The hidden history of spas

Book review of Health, Hedonism and Hypochondria

If you are the sort of person who likes to visit spas as part of a self-care routine, it must be hard to have no access during the Covid-19 pandemic. It might take a while before you get your next deep tissue massage, or hit the jacuzzi, lounge in the sauna or sweat it out in the steam room. In the meanwhile, you could brush up on “the hidden history of spas”, thanks to Ian Bradley’s new book Health, Hedonism and Hypochondria.

The author is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews. He describes himself as a person with “a lifelong fascination with spas.” He has previously written the book Water Music: Making Music in the Spas of Europe and North America (2010). His research is situated within the broader framework of Christian spirituality. His interests include liberal theology, water, pilgrimage and mysticism.

Bradley writes, “According to figures produced by the Global Wellness Institute in 2018, new spas are opening around the world at a rate of 8,000 a year and there are now over 150,000 ‘spa locations’ employing 2.6 million people and contributing $120 billion annually to the $4.2 trillion global wellness economy. Thermal springs counted as a separate category, employ a further 1.8 million and generate $56.2 million annually.”

This book, however, is hardly about the present. It focuses on “the historic, traditional spas of Europe.” These eminent and notorious establishments include the original Spa in Belgium; Bath, Buxton and Harrogate in Britain; Baden-Baden, Bad Ems and Wiesbaden in Germany; Bad Ischl and Baden bei Wien in Austria; Vichy and Aix-les-Bains in France; Karlovy Vary and Karlsbad in the Czech Republic; and Baden bei Zürich and Bad Ragaz in Switzerland.

Bradley’s main achievement lies in his evocative descriptions. His prose will take you on a tour of these places, and make you visualise what they must have looked like a few centuries ago. The language he employs is colourful, sarcastic, provocative and entertaining. Read the book at a leisurely pace, and soak in all the details as he reconstructs a bygone world for you.

He has divided the book into eight chapters, and each one is dense with detail. If you are interested in the subject but do not have the time or patience to read it from cover to cover, it might be useful to read at least the introduction (titled “Der Kurschatten”) and the conclusion (titled “Europe’s Traditional Spas Today”). These essays will help you understand how and why things have changed over time.

Bradley writes, “In their heyday, from the mid-18th to the early 20th centuries, Europe’s spas were the main meeting places for royalty, aristocracy and political, business and cultural elites; centres of political and diplomatic intrigue; and fertile sources of artistic, literary and musical inspiration and creativity.” A comparable South Asian equivalent can be found in Nemat Sadat’s novel The Carpet Weaver (2019) featuring hamams in Kabul in the 1970s.

If you think of spas mainly in terms of their therapeutic benefits, Bradley’s book will challenge your ideas. Though many went there seeking treatment for arthritis, gout, acid reflux or merely to escape the noise of the city, spas also attracted people keen on networking, flirting, gambling, drinking and sexual adventures. Women who found it difficult to conceive and men who were anxious about their virility flocked to these places.

Health, Hedonism and Hypochondria

Authors: Ian Bradley

Publisher: Tauris Parke

Pages: 304; Price: Rs 799

Bradley writes, “The combined effects of medical and royal endorsement helped to clean up the image of spas and bathing places across Europe but they did not entirely efface their reputation as glorified brothels. Successive attempts to outlaw mixed bathing and to make long ankle-length white linen bathing robes compulsory for men and women were not always successful.” 

As you might have guessed, the church played a major role in regulation.

This book will also fill you in on the intimate lives of authors who were frequent spa-goers, apart from giving you a whole new reading list with its multiple references to books set in spas. Daniel Defoe, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, Jane Austen, Tobias Smollett, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Alexandre Dumas, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Mann are some of the writers featured in these pages.While discussing the “secret or shadow side” of European spas, Bradley also points out their involve­ment with the Nazis in Germany. He writes about “eugenics experiments being carried out in the bath houses and SS (Schutzstaffel) officers sleeping with specially-picked blonde women…to propagate a ‘pure’ Aryan race.” Jews, who were loyal patrons until then, were made to feel less welcome.

This book also shows how the economic fortunes of Europe’s spas have been linked to the changing political climate. Bradley writes, for instance, about Communist Eastern Europe, “where spas flourished as popular proletarian holiday resorts to which workers and their families were sent for a couple of weeks a year by trade unions.” With the end of Communism came the growth of high-end luxury tourism and an influx of wealthy clients.

What is the current state of Europe’s historic spas? Bradley writes, “There is a certain bland sameness and clinical cleanliness about these ultra-modern thermal establishments. With their open-plan design, bright uniform lighting and piped music, they lack the dark hidden corners and the live entertainment of the old bath houses they have replaced.” Some historic spas are also being converted into artist residencies and performance spaces.

This book also illuminates how disability and mental illness have been constructed through medical discourse and popular fiction. The portions on hypochondria and hydrotherapy are informative. They could have been made more relevant to contemporary readers, however, with inputs from mental health professionals since theoretical understandings and lived experiences of what constitutes mental health have changed drastically.