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Mineral spa

  • 3 min read
  • 3 chapters

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Through Recreation, Traditional medicine and Boat

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Origins

Spas were used for millennia for their purported healing or healthful benefits to those wealthy or close enough to partake of their waters. This was called a mineral cure and gave let to phrases such as taking a cure and taking the waters. There has always been a mixture of recreational and medicinal connotations involved, from rest and relaxation, stress relief, and convalescence to more specific notions such as humorism. These phrases are sometimes used as a euphemism for one trying to kick a drug dependency.

In many cases, mineral spas were located in mountainous locales that gave an additional excuse to leave the drudgery of a hot house in warm weather during summer's onset and were seasonally populated by the well-to-do. They eventually became early vacation spots with the counter-Victorian work ethic 'rationale' of health as an excuse to have fun and mix with one's peers in recreation.

Subsequently, many became the seed stock for today's modern vacation resorts. Locations such as Steamboat Springs, Vail, St Moritz, Mineral Wells first became popular for the questionable health benefits of mineral or soda-water soaks, ingestion, and clean outs during the hey-day of patent medicines and backward medical knowledge. United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt suffered a paralytic illness, and regularly visited Warm Springs and other hot springs for restorative soaks. While his cousin Theodore Roosevelt was known as a physically active and healthy person, he had asthma and used physical activity as well as occasional visits to mineral spas as attempts to address his asthma.

The name "spa" comes from the Belgian town Spa.

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