“The waters of Vichy…gave me back my strength.” – Madame de Sévigné
The darkest days of winter are here, and I think it’s time we all indulged in a little self-care, non? My own quarantine hobby, skincare, set me down a particular path. Why was I spraying my face with thermal spa water from France? What is thermal spa water? Why do we drink thermal spa water? Does any of it really do anything? France loves her thermal spas, no matter what form they take: rustic watering hole, glamorous resort, or rigorous medical establishment.
Episode 65: “A Trip to the Spa”
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The history of French thermal spas:
Transcript
Bienvenue and welcome back to The Land of Desire! I’m your host, Diana, and here’s a little quiz to see whether any of you have spent the last oh-my-god year of the pandemic with the same hobby I have. Can you guess what this list has in common? Vichy. La Roche-Posay. Uriage. Avène. Caudalie. I can already feel a lot of you nodding along because you’ve already guessed the answer. Yeah, I wear sweatpants all day every day and I haven’t worn makeup since March 2020, but my skin? My skincare is glaaaaamorous, darlings, I am absolutely babying it. I just listed off a bunch of the most well-respected – and widely distributed – skincare brands in France. But that’s not all. If you’re very clever, you may also notice that all of the names I listed have something else in common. Every single one of those brands traces its origins back to a natural water source – whether it’s a world-famous spa town frequented by royalty, or a very picturesque babbling brook on some mythical farmland. All of these brands boast about their very special eau thermales, all of which are supposed to have very special and distinct healing properties. A few nights ago, while I was halfway through my night routine, I found myself wondering about those spa towns. The French really go crazy for hot springs – I personally associate hot springs with, like, a bunch of outdoor hot tubs, maybe a weekend getaway with the girls. For thousands of years, natural springs have provided the French with relief from major and minor physical ailments, tons of society gossip, a respite from the bustle of city life, and maybe, just maybe, a miracle or two. So this week, maybe it’s time to fill up the tub and enjoy this episode during a nice, warm soak in some hot water, because we’re taking a trip through the history of the spa.
Take a stroll down the Boulevard Saint-Germain today, and you’ll pass any number of high-end pharmacies and drugstores, advertising a dazzling assortment of creams, lotions and potions to cure what ails you, whether it’s eczema, acne, indigestion, athlete’s foot or simply the inexorable march of time. Starting at Les Deux Magots, you could walk past the Pharmacie de Saint-Germain de Pres, the Pharmacie Beauté, Pharmacie Saint-Sulpice, and the Pharmacie Odeon within the space of a few blocks. But continue on a few more feet and you’ll encounter a different sort of dispensary altogether: the most ancient source of medicine in the city of Paris. Here on the corner of the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Boulevard Saint-Michel is the famous Musée de Cluny, home of the city’s most ancient Roman baths.
Built approximately 2200 years ago, the baths were enormous in their day, stretching over 6,000 square meters of valuable real estate. Back then, the ancient Roman outpost called Lutetia required constant guarding, and this part of town held a host of administrative buildings – and military outposts. In Ancient Rome, wherever troops traveled, public baths followed, for rather obvious reasons. While rich Romans might build private baths in their homes, the general public was welcome and encouraged to take part in a public dip, where they could scrub themselves clean, exchange gossip, maybe broker a few deals, and even get a little workout in. Men and women both enjoyed use of the public baths, and free admission meant there was a genuine cross-section of society present in the pools. The ruins at Cluny are pretty typical Roman bath architecture: the complex was divided into three sections, in which water was available at different temperatures. First, you’d enjoy the piping hot water straight outta the ground in the calderia, sweating out your impurities. Then, you’d move into the tepidarium, where the naturally hot water had been allowed to cool off a bit. Here, you might get a massage with some essential oils. Finally, you’d step into the frigidarium, which is exactly what you think – a nippy environment to close the pores and finish off your day before going into the locker rooms to pick up your clothes. Even today, visitors to Cluny can see the sophisticated pipes which carried water around to the different chambers, and step inside the enormous frigidarium which remains in great condition for a 2000 year old YMCA. The golden age of the Cluny bathhouse lasted for about 200 years, after which point a roving band of barbarians sacked the baths along with the rest of the city. After that, bathhouses which survived invading hordes acquired a seedier reputation, and most of them fell into disuse or disrepute for the next thousand years.
