Spas
De balneis omnia quae extant apud Graecos, Latinos, et Arabas, tam medicos quàm quoscunque ceterarum artium probatos scriptores; qui vel integris libris, vel quoquo alio modo hanc materiam tractauerunt: nuper hinc inde accurate conquisita & excerpta, atque in vnum tandem hoc volumen redacta (Venice, 1553), fol. 489v.
This image of an ancient bath is from a large compilatory work, produced by the Giunti press of Venice in 1553, which brings together a host of texts related to balneology and hydrotherapy in sixteenth-century Europe. As Zucollin has argued, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed the ‘medicalization of hydrotherapy’, a process fuelled by early modern physicians’ investigation and promotion of their local springs.[1] Italian physicians led the charge in this regard and Worth owned famous texts such as Bartholomeo Viotti’s De balneorum naturalium viribus libri quatuor (Lyon, 1552), which had first appeared in 1524, and Andrea Bacci’s extensive De thermis Andreae Baccii Elpidiani … libri septem (Venice, 1588). In these works both Bartolomeo Viotti da Clivolo (d. 1568), a physician from Turin, and Andrea Bacci (1524–1600), a physician of the pontifical court, discussed the famous Piedmontese baths of Acqui, among others.
The rise of ‘Paracelsianism’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries further turned the medical spot light onto spas as important locations for the treatment of disease. Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541) had produced two treatises on therapeutic bathing in the period 1525–35: Von den natürlichen Bädern (1525) and Of Pfeffrs bath (1535).[2] Subsequent ‘Paracelsian’ writers who promulgated the therapeutic power of the drinking of mineral waters were equally keen advocates of the benefits of mineral waters for bathing and Worth owned an excellent sixteenth-century example: Martin Ruland the elder’s Hydriatrice: Aquarum Medicarum Sections Qvatour (Dillingen, 1568). In this Ruland (1532–1602), a well-known ‘Paracelsian’, explored the world of German spas, explaining the therapeutic benefits of bathing. Needless to say, this led to an inevitable backlash from Galenic physicians, particularly in France, but just as the ‘Paracelsians’ had helped to raise the profile of spas, so too, one might say, the curative waters of the spas buttressed ‘Paracelsian’ claims.
Jean Pascal, Traité des eaux de Bourbon l’Archambaud selon les principes de la nouvelle physique … (Paris, 1699), view of the baths of Bourbon l’Archambault.
The majority of Worth’s extensive collection of texts devoted to mineral waters were seventeenth-century tracts, many specifically devoted to the promotion of a specific local spa. Where Italian and German springs had dominated his sixteenth-century works, now English and French spas came to the fore. The above image, one of the few representations of an actual bathing resort in Worth’s collection, is of the famous spa of Bourbon l’Archambault. As Brockliss has demonstrated, Bourbon l’Archambault was one of a number of important spa resorts which came to prominence in seventeenth-century France.[3] Others included Passy, Vichy, and Forges and tracts on all were collected by Worth. Crucial to their rise was their advocacy by a local (or well-placed physician), who, in turn, had good connections at court.
French spas had, in the main, been neglected in Bacci’s survey of sixteenth-century spas in his De thermis, and as Brockliss notes, their rise to prominence in the later part of the sixteenth century was due to the need of the Valois dynasty for an heir.[4] Henri III (1551–89), King of France, and his wife, Louise of Lorraine (1553–1601), travelled to the spa of Bourbon-Lancy in 1580, hoping that its waters might aid them in their quest. Though their journey proved fruitless, it highlighted Bourbon-Lancy and, more generally, showed aspiring physicians the possibilities of their own local springs. While not all were successful some stood out and became fashionable destinations for members of the court. In particular, during the long reign of Louis XIV (1638–1715), King of France, Bourbon-l’Archambault, Vichy and Forges, were frequent destinations for courtiers and members of the royal family. Brockliss estimates that ‘Every year in the second half of the century Bourbon, Vichy and Forges played host to a representative cross-section of the French élite’.[5]
The promotion of the health benefits of the French spas by physicians with links to the court, coupled with testimonies from courtiers such as Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigné (1626–96), a frequent visitor at Vichy and one who maintained an extensive correspondence, heightened the reputation of certain spas.[6] Bourbon-l’Archambault might at first have been eclipsed by its more illustrious neighbour, Bourbon-Lancy, but by the assiduous work of Charles Delorme (1584–1678), medicin ordinaire du roi, it rose to prominence by the middle of the seventeenth century. Delorme was well-placed indeed, for he was the son of Jean Delorme, who had been the physician of Queen Marie de Médicis (1573–1642), the wife Henri IV (1553–1610), King of France, and Charles himself became a physician to several members of the royal family.[7] His death in 1678 did not see a diminution in the importance of Bourbon-l’Archambault for it was subsequently promoted by one of the most important royal physicians at the court of Louis XIV, Guy-Crescent Fagon (1638–1718). Fagon proved to be an important supporter, not only of Bourbon-l’Archambault, but also Forges and Vichy in the later years of the reign of Louis XIV.
