneological Museum of Imrich Winter (Balneologické múzeum Imricha Wintera) and the national institute for rheumatological diseases (Národný ústav reumatických chorôb).
The advert for Pistany mud that set me on this research journey was found on the back cover of the fourth issue, dated January 1924, of the Archives of medical hydrology, the journal of the International Society of Medical Hydrology and Climatology (ISMHC). The ISMH was founded in 1921 with the aim of promote scientific, clinical and experimental studies of medical balneology and climatology and of related fields within health resort medicine. Its journal published articles in English, French and German discussing the theory and practice of mineral waters, hydrotherapy, and spa towns across Europe. The journal contained numerous adverts for spas and spa organisations across the continent, though few as startling as that for Pistany.
Several issues of the journal were received by the British Society of Rheumatology as part of a donation of books from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Rotorua, New Zealand, as the result of a reorganisation of its library in 2023. The books have all now been catalogued, and are available for research as part of the Heberden Library, is a collection of over 1,500 items documenting the history of rheumatology. It is available to all by booking an appointment via history@rcp.ac.uk.
Katie Birkwood, rare books and special collections librarian
Source consulted in writing this post:
Advert for ‘Sunny Pistany’, British Medical Journal, 9 July 1938, p. 31. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.64453/page/n235/mode/1up
Advert for ‘Sunny Pistany’, British Medical Journal, 23 July 1938, p. 31. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.64453/page/n481/mode/1up
Advert for Pistany radio-active Mud, The chemist and druggist, 2 February 1924, p. 50. https://archive.org/details/b19974760M2397/page/50/mode/1up
Advert for McClure, Young & Co., The chemist and druggist, 28 September 1929, p. xii. https://archive.org/details/b19974760M2701/page/n131/mode/2up
Advert for McClure, Young & Co., The chemist and druggist, 25 May 1929, p. xviii. https://archive.org/details/b19974760M2682/page/n87/mode/2up
‘Company news’, The chemist and druggist, 20 March 1937, p. 329. https://archive.org/details/b19974760M3108/page/n50/mode/1up
‘Foreign mineral water resorts’, British Medical Journal, 17 April 1920, p. 545
‘Medical news’, The Lancet, 17 March 1923, 201:5194, pp. 569-570 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140673600954540
‘Radio-active mud’ in ‘Notes, short comments, and answers to correspondents’, the Lancet, 30 September 1922, 200:5170, p. 744.
Santos, Lucy Jane. Half lives: the unlikely history of radium (London: Icon Books, 2021).
‘The spas of Czechoslovakia: a medical tour of Pistany and the High Tatra health resorts’, British Medical Journal, 4 June 1927, pp. 1015-6.