Healing Waters: A History of Victorian SpasModern spas are wellness resorts that offer beauty treatments, massages and complementary therapies. Victorian spas were sanitariums, providing "water cure" treatments supplemented by massage, vibration, electricity and radioactivity. Rooted in the palliative health reforms of the early 19th century, spas of the Victorian Age grew out of the hydrotherapy institutions of the 1840s--an alternative to the horrors of bleeding and purging. The regimen focused on diet, rest, cessation of alcohol and foods that upset the stomach, stress reduction and plenty of water. The treatments, though sometimes of a dubious nature, formed the transition from the primitive methods of "heroic medicine" to the era of scientifically based practices. |
Contents
Four The Quest for Healthy Eating | |
Five Water as the Universal Cure | |
Six The Water Cure Comes to America | |
Twelve Victorian Watering Places | |
Thirteen Springs and Spas in America | |
Fourteen The Battle Creek San | |
Fifteen The Cereal Battles | |
Sixteen The Spas Transform | |
Postscript | |
Victorian Medical Terminology | |
Composition of Representative Mineral Springs | |
Seven Elusive Victorian Diseases | |
Eight Taking the Plunge | |
Nine Bathing the Insides | |
Ten Shocking Treatments | |
Eleven Treatments Galore | |
Chapter Notes | |
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Common terms and phrases
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