The texts collected by Worth provide us with important information about how spas operated. They not only focused on the medicinal applications of the mineral waters but also gave their readers important information about how to prepare for their visit and what to expect when they were there. Purging prior to a visit was considered essential, and life at French spas was well-regulated (if sometimes rather boring – at least according to Mme de Sévigne)! Drinking the waters and bathing in them might go hand in hand at some spas, and spas also offered vapour baths and showers to their clientele. Facilities might be very rudimentary, and, as can been seen in the above image of the spa at Bourbon l’Archambault, were usually in the open air. There were set hours for bathing and different baths were recommended for different ailments (even at the same spa).
Brockliss draws attention to the important role played by the superintendent of baths in seventeenth-century France for supervision of the bathing process was considered to be essential – so much so that superintendents of baths quickly came under the control of the king’s physicians. Superintendents were not only expected to investigate the properties of the waters over which they held charge, but also, crucially, were given the authority to appoint recognised physicians and surgeons who would assist patients at the spa. The function of spas such as Vichy and Bourbon l’Archambault was to be ‘centres of therapy not sociability’.[8] However, while the spas of seventeenth-century France were apparently rather sedate, indeed rather dull affairs, the same was not true of spas elsewhere.[9]
Tobias Venner, The baths of Bathe … (London, 1628), title page.
Tobias Venner (1577–1660), an English physician resident in Bath, had first written about the famous English spa in 1620 and the tract was appended to the 1628 edition of his more general work on health regiment: Via recta ad vitam longam (London, 1628). Venner was keen to attack the prevalent notion that spas should only be frequented at certainly times of the year and should be avoided during the summer months.[10] He not only eagerly explained the various hydrographical delights on offer at Bath and the variety of diseases which might be cured there, but he also gives us a fascinating insight into the skulduggery which might ensure when spas were not well regulated. The one thing that all writers on spas were in agreement on was the need for direction from a qualified physician – the French, as we have seen, had institutionalised the process but elsewhere, there was room for non-licenced medical practitioners to literally invade the medical marketplace by setting up their stalls at popular medical locations such as spas. Venner was keen that patients arriving in Bath should ask medical advice from qualified local practitioners (such as himself), who were familiar with the different baths and their properties.[11] As we can see, he counselled strongly against engaging assistance from ‘empiricks’ who sought to act as medical ‘ciceronis’ at the spa:
‘The thing therefore that I would haue you to take notice of, is, how the people of that place that keep houses of receipt. and their Agents (for such they haue in euery corner of the streets, and also before you come to the Gates) presse vpon you, importuning you to take your lodging at such & such an house, neere to such and such a Bath, extolling the Baths neere which they dwell, aboue the rest, respecting altogether their owne gaine, not your good or welfare. And when they haue gotten you into their houses, they will be ready to fit you with a Physician (perhaps an Emprick or vpstart Apothecary, magnifying him for the best Physician in the Towne) that wil not crosse them in remouing you to another Bath, though the Bath neere which you are placed, be altogether contrary to your infirmities and state of body, or at least, not so conuenient as some other. And this is also a special reason, why many oftentimes receiue rather hurt then good by the vse of the Baths’.[12]
Venner warned patients against placing themselves ‘into the hands of Empericks, who, by their ill qualified Physicke, will spoile their bodies, and by reason of their pragmaticall nature, perswade and put them to vnnecessary and preposterous courses, which cannot but produce disastrous effects’.[13] He was equally condemnatory of qualified physicians putting themselves forward as ‘bath-guides’ without proper accreditation.[14]
Richard Dickinson, an eccentric man from Scarborough, who imagines he is a king, sitting with his pet fox and monkey. Engraving by G. Vertue after H. Hysing, 1725. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Venner says little of the non-medicinal entertainments on offer at Bath – his focus was purely a medical one – but others soon came to see that spas need not necessarily the boring places described by Mme de Sévigne. Scarborough Spa is a case in point. Scarborough as a site for the drinking of mineral waters had received a lot of attention in the later seventeenth century, due to the well-publicised professional debate between two physicians, Robert Wittie (bap. 1613, d. 1684), and William Simpson (which is explored in our ‘Mineral Waters’ page). By the early eighteenth century it had developed exponentially and had become an important location not only for internally ‘taking the waters’ but also externally bathing in the nearby sea waters. Indeed, as Brodie relates, by the 1730s, ‘sea-bathing’ at Scarborough was beginning to overtake the drinking of mineral waters there.[15] The benefits of cold-water bathing would not have been news to Edward Worth who owned a copy of Sir John Floyer’s The ancient psychrolousia revived: or, an essay to prove cold bathing both safe and useful. In four letters… Also a letter of Dr. Baynard’s, Containing an Account of many Eminent Cures done by the Cold Baths in England. Together with a Short Discourse of the wonderful Virtues of the Bath-Waters on decayed Stomachs, drank Hot from the Pump (London, 1702). As Floyer (1649–1734) noted, sea water bathing had the added advantage of being readily available![16]