The next thousand years are extremely dirty and smelly, so let’s time travel all the way up to the year 1571. All over Europe, philosophers, scientists, artists and politicians were rediscovering Ancient Greece and Rome, experiencing a rebirth – a renaissance, if you will, eh, eh – of classical culture and thought. Early scientists had developed a bunch of very early lab equipment, and they were always excited when they came up with new ideas about how to use it. At some point early on in the Renaissance, someone thought it might be a good idea to figure out just what, exactly, was in natural spring water. After all, some natural waters smelled like rotten eggs, some of them made you feel sick when you drank it, and some of it had a special color. For the next two hundred years, whenever anyone with a 16th century beaker had an afternoon to kill, he’d trudge up the hill to the nearest natural spring, distill the water, and try to figure out what what the sediment was made out of. After about 200 years of this tinkering, a man named Andrea Bacci decided somebody needed to write the book on natural springs, and look, he was just such a man! His work, De Thermis, was a culmination of nearly 200 years of European men trudging up the hills with a canteen, and it was a pretty monumental work. For 497 pages, Bacci’s encyclopedic work declared that no man could consider himself classically trained in medicine without understanding the healing properties of natural waters – if no less than the Ancient Romans were out there building baths everywhere they went, surely there was something of merit in them? All of a sudden, that weird little steaming watering hole up in that obscure little village was more than a local curiosity or a laundry site – suddenly, it was a direct link to a glorious past, and perhaps a key to optimal health. As he wrote in a sequel later in his career, “these waters were known to the ancients but overlooked for hundreds of years, and had now been brought back to light for the good of all.” Bacci’s book wasn’t just a press release for the magic of thermal baths – it was also a rallying cry. For one thousand years, the baths had gurgled along, right under their noses. Oh, it wasn’t that people had forgotten about the baths. Sitting in a hot tub on a cold night is a pretty instinctive endeavor, and the locals certainly enjoyed their local watering holds. But the people weren’t taking the baths seriously enough. These were very serious matters, and they ought to be overseen by doctors, not just the rough and tumble public. With that in mind, Bacci laid out a long discourse about the incredibly complex world of water therapy – and a guide to the most reputable baths in Europe. Here’s where the problem comes in: France, according to Andrea Bacci, lacked any hot springs worth a road trip. In the 16th century, the discerning hydrotherapy enthusiast would recommend hot springs in Italy, Greece, Germany, and one particularly famous Belgian hot spring in the town of Spa. But France? Why? All the once great Roman baths had crumbled into disrepute, and what was left was of questionable medical potency. All throughout the 1600s, the royal families of Europe traveled to the natural springs of their nation, and returned home with tales of wonder cures, and their pleasing odors alone must have seemed proof that miracles really do happen. Yet in France, with no respectable bath houses to speak of, the French court sat around, stewing and sweating, turning their noses up either out of snobbery or desperation to escape the smell of their neighbors. But then, in 1580, an old, familiar tune began playing at court: the king and queen had yet to produce an heir. What France may have lacked in deluxe spas, she made up for with her number of quack doctors. Royal doctors packed up Henri III and his wife and dispatched them to the the natural springs at Bourbon-Lancy. It was the first great spa day of the French nation. Kind of.
The thing is, in 1580, Bourbon-Lancy was a noble, ancient…pile of rubble. The waters were definitely hot, but none of the water nerds of the previous century had ever bothered to study what was in the water, or what curative properties it might hold. But good news for Henry: he was the king, and if he and his lady wanted a luxury spa trip, by god they were going to get one. Henri’s crew sent no fewer than 150 men ahead to transform the big pile of ancient rubble into a resort fit for a king. They cleared the rubble, restored the flow of thermal water to a more robust current, and even built a lodge for guests to stay – good thing, too, since the king and queen arrived with a bunch of sick courtiers in tow. Unfortunately, the queen did not get pregnant on the trip. On the other hand, one of her courtiers, the Comtesse de Fiasque, did get pregnant on the trip. The Comtesse de Fiasque was 54 years old at the time. So maybe there was something in the water after all.
