 A spa town is a town frequented mainly for health reasons, to "take the waters". The often historical term derives from the Belgian town Spa. In continental Europe, a spa was known as a ville d'eau (town of water). Although Spa is famous for hot thermal baths, the term is also used for towns or resorts offering cold water or mineral water treatments which are included under the terms balneotherapy and hydrotherapy.
Traditionally mineral waters would be used or consumed at their source, often referred to as taking the cure, and such sites were referred to as spas, baths or wells. Spa would be used when the water was consumed and bathed in, bath when the water was not generally consumed, and well when the water was not generally bathed in.
History of Spas
According to Mikkel Aaland in Sweat, Homer and other Greek writers tell us the Greeks favored a variety of baths as early as 500 BC, from hot water tubs to hot-air baths, or laconica. From the small Greek laconica grew the Roman balneum and finally the extravagant Roman thermae (Greek word for “heat”). Before Emperor Agrippa designed and created the first thermae in 25 BC, the smaller, more numerous balneum had been enjoyed by Roman citizens for more than 200 years. Each subsequent emperor created thermae more spacious and splendid than his predecessor. The Diocletian bath could hold 6,000 bathers. They were built all over the Roman Empire from Africa to England. The thermae later became a central entertainment complex offering sports, restaurants, and various types of baths. A typical routine might begin with a workout in the palestra, followed by a visit to three progressively warmer rooms starting in the tepidarium, the largest and most luxurious room in the thermae. Here the bather would stay for an hour or so while being anointed with oils. This would be followed by a visit to the caldarium with small private bathing stalls offering a choice of hot or cold water. A visit to the hottest chamber, the laconicum, would follow. Here the body was vigorously massaged and the dead skin scraped off with a curved metal tool called a strigil. The bathing ritual would end with a cool dip in the pool of the frigidarium. Refreshed and clean, the bather then retired to the outer areas of the thermae to relax in the library or assembly room.
As the Roman Empire fell, the Roman thermae fell into disrepair and disuse. The bath gained and lost popularity in different parts of the world – Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America – through the present day. Baths were often built near natural hot or mineral springs. According to Prof. de Vierville, Charlemagne's Aachen and Bonaventura's Poretta developed as important social bathing and healing places around thermal springs during the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance era, Paracelsus' mountain mineral springs at Paeffers, Switzerland, and towns like Spa, Belgium, Baden-Baden, Germany, and Bath, England, grew up around natural thermal waters considered to have healing properties. The use of saunas and steam baths also emerged. As these springs and spas were discovered, forgotten, and rediscovered, the healing power of the water was often enhanced and formalized. In 1522, the first scientific book on the Czech Karlovy Vary treatment for disease was published in which a regimen of baths and drinking the waters of the springs was recommended.
With the medical discoveries of the early 20th century, scientific clinics and public hospitals replaced the spa. Existing spas responded by offering luxury accommodations, and many eventually turned into vacation locations or clinics that concentrated on weight loss, catering to the wealthy, with the spa origins obscured. In recent years, the value of prevention, healthy lifestyles, and relaxation has been rediscovered and the spa is again finding its place in modern society as a place uniquely qualified to address these needs. The wealthy no longer have exclusive use of spas. Spas now appeal to and are accessible to a much broader population.
 Today’s spa is an interesting combination of ancient traditions and modern mechanical wonders. However, the heart of the modern spa, just as the ancient spa, is water and the rituals that evolve around it. According to Prof. De Vierville, the proper sequence of the typical spa ritual is cleaning, heating, treatment, and rest. The first step, cleaning, should be a visit to the shower to purify the body. The second step is to heat the body. Many spas offer heated whirlpools, saunas, and steam rooms. A short visit to each or any combination can heat the body (caution: this step should be eliminated for people with certain medical conditions). The third step is the treatment such as a body scrub and massage. The last and equally important step is rest. Today’s ritual is very similar to the spa ritual used at the Roman thermae.
There have been many recent additions to spa water therapies in recent times. The Jacuzzi whirlpool, a central fixture in many modern spas, was invented in the 1950s, followed by Hydrotherapy Tubs, Swiss Showers, Scotch Hoses, and Vichy Showers. In addition to these mechanical inventions, new therapeutic ways to use still water have been discovered: Floatation Therapy, Watsu, Wassertanzen, Water Dance, Liquid Sound, and Dreams and Rituals in Healing Waters have been developed. The spa today embraces and celebrates its origins in water and is constantly looking for new ways to express it.
Mineral Waters and Spa Towns
 Mineral Spas were naturally occurring mineral spring locales which grew a reputation in the nineteenth century on into the late middle-twentith century for healing or healthful benefits to those wealthy enough to partake of their waters.
In many cases, they 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 such became the seed stock for today's modern vacation resorts. Alpine locales such as Steamboat Springs, Vale, 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, a Polio survivor, regularly visited Warm Springs and other Hot Springs for restorative soaks. While his cousin Theodore Roosevelt became known as a manly-man of incredible endurance, he was a sickly child suffering from athsma and 'took cures' periodically in an attempt to gain better health.
Evolution of the resort
As the Victoria era came towards it's end, the influences of the industrial revolution created more and more varied members of the upper middle class and the concepts of vacationing, tourism, and travel became less the property of the old monied, and shared by an increasing population base of those who could afford holiday trips like the rich. Such adventures had much alure in the days before any audio-visual entertainments outside a live orchestra. Thus the spas began attracting an increasing number of local patrons as well as those from afar just at the time when the burgeoning numbers were able to take advantage of the new fangled automobile and the now extensive railways throughout most all of Europe and the United States. The Spa towns already had infrastructure and attractions in place to assage such desires, and the modern tourist trip began to take it's familiar form. Other technologies came into play (Ski's, Ski boats, etc.)
Some Famous Spa Towns
United States
- Calistoga, California
- Desert Hot Springs, California
- Estill Springs, Tennessee
- Hot Springs, Arkansas
- Hot Springs, North Carolina
- Saratoga Springs, New York
- Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
- Warm Springs, Georgia
- White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
- Long Branch, New Jersey
Japan
Europe
- Spa, Belgium
- Chaudfontaine, Belgium
- Évian-les-Bains, France
- Vichy, France
- Vittel, France
- Bad Kreuznach, Germany
- Bad Krozingen, Germany
- Baden, Switzerland
- Bad Ragaz, Switzerland
- Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
Footnotes & Links:
- Sweat by Mikkel Aaland, The History of Bathing Customs
- The Bath Spa Project
- American Healing Waters by Prof. Jonathan Paul de Vierville, Ph.D., L.P.C., L.M.S.W.-A.C.P., T.R.M.T. Alamo Plaza Spa at the Menger Hotel, San Antonio, Texas
- About's Ancient History Site, Baths
- Temascal, Traditional Mexican Sweat Lodge
- International Spa Association (ISPA)
- The Spa Culture Course & Kur Spa Tour at Karlsbad "King of Spas" May 13th - May 23rd, 2003
- Wet Poet Society |