Spa | Relaxation, Detoxification & Wellness | Britannica (original) (raw)

spa, spring or resort with thermal or mineral water used for drinking and bathing. The name was taken from a town near Liège, Belg., to which persons traveled for the reputed curative properties of its mineral springs.

The practice of “taking the waters” for therapeutic purposes reached its heyday in the 19th century, but springs have been considered places of healing at many times and in all parts of the world. The founding of Bath in England is attributed in legend to Bladud, son of Lud Hudibras and father of King Lear, who in 863 bc was cured of disease by immersion in the steaming swamps. Roman colonists developed a considerable spa there and also at Buxton, Derbyshire. After the departure of the Romans the baths seem to have been long neglected, but many churches were built on sites of ancient places of healing throughout Europe, and cures were attributed to immersion in fonts fed by the springs beneath the sanctuary. In the early 18th century some Roman baths were rebuilt, many new “watering places” were established, and spas became fashionable secular centres of resort for the upper classes at the most seasonable times of the year. For the ill and infirm many spas provided year-round treatment centres under varying degrees of medical supervision.

Spa therapy is based on both the drinking of and the bathing in certain waters containing properties believed to be of medicinal value. Mineral springs usually contain noticeable quantities of salts in solution—including carbonate and sulfate of lime, common salt, iron, and sulfur. Magnesia and many trace minerals, notably lithium, also constitute medicinal waters. In addition to solid constituents, gas is present in many waters in considerable quantities. There is a little oxygen and a good deal of nitrogen in some of them. The quantity of hydrosulfuric acid, even in strong sulfuric waters, is small, but the volume of carbonic acid present is often large, giving a noticeable effervescence. Thermal springs are derived from two sources: meteoric waters that rise from considerable depths along fissures of penetration; and volcanic waters, which reach the surface in the form of either geysers or hot springs. Most thermal water contains mineral substance in solution.

The spas of Europe and the United States with the greatest popularity were those with thermal springs. Bathing in warm water has an undoubted therapeutic effect as an aid to relaxation, although the skin does not absorb any of the salts or gases. Sulfurated waters such as those at Aachen, Ger., Baden, Austria, and White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., are used for some skin conditions. Drinking mineral waters may, at the least, provide a general washing out of the digestive system, and the alkaline waters of Vichy, Fr., Ischia, Italy, and Mariánské Lázně, Czech Republic, may act as purgative agents. The highly carbonated salt springs at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and at Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden, Ger., have long been used for rheumatic and neuralgic conditions. Drinking mineral water, carbonated or not, has become so popular that a considerable business of bottling and exporting has grown up on both sides of the Atlantic; it has a practical importance in aiding digestion that is much greater than one would expect from its small mineral content.

It is likely, however, that most of the medicinal effects of spa therapy result from the environmental factors of the location and facilities of the spa. The beautiful town of Bath has the only thermal springs in England, which usually yield more than 500,000 gallons daily at a temperature of 120° F (49° C). The waters are drunk medicinally and used for hydrotherapy treatments, and the Georgian Pump Room, with its fountain, has long been a rendezvous for visitors who are “taking the waters.” Many European spas are located in forested alpine settings such as Sankt Moritz, Switz., Évian-les-Bains, Fr., Badgastein, Austria, and Bormio, Italy. Japan has several thousand hot springs, many of which have been converted into spas or public baths.

An individual who goes to a spa usually finds a different climate, diet, and style of living than he is used to. In a new and probably cheerful society, a person is more relaxed and may take more exercise in the open air. For many persons the therapy of the waters is secondary to the company in which they are taken, and it has long been so at spas. After the American Civil War a spa at French Lick, Ind., enjoyed enormous popularity as a meeting place to arrange marriages. Saratoga Springs declined as a spa in the early 20th century but still attracts thousands of visitors to its racecourse each year. For the diseased and convalescent many spas offer medical therapy, and for all persons the spa has been and continues to be in a variety of ways a place of healing.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.