The first French royal visit to a thermal bath kicked off a national frenzy to discover the waters, promote the waters, and then take the waters. Any waters. It was a boom time for French doctors, all of whom insisted that their little spring would cure warts and soothe athlete’s foot. By 1600, every puddle in France seemed to have at least one curative property, and one local champion. Like cupcake shops in New York City in 2005, most of them were doomed to fail after the craze passed, but those which had been lucky enough to secure the patronage of royals and the rich secured themselves a lasting legacy. Bourbon-l’Archambault was the favored spa of Madame de Montespan, the mistress of King Louis XIV, which meant Bourbon l’Archambault was the favored spa of every other fawning courtier at Versailles. Others in search of specific relief for specific maladies might read through a 17th century guidebook to find an appropriate treatment center. Those with bad nerves or infertility took the waters at Forges, while those with the shakes went to Vichy. The eminent Madame de Sevigne believed so strongly in the curative powers of Vichy waters that she made the difficult eight day journey multiple times, well into her old age, to treat the arthritis which left her unable to hold a pen – a fate worse than death to the famous writer.
No matter which site they chose, the rich and ailing were in for a quite a ride. One can only imagine the field trip from hell, with all of Versailles struggling with their best resort wear only to spend two weeks on muddy roads, trudging through terrible weather, in the middle of nowhere. As Madame de Sevigne recalls about one journey, “we walked from daybreak until nightfall, without stopping, just two hours for dinner, a continual rain, devilish paths, always on foot, for fear of falling into terrible ruts.” Once they arrived, it wasn’t exactly rainbows and kittens. While things had improved since King Henry III’s time, most of the spa towns were just that – towns. Compared to the gilded splendor of Versailles, it was hardly luxurious to spend three weeks in a town of 2000 peasants, renting a room from a pig farmer. The spa facilities were no better: even the famous Bourbon l’Archambault, favorite of the king’s mistress, was little more than a mud pit in the ground. Whatever the spa towns may have become later, 17th century spa-going was about two things and two things only: sticking close to the king, and finding something – anything – to fix what ailed you. Even if the medicine was a hell of a pill to swallow.
If Andrea Bacci was worried about one thing, it was people having too much fun at the spa. As Europe entered the Enlightenment, ‘a good soak’ became ‘a dose of hydrotherapy’ and ‘taking the waters’ meant a rigidly monitored 18 part regimen. No matter where you went, everyone’s spa trip began the same way: bleeding and purging. Yum. As soon as you’d thoroughly emptied out your body, it was time to refill at the closest drinking fountain, where you’d drink as much magical thermal water as you possibly could. You’d drink and walk around the room, and then refill your glass, and drink, and walk around the room, making polite conversation with your other hydro homies until nature called, at which point you’d duck discreetly into a back alley to, ah, well I’ll let Madame de Sevigne explain it: “At six o clock we go to the fountain. Everyone is there, and we drink while making a face, the water is boiling hot and tastes unpleasantly of saltpeter. We turn, we go, we come, we walk, we hear mass, we make water in the alley, we talk discreetly about how our water making went.” Fun!
