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Following the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening, many Americans strove for moral and physical perfection in an effort to hasten the second coming of Christ. Hydropathy, or water cures, became popular beginning in the 1840s. Practitioners encouraged patients to relieve their ailments by drinking cold mineral water or immersing in a cold bath. Following the Civil War, the technology to bottle water became available, and health practitioners promoted drinking mineral water to help ease internal pains. Mineral water was said to have special chemicals that flushed the system. Drinking mineral water, formerly a key activity at hydropathic spas, was now available at home. This bottle contained mineral water from the springs of Guilford, Vermont. Being a small, rural town, residents of Guilford shipped their water to Saratoga, New York, to be bottled and distributed.

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