After thriving since Roman times, ‘In recent years the medical profession has largely forsaken its interest in spas.’. Roger Rolls has given us a detailed, well-illustrated history of Bath, our best-known spa. On reading of the ebb and flow of novel ideas about how the waters might be therapeutic, it is natural to question why was belief in their powers maintained for so long?
One answer was given by Voltaire who told us that the duty of the physician is to entertain the patient while nature effects the cure. Sufferers from leprosy, gout, paralyses, and a legion of other ailments sought relief at Bath where they, and those who cared for or preyed on them, gathered.
The spa doctors sought to persuade patients that the mineral waters had healing properties. Many reports were written but invariably they failed to include a control group and were thus valueless.
Of course spas would never have had any success if people were not open to being persuaded. If we are tempted to feel superior we should consider the rise from nowhere of the bottled water industry, based to a large degree on the erroneous idea that tap water is somehow less than safe.
Medicine is its worst when it claims too much. Spas offered false solace from an enormous range of remedies, foul drinks, and much prolonged bathing.
Diseased, Douched & Doctored is more than a record of a world we have lost forever. It is a mirror on our own practice today, potentially reprimanding us when we claim too much; reproving us for poorly conducted therapeutic trials, and above all, encouraging people to rely on medicine when health would be likelier to come from a good walk, good company, creativity, and thinking of others above ourselves.