If you were there for a specific ailment, you’d proceed to all manner of hydrotherapies, most of which are pretty familiar today: sitting in a hot tub, sitting in a steam room, and so on, before you’d be swaddled in blankets and set in a dry sauna, maybe even a mud pack. Every day you’d repeat the process, or some variation, for at least two weeks, after which you waddled out resembling a California raisin. At every step of your journey, you would be supervised by a medically-qualified intendant, who reported to the king’s own physician. Working alongside the intendant was the baigneur, aka the fun police, who made sure everyone wore their modesty gowns, intervened whenever he saw horse play, and kicked out any riff-raff. When you weren’t soaking, steaming or sweating, you were eating a light, boring lunch and enjoying quiet card games and conversation, before having another light, boring dinner and going to bed by 10 PM. If you’re struggling to imagine the court of Versailles going to bed by 10 PM, I don’t blame you, but on the other hand, perhaps for the perpetually hungover and gouty courtier, it was a nice break. Whatever else may have happened, you emerged after two weeks feeling well-rested, well moisturized, with some fresh country air in your lungs. No wonder everyone sang the praises of the spa doctors upon their return. And praise wasn’t all they brought back as a souvenir: by the end of the 17th century, the nobles began bringing back the water itself – a prelude to the distribution networks to come, and the new wave of spa mania which would sweep the nation.
If the cheerleaders of the 17th century spa towns were doctors, the 18th century cheerleaders were hotel owners. With every body of hot water in France getting marketed to the rich, each enterprising up-and-coming spa had to set themselves apart. Instead of writing about the specific curative properties of their water, hotel owners, town mayors, and other enterprising locals would describe the charming sentiments of their village. But many of the most prestigious guests of the late 1700s were underwhelmed with what they found at the end of long, exhausting journeys. In 1761, the daughters of the king visited Vichy, and came back complaining that the famous waters were muddy, inaccessible pits. In 1787 their nephew, Louix XIV, constructed a series of more luxurious bathhouses, but probably never had time to visit them himself. For spa towns and spa goers alike in late 1700s France, it was survival of the fittest. Even one of the directors of the Vichy facilities was executed in the Terror. After the chaos of the Revolution – and the beheading of their most loyal customers – hundreds of smaller spa facilities closed their doors. Fittingly enough, any spas lucky enough to survive the French Revolution were probably renovated by Napoleon, who found time in between planning invasions to order the expansion and improvement of French spa resorts. Always a fan of efficiency, Napoleon saw French spas as an excellent way to keep his enormous armies clean and free of disease. No doubt the baigneuse gave up on any attempt to keep things refined and genteel. But soon, soldiers weren’t the only ones experiencing the wonders of hot rock water for the first time.
If the cheerleaders of the 17th century spas were doctors, and the 18th century cheerleaders were hotel owners, the 19th century cheerleaders were travel bloggers. It was the golden age of travel writing, in which writers like Alexandre Dumas would use a flimsy plot as an excuse to describe in tantalizing detail all the interesting places of the world. Others embarked on a Grand Tour and returned to write memoirs – or guidebooks – to sell to hungry audiences. Thermal spa towns were no longer just for the elderly and infirm – they were a destination for adventurous travelers in need of a little pampering. The tour guides of the age shaped the popular idea of the spa town as either a rural oasis set in a bucolic landscape, or a glamorous getaway for the in-crowd. In other words, what had once been the Mayo Clinic was now either Monte-Carlo or a glamping yurt. The travel guides and stories spend much less time talking about peeing in the alleyway or curing eczema, and much more time bragging about the golf courses and the beautiful rowboats. Where Madame de Sevigne may have taken a brisk after-dinner stroll, now French men and women found themselves playing a hearty game of tennis.
Or so the brochures said. Reality took a long time to catch up with PR – the spa towns needed visitors first so they’d have money to build luxury properties second. Even after centuries of elite spa tourism, Vichy still didn’t offer a hotel suitable enough for a high status visitor. The hotel owners of the 1700s had made sure that there were plenty of reasonable rooms for the undiscerning visitor willing to bunk up above the local tavern, but there was nowhere for the genteel European classes to stay. In 1836, the writer Auguste Luchet wrote that Vichy was “one of the two best summer quarters of Parisians” full of “elegant villas” amidst a “picturesque countryside”. But nearly 30 years later, in 1861, Napoleon III traveled to Vichy in search of a cure for his ailing liver. His retinue was horrified at the state of the hotels and amenities – whatever the writers might have said, this was not a town fit for an emperor.