As a destination for a spa Scarborough might at first have looked unpromising: the fame of Bath was matched by its advantageous location, while newer spas, such as Tunbridge Wells were much closer to London and the wealthy south of England than Scarborough, a ship-building port on the east coast of Yorkshire. However, as Brodie makes clear, from the date of the discovery of its mineral waters c. 1626, Scarborough had slowly been gaining in renown, and by the 1730s almost 80,000 bottles of mineral water were being sent from Scarborough to London.[17] Medical writers of the 1730s, such as the physicians Thomas Short (c. 1690–1772), and Peter Shaw (1694–1763), as well as the surgeon John Atkins (d. 1757), each published texts in the 1730s which drew attention to the variety of diseases which might be cured by drinking Scarborough mineral waters. However, perhaps even more important in putting Scarborough on the map of early eighteenth-century English spas was the colourful character of Richard Dickinson, known as ‘Dickie’, who acted as Governor of the Spa from c. 1700 until his death in 1738.
The 1730s guides to Scarborough pulled no punches: Dickie was described as being ‘one of the most deformed Pieces of Mortality I ever saw, and of most uncouth manner of speech’.[18] Dickie, however, had the last laugh, because he proved to be an astute businessman, investing in property at the spa. A guidebook from 1734 related that:
‘He [Dicky] rents the Well from the Corporation at a small Rent, and has built two Houses for the Conveniency of the Company, one for the use of the Gentlemen, and the other for the Ladies. The Custom is, as soon as you enter the Room, to subscribe your name in Dicky’s Book, and pay Five Shillings; after which, you have the free use of his Retirements’.[19]
That Dickie’s investments proved to be wise is seen on maps of the town which show his handsome house. For Dickie Dickinson had identified one of the necessary requirements for any lucrative spa: access not only to the waters but also to housing and entertainment for visiting patients. Under his regime two assembly rooms were established which provided entertainment for visiting patients. As Brodie notes, attention was drawn to these in the guidebooks emanating from Scarborough in the 1730s:
‘There is a noble, spacious building, sixty two Foot long, thirty wide, and sixteen high, the Situation being so lofty, commands a Prospect over the Sea, and you may sit in the Windows and see the Ships sailing at several Leagues distance. Here are Balls every Evening, when the Room, is illuminated like a Court Assembly … Gentlemen (only) pay for Dancing one Shilling each, on one side of the Room is a Musick-Gallery, and at the lower end are kept a Pharo Bank, a Hazard-Table and Fair Chance; and in the side Room, Tables for such of the Company, as are inclined to play at Cards: below Stairs you have Billiard Tables’.[20]
Those who did not wish to dance might amuse themselves reading books from a circulating library or, alternatively attend plays in the town. A morning stroll might lead to a host of coffee houses.
Despite the rise of these additional attractions, public bathing was not considered to be a cure-all and even physicians who strongly advocated for the medicinal use of public baths warned that some patients should avoid them. As Benedek notes, even Martin Ruland the elder had noted in his Hydriatrice: Aquarum Medicarum Sectiones Qvatour (Dillingen, 1568), that patients whose constitutions were considered to be ‘hot and dry’ should be wary, and, needless to say, those with diseases such as consumption and leprosy were advised against using public baths.[21] Many physicians (particularly those not connected to a spa and hence who did not have a professional axe to grind), were even more wary. A popular textbook on medical practice by the sixteenth-century German physician Christoph Wirsung (1500–71), which had appeared first in German in 1568 and which Worth inherited from his father John Worth (1648–88), Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in a 1654 English translation by Jacob Mosan, to all intents and purposes ignored balneologic treatment. In Wirsung’s The general practise of physic … Compiled and written by the most famous and learned doctor Christopher Wirtzung, in the Germane tongue, and now translated into English in divers places corrected, and with many additions illustrated and augmented. By Jacob Mosan Germane … (London, 1654), a comprehensive textbook of hundreds of pages, it was, as Benedek notes, only referred to on two occasions![22] Perhaps Wirsung’s textbook gives us insight into what ordinary physicians thought of bathing – in either mineral waters or sea bathing!
