The History of Whirlpool Baths

The concept of the whirlpool bath has been around for thousands of years. As early as 2000 BC, the ancient Egyptians used a version of the whirlpool bath for therapy, with hot stones and swirling water to soothe aching muscles. And the ancient Greeks thought of bathing as more than just hygiene — a bath in the Greece of 400 BC was a health measure and was touted as a cure for many diseases. The modern science of hydrotherapy owes much to the Greeks.

On the other side of the world, around the same century, in Japan, the first onsen, or public hot spring, opened. Inns were built nearby these natural hot tubs over the years, and indoor soaking tubs were added to help the tired traveller relieve their aches. These tubs, called ofuru, will pop up later on in our tale of the development of the modern whirlpool bath.

The ancient Romans embraced the medicinal side of bathing even more so than the Greeks had. The construction of thermae, gigantic bathhouses that could hold thousands of bathers, pushed the per capita consumption of water up one-hundred-fold in Roman cities. When the Roman legions conquered foreign lands, one of the first buildings built was always a public bath, ruins of which can still be found near the natural thermal springs and mineral baths all over Europe and around the shores of the Mediterranean.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, bathing fell into disrepute in Europe. However, public baths were still a big thing in the Ottoman Empire, famous over the past thousand years for the domed hammam, a style still evident in the Baths of Roxelana, built in 1556, with steam rooms, washing quarters, and massage platforms. But, for most of the rest of the world, bathing became more limited, often restricted to only those parts of the body seen in public, until the dawn of the Industrial Age, when regular work weeks and a Saturday night bath before dressing up the next day for Sunday worship became the norm for most of Europe and the Americas.

Then came the Jacuzzi.

In the late 1940s, in the state of California, in the United States, early versions of hot tubs were cobbled together from wine vats and large oak barrels scavenged from the region’s innumerable wineries. The Japanese influx into California over the previous century provided part of that inspiration for these hot tubs with the Japanese ofuru. Custom tubs were made from California redwood, and, though leaky and hard to clean, these hot tubs became very popular up and down the Pacific coast.

1950 Jacuzzi J-300 Pump

Meanwhile, six immigrant brothers, the owners of a Berkeley factory that had begun as a manufacturer of airplane propellers in the 1920s, had moved on to the manufacture of large agricultural pumps. One of the brothers, Candido Jacuzzi, wanted to help his young son, who suffered from the chronic pain of rheumatoid arthritis. Candido was inspired by the hydrotherapy tubs used in the periodic treatment of his son’s condition to develop a small submersible pump that could be placed in a bathtub. He found that the daily use of this small pump would give his son the same relief that he received in his not-frequent-enough hydrotherapy treatments at the hospital. In 1955, the Jacuzzi brothers began selling that pump, called the J-300, to schools and hospitals as a therapeutic aid.

Orthopedists and physical therapists began prescribing the J-300 for personal use. In the early 1960s, the company decided to develop a consumer version of an integrated tub and pump. In 1968, the Jacuzzi brothers began selling a tub-system complete with controls and water-jets; Hollywood celebrities began buying this home luxury appliance, the Jacuzzi.

Fiberglass shells began to replace the original wooden slats of the Jacuzzi in 1970, and, not long after that, acrylic shells began to be used. Cleaning a hot tub became much easier, and hot tubs became that much more hygienic. From the 1970s on, better filters and improved control systems were installed in larger tubs that could accommodate more people, in order to satisfy the increasing popular demand for these appliances.

The simple hydrotherapy bath has come to be known by many names: hydro-spa, jetted bath, whirlpool bath, air-spa bath, and hydro-pool. Some tub-systems even included an ozone generator to add new levels of healthy invigoration to the whirlpool experience. Underwater lighting was been added to some baths for both aesthetic reasons and for the chromatherapy effects.

Whirlpool baths are available today in enamelled steel or reinforced acrylic, with features that can be added or subtracted to fit any budget. Most whirlpools have self-draining pipes, and some even have built-in systems that will disinfect the most hidden area within the tub.