The spa towns were too important to be regulated by mere doctors – they were a civic affair, and soon spas weren’t overseen by royal physicians but what was essentially the chamber of commerce. After Emperor Napoleon’s disappointing first visit, for example, the leaders of Vichy gathered together to formulate a plan – Vichy must upgrade, and soon. Napoleon III helped foot the bill, considering the spa a public utility, and within five years the summer population of Vichy had grown by 25%. In every major spa town, civic leaders raised funds for widespread advertising – in the Belle Epoque, customers weren’t just found in Versailles – they could be found as far away as Manhattan! Spa towns created tourism offices to do a full court PR press, putting out flyers, newsletters, newspapers, newspaper ads, and then, eventually, radio spots. The advertisements were hardly touting images of grandmothers with arthritis able to walk again: instead, advertisements depicted beautiful young women in thin white gowns, about to dip into a pool of steaming water. She’s young and healthy and, well, damp. You get it? You get it. In classic 19th century orientalist nonsense, the new luxury hotels often evoked the exotic fever dream of the Turkish bath: curved arches, minaret towers, painted tiles, and the promise of beautiful women hidden somewhere off-screen. The ploy worked: investments rolled in, luxury hotels went up, and before long, French spa towns offered a world of alluring, expensive entertainment.
By the 1890s, French guests could stay in brand new hotels, and spend their time in between treatments playing at the in-house casino, or watching a performance at the town theater. New railroad tracks made it easier and faster than ever to reach even the most remote hot springs, and spa towns began to feel less like a nursing home and more like a resort. All across Europe, the rudimentary spas became big spas, the big spas became grand spas, and the grand spas became international hotspots, drawing artists, socialites, world leaders and more together for food, fun, and oh yeah, some hot rock water. The frigid, monastic retreats of the 1600s were now the playgrounds for the idle, wealthy, and scandalous. What happened in Vichy, stayed in Vichy. Before long, society even had a name for the phenomenon afflicting those gathered at spa towns or beach resorts: seaside morals. Sometimes the flirtation worked out: women began bringing their eligible daughters to the fashionable resorts, in hopes that steamy environments would help them secure a wealthy husband. If men weren’t willing to make such a lifelong commitment, spa towns soon crowded with a new type of visitor: sex workers and courtesans. Madame de Sevigné and Andrea Bacci would have been shocked – but in the years leading up to World War I, the bright young things of Europe couldn’t get enough. When Napoleon first began upgrading the nation’s facilities, fewer than 10,000 people visited a French spa each year, to spend two weeks bored out of their minds. By the end of the same century, nearly one million people trekked out to the oases of entertainment for thrills, theater, and maybe, if time allowed for it, a little water therapy.
By the dawn of the 20th century, French spa resorts were the geese that laid golden eggs. They simply could not fail to turn a profit, year after year, decade after decade. By 1900, French spas employed half a million people, generated 300 million francs of revenue, and entertained anyone who was anyone. Long gone were the days when a dozen exhausted courtiers would spend a quiet week or two in a mud hut. With the completion of the railroads making travel easier than ever, an unprecedented type of tourist arrived: the middle classes. The entire middle class, it may have seemed: from 1900 to 1930, the number of annual visitors in Vichy alone doubled. Conditions only grew more crowded by the end of the 1920s. French military officials were granted six month sabbaticals after 10 years of service, so the thousands of men who enlisted in World War One and stuck around all began qualifying for a little R&R at the same time. Another earthquake arrived in 1936, with the introduction of paid vacation. If you listened to episode 26, “Hitler in Paris” you’ll remember that state subsidized vacations were all the rage in Europe in the 30s and 40s. The French government arranged for standardized hotel prices, rail packages, and chartered group tours. Within the year, tens of thousands of French workers used their benefits to visit a thermal spa. Business was booming – but the party was almost over.
France’s grand spas had committed the unforgivable offense: they’d let poor people in. The same railroads which ferried the middle class to the spas could ferry the upper classes away – towards new hot spots like St Tropez and Biarritz. As discussed in episode 31, Le Train Bleu offered the rich and idle a pampered pathway to the coast, but most importantly, it offered exclusivity. No need to worry about running into a colonial official or a soldier in the spa, or god forbid, an office worker – the hotels at Cannes were grand, glitzy and inaccessible.
