earth bath

• earthbath, Earth bath

Sense 2: Compound of earth +‎ bathing. Widely understood to have been coined Scottish physician James Graham in the late 1780s or early 1790s.

• Possibly coined earlier by Gerard van Swieten in 1765 in references to practices found in the Kingdom of Granada (writing "per balneum terrae," Latin for "bath of earth").

earth bath (plural earth baths)

1. Mud bath
2. (historical) A bath or therapeutic treatment in which the body is buried or immersed in earth, as practiced in James Graham’s 18th-century "earth-bathing" therapy.