Blubber Bath: When Dead Whale Carcasses Were Used as Health Cures

Whales are some of the largest known creatures to exist (or, in the case of the blue whale, to have ever existed) on Earth, with some species weighing up to 200 tons—and while many find the mammals awe-inspiring and majestic, that hefty body composition can be a problem when death arrives. A rotting whale carcass that washes ashore can produce a smell so noxious that not even seagulls or flies will go near it; locals encountering a whale corpse have described the odor as something that seems to permeate their entire body, leaving them retching. Some have even reported being able to smell a dead whale nearly four miles away.

This repulsion was apparently far less discouraging in the 1890s, when some Australians briefly took to sitting in a whale carcass as a natural remedy for chronic pain.

1. Whaling While Intoxicated
2. The Dead Whale Tourism Board

Whaling While Intoxicated

According to a story that appeared in an 1896 issue of the London newspaper The Pall Mall Gazette, a rheumatic man was walking along the whaling station of Twofold Bay in New South Wales, Australia, in the early 1890s with a group of friends when they spotted a dead whale. The man noticed the whale had already been sliced open and so decided to jump in, possibly owing to the fact he had been drinking. He stayed within the decaying blubber for more than two hours and emerged refreshed: “He was quite sober,” the newspaper article noted with credulity, “and ... the rheumatism from which he had been suffering for years had entirely disappeared.”

It’s possible this fanciful story was apocryphal, but the whale carcass cottage industry that soon emerged was not. While whales had long been hunted for their valuable oil—it powered lamps and was used in soap, among other things—the creature’s curative properties were suddenly in demand. Newspapers regularly reported on people visiting Eden, a town on Twofold Bay, to seek the unusual cure. “In the town of Eden ... is [a] hotel where the rheumatic patients congregate,” the Gazette continued. “Upon news of a whale being taken, they are rowed over to the works on a boat. The whalers dig a sort of narrow grave in the body, and in this, the patient lies for two hours, as in a Turkish bath, the decomposing blubber of the whale closing round his body and acting as a huge poultice.”

According to an 1895 story in the Australian newspaper Snowy River Mail, three visitors crawled inside the whale and remained there for 90 minutes despite temperatures inside the massive mammal reaching 105 degrees. One, identified as Mr. Anderson, claimed he no longer needed crutches after experiencing the sauna-like environment of the whale. Another insisted there was notable pain relief in his upper body. All three expressed a desire to return to the blubbery womb in the future.

“No one seems to know for certain what is in the whale that gives such relief,” the Mail wrote, “but the general opinion is that the virtue is contained, not in the oil, but in certain gases which accumulate in the whale’s carcass as decomposition sets in.”

Writer George Lewis Beck observed the practice in greater detail, writing that “a hole is put through one side of the body sufficiently large to admit the patient, the lower part of whose body from the feet to the waist should sink in the whale’s intestines, leaving the head, of course, outside the aperture,” which was then closed—“otherwise the patient would not be able to breathe through the volume of ammoniacal gases which would escape from every opening left uncovered.” Men typically climbed in nude; women wore a wool gown that they hiked up as they burrowed further inside the corpse.

Many, Beck wrote, could not last long, either fainting or needing a break before returning for further exposure. One optimal treatment plan called for a 30-hour stint inside the whale, which might provide as much as 12 months of pain relief. A ripe carcass was preferred over a fresher one. The exact species—humpback, sperm, or other—didn’t appear to matter, so long as it stunk.

The Dead Whale Tourism Board

While the whalers didn’t charge for the spa treatment, Eden hoteliers apparently made a good profit boarding afflicted tourists; perhaps they perpetuated the quackery for the revenue. Some patients even believed it could be scheduled in a manner similar to a physician appointment: One wired Eden, hoping a dead whale could be prepared for his arrival on a specified day.

Time spent sewn up in a whale wasn’t the only curious historical treatment for rheumatism. Elixirs of dubious origin promised relief; a doctor in Paris declared 20 small needles and a proprietary oil would cure it; one man insisted his pain went away after being kicked by his mule, though he stopped short of recommending it to anyone else.

How long the whale persisted as a remedy in Eden is unclear. It was still being referenced as late as 1911, though as one newspaper observed, “it is questionable whether some persons might not prefer rheumatism to the whale cure.”

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