Richard Russell (doctor)

Richard Russell (26 November 1687 – 1759) was an 18th-century British physician who encouraged his patients to use a form of water therapy that involved the submersion or bathing in, and drinking of, seawater. The contemporary equivalent of this is thalassotherapy, although the practice of drinking sea water has largely discontinued.

Richard Russell was the son of Nathaniel Russell, a surgeon of Lewes, in Sussex, who at one time owned Ranscomb Manor, in South Malling, near Lewes. He was the eldest of seven children, his siblings being: Mary (b. 1689), John (b. 1691), Nathaniell (b. 1694), Elizabeth (b. 1695/96), Hannah (b. 1699), and Charity (b.1701).

He began his medical practice in Lewes in 1725. Records indicate that in 1742, Russell purchased a manor in Ditchling from Thomas Godfrey, John Legas, and Legas' wife Judith. "Between 1758 and 1760 it passed to Dr. Russell's son William Russell, who assumed his mother's surname of Kempe, and he held it until 1787", after which it was owned by John Ingram, and thence Charles James Ingram.

Around 1747, Russell went to Brighton to exploit his theories on the medical properties of sea-water. In 1750, he published a Latin dissertation De Tabe Glandulari, in which he recommended the use of sea-water for the cure of enlarged lymphatic glands. This was translated into English in 1752 as Glandular Diseases, or a Dissertation on the Use of Sea Water in the Affections of the Glands by W. Owen in London, and in 1769 it reached a sixth edition. It was the first book to make a connection between drinking and bathing in seawater and improvements in health.

Dr Russell recommended especially that people try the water near Brighton, proclaiming that sea water was superior to those cures provided by inland spas. His ideas were widely acclaimed in England and abroad, and despite dispute regarding the best ways to use sea water, "few disputed its value".

By 1753, his treatment became so popular that he moved his surgery to Brighton. He bought a plot of land at the south of Old Steine—a sheltered, marshy area of common land on the seafront—for £40 (£5,000 as of 2017), and built a house there. The red-brick, gabled structure was Brighton's largest house to date, and accommodated both patients and Russell himself. The rear opened directly out to the beach.

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