But that wasn’t all. If French resorts were entering a new age, so was French medicine. As we learned last month, Louis Pasteur revolutionized the way French people thought about hygiene. So many of the mysterious ailments which had sent desperate travelers to thermal waters for three hundred years could be treated with effective techniques by any respectable physician across the country. Pasteur himself was actually a fan of water therapy, so long as it was performed the old fashioned way: that is to say, under the watchful eye of a trained doctor. For one hundred years, water therapy had undergone a process of demedicalization – suddenly, the process reversed itself. Patients seeking serious relief skipped out on the luxury hotels and headed to new, scientifically minded medical spas. By the end of the 1930s, fewer than 1 in 5 spa visitors were there to seek treatment for an ailment. If the management had been a little savvier, they might have recognized this as an existential threat.
Entertainment and glamour are passing whimsies, doomed to instability. But suffering? Is forever. As long as thermal spas catered to the unwell, there would be a dependable trickle of customers making a pilgrimage every year. But the grand spas of the 1930s were one big party – and the party was about to come to an end.
In 1913, Vichy had 108,963 visitors. In 1921 the town offered 26 first class hotels and 48 second class hotels.
Just before WWII, there were 14 major spas in France, receiving more than 14,000 visitors a year.
In 1940, France fell to the invading German army. As Nazis streamed into the capital, the national government packed up and hit the road, and after a few weeks the administration settled in none other than the spa town of Vichy. There were good reasons for this: Vichy was a quick, easy train ride away from Paris, but far enough away that it was outside German territory. Vichy’s status as a spa town meant there were thousands and thousands of hotel rooms available to house the officials and bureaucrats pouring off the getaway trains, along with every modern technology: phone lines, telegraph lines, central heating, and needless to say, plumbing. For locals, 1940 felt like an invasion of its own: the population of Vichy swelled from 30,000 to 130,000, with the original residents squeezed out by their own disgraced leadership. Locals distinguished between the Vichyssois, victims of the war like everyone else, and the Vichystes, who served the shameful administration during the next four years. After the German collapse in 1944, the Vichystes pulled up stakes again, leaving Vichy behind, stripped bare, desolate and barely functional. The formerly glamorous spa town was now a byword for national shame, and the locals set about erasing any traces of the Vichy regime from their city streets. But the biggest threat to Vichy – and every other French spa town – actually came from within.
In 1958, the French national health insurance system dramatically reduced its subsidies for medically prescribed thermal spa cures. In the modern world, patients sought relief from doctors, pills, creams, and surgeries, not hot rock water. The elites had moved on to the Cote d’Azur, the middle class were recovering from wartime devastation, and medical patients were now steered towards their local doctor’s office. The savviest French spas knew they had to get innovative if they were going to survive – and the solution, so to speak, was right in front of them the whole time.
TWENTIETH CENTURY SPA CULTURE: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3080730
[WHERE DOES THE SKINCARE COME FROM]
You’ll remember that aristocratic ladies shipped bottled thermal water to their homes as early as the 17th century. By the early 20th century, during the golden age of spa tourism, bottled water took on a new life of its own. Part souvenir, part diffusion line, bottles of thermal water allowed you to bring home a memory of a great trip, a visual signifier to your social circle that you’d taken the waters, and a cheap way to pretend that you’d taken the waters even if you’d never left city limits. By the 1930s, even when spas were packed with throngs of tourists, bottled thermal water yielded as much profit as the tourists did. In the postwar economy, bottled water transformed from a side hustle to a lifeline.
The French love their water bottled. Between World War II and today, the French population grew 60%. The French consumption of bottled water grew 2,350%. It’s a long story unto itself, involving complicated water law, and don’t worry, I’m not going to go into it. What matters is that the spa towns pulled off a neat marketing trick. For centuries, European thermal spas convinced customers that you had to experience the water right at the source to get any of those juicy benefits. You couldn’t just pour it into your bath or your own kettle, it was crucial that you make the 24 day trip by horse-drawn carriage over bad roads to stay in a twin bed over a brewery for the privilege of drinking the hot rock water straight from the rocks. All of a sudden, those very same resorts declared the opposite: turns out, you could totally get the benefits of thermal water even if it had been poured into a plastic bottle and shipped 9,000 miles away! Today, France spends 4 billion euros on bottled water, and four out of the five most consumed brands are former spa towns: Evian, Perrier, Badoit, and Vittel.
But they didn’t stop there. If thermal water could maintain its curative properties when bottled and consumed across distance and time, could it be incorporated into creams and treatments as well? Those wily businessmen of the Belle Epoque were way ahead of the curve. As early as 1931, a perfumer and a physician co-founded a cosmetics company which incorporated Vichy water into its skincare products – you still know it as Vichy, and you can find it in any drugstore in America. An enterprising doctor in the 1950s infused moisturizer with the unique plankton found in his local thermal springs and founded Biotherm. La Roche-Posay, once a hydrotherapy facility for Napoleon’s soldiers, now home to one of the world’s most prestigious treatment centers for dermatologic diseases, launched a spinoff line of skincare products in 1975. These spinoff lines, like bottled water, turned out to be an enormous success. Anyone on skincare TikTok sees these brands recommended by teenagers and dermatologists alike, without having any knowledge of their origins in 19th century wellness retreats. As with any skincare products, the big question is, of course, does it work?
The short answer is: jury’s still out. But the interesting answer is: maybe. As much as I joke about hot rock water, thermal spas may well offer significant benefits for a number of painful conditions and rheumatologists, dermatologists and others continue to refer thousands of patients every year. I wouldn’t be surprised if actual thermal spas provide significant health benefits – just as with bottled water, what happens when that thermal water is mixed into a face cream and shipped around the world? Most of the peer reviewed publications out there were funded by the thermal water companies, so take it with a sip of salty water. In the meantime, it’s a gentle, fun step in a skincare routine, so sales have been through the roof over the past year of quarantine. And that includes my house, where I have a can of Avène thermal water that I spray on my face, in hopes that it’ll get my rosacea to chill out. I have no idea if it works, but I do know this: Avène has the most ridiculous origin story of any skincare brand. During my research, I expected to see a long flowery story about ancient mineral springs in which ancient French kings healed from battle and beautiful French women never aged, and everyone lived to age 100 after drinking a glass. Instead I found this, and I swear to you, I am quoting directly from their website: “The therapeutic properties of Avene Thermal Spring were first discovered when a horse belonging to the Marquis de Rocozels, suffering from alopecia, rolled in the water regularly to soothe its itching skin. It’s been told that the horse’s coat was restored to its original shiny and healthy condition.” Well, if it’s good enough for the alopecia of a nobleman’s horse, I guess it’s good enough for my dumb old face. From ancient Roman baths, to royal infertility, to military convalescence, to elite nightlife to mass market relaxation all the way to fancy water bottles and undereye cream, the humble hot rock waters of France have had quite the journey. So let’s raise a glass of mineral water and give a toast: to hydration!
Thanks for listening to The Land of Desire. Make sure to sign up for the show’s newsletter at thelandofdesire.substack.com – I’ll be sending out this month’s update on Friday! You can also follow the show on Twitter or Instagram, which is honestly the easiest way to say hi. I’d like to send a thank you and an apology to anyone who emailed me in, oh god, the last few months. It’s been a very, very, very busy quarter between my job and this show and a lot of other personal things, and something had to give – my personal inbox was definitely the thing that gave! I apologize if I haven’t responded to your email, but I hope you know I appreciate you writing it. Thank you to everyone who listened to today’s episode, and until next time, au revoir!
Sources:
- Weisz, George. “Spas, Mineral Waters, and Hydrological Science in Twentieth-Century France.” Isis, vol. 92, no. 3, 2001, pp. 451–483. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3080730. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.
- Tilton, Elizