After bathing 15 minutes in brown, muddy looking water, Eric Van Winkle feels clean. His skin is soft, his muscles are relaxed an his migraine is gone.

What appears to be unorthodox behavior is purely medical procedure. His physician, Dr. Richard Kitaeff, has prescribed an Winkle hot mud baths to treat whiplash and a pinched nerve.

In October, the 35 year old general contractor from Mountlake Terrace was in an auto accident. The other driver's insurance company, Safeco, pays for the physical therapy treatment that includes the mud baths.

The medical term for the mud procedure is hydrotherapy, balneology or moor bath. In Europe and Japan, the treatment - which may use peat with herbs or other natural materials - has long been a common alternative medical treatment. It travels back to the spa of ancient Rome. Because of its popularity, the healing mud has become so rare that doctors in Europe now recycle hot packs.

But in the United States, where physicians traditionally rely more on technical medicine than on nature, mud baths are still virtually unheard of, so insurance companies and doctors are divided about the treatment's effectiveness.

"When I took my first mud bath, I was very skeptical," Van Winkle said, "but it worked. Within a month I was back to work."

Now once a week he takes a mud bath in the New Health Medical Center in Edmonds. When he suffers from a migraine, a result of the accident, he prepares the bath at home, using the peat formula in 107 degree water. After the bath he wraps up in blankets, lies down in bed and sleeps.

"You don't feel dirty at all," he said. "After the mud bath, you must not have a shower. That would diminish the therapeutical effects."