Text: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin.
Sources
Benedek, Thomas G., ‘The role of therapeutic bathing in the sixteenth century and its contemporary scientific explanations’, in Albrecht Classen (ed.), Bodily and spiritual hygiene in medieval and early modern literature: explorations of textual presentations of filth and water (Berlin and Boston, 2017), pp 528–67.
Brockliss, L.W.B., ‘The development of the spa in seventeenth-century France’, Medical History, Supplement No. 10 (1990), 23–47.
Brodie, Allan, ‘Scarborough in the 1730s – Spa, Sea and Sex’, Journal of Tourism History, 4, no. 2 (2012), 125–53.
Bycroft, Michael, ‘Iatrochemisty and the Evaluation of Mineral Waters in France, 1600-1750’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 91, no. 2 (2017), 303–30.
Coley, Noel G., ‘“Cures without Care” “Chymical Physicians” and mineral waters in seventeenth-century English Medicine’, Medical History, 23 (1979), 191–214.
Floyer, Sir John, The ancient psychrolousia revived: or, an essay to prove cold bathing both safe and useful. In four letters … Also a letter of Dr. Baynard’s, Containing an Account of many Eminent Cures done by the Cold Baths in England. Together with a Short Discourse of the wonderful Virtues of the Bath-Waters on decayed Stomachs, drank Hot from the Pump (London, 1702).
Gentilcore, David, ‘In praise of the ordinary: shifting knowledge and practice in the medical use of drinking water in Italy, 1550-1750’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 97, no. 4 (2023), 531–559.
Rolls, Roger, ‘Venner, Tobias (1577–1660), physician and medical writer’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB).
Venner, Tobias, The baths of Bathe … (London, 1628).
Willard, Thomas, ‘Testing the Waters: Early Modern Studies’, in Albrecht Classen (ed.), Bodily and spiritual hygiene in medieval and early modern literature : explorations of textual presentations of filth and water (Berlin and Boston, 2017), pp 568–98.
Zuccolin, Gabriella, ‘Les traités médicaux sur les bains d’Acqui Terme, entre XIVe et XVIe siècles’, Séjourner au bain (translated by Didier Boisseuil and Marilyn Nicoud, Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2010).
[1] Zuccolin, Gabriella, ‘Les traités médicaux sur les bains d’Acqui Terme, entre XIVe et XVIe siècles’, Séjourner au bain (translated by Didier Boisseuil and Marilyn Nicoud, Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2010), paragraph 1.
[2] Benedek, Thomas G., ‘The role of therapeutic bathing in the sixteenth century and its contemporary scientific explanations’, in Albrecht Classen (ed.), Bodily and spiritual hygiene in medieval and early modern literature : explorations of textual presentations of filth and water (Berlin and Boston, 2017), p. 542.
[3] Brockliss, L.W.B., ‘The development of the spa in seventeenth-century France’, Medical History, Supplement No. 10 (1990), 23–47.
[4] Ibid., 23–4.
[5] Ibid., 36.
[6] Ibid., 28.
[7] Ibid., 29.
[8] Ibid., 39.
[9] Ibid., 37–9.
[10] Venner, Tobias, The baths of Bathe … (London, 1628), p. 6.
[11] Ibid., p. 5.
[12] Ibid., pp 322–323.
[13] Ibid., p. 323.
[14] Ibid.
[15] On Scarborough Spa in the 1730s see Brodie, Allan, ‘Scarborough in the 1730s – Spa, Sea and Sex’, Journal of Tourism History, 4, no. 2 (2012), 125–53.
[16] Floyer, Sir John, The ancient psychrolousia revived: or, an essay to prove cold bathing both safe and useful. In four letters… Also a letter of Dr. Baynard’s, Containing an Account of many Eminent Cures done by the Cold Baths in England. Together with a Short Discourse of the wonderful Virtues of the Bath-Waters on decayed Stomachs, drank Hot from the Pump (London, 1702).
[17] Brodie, Allan, ‘Scarborough in the 1730s – Spa, Sea and Sex’, Journal of Tourism History, 4, no. 2 (2012), 130–1.
[18] Ibid., 133.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid., 142.
[21] Benedek, Thomas G., ‘The role of therapeutic bathing in the sixteenth century and its contemporary scientific explanations’, 556.
[22] Ibid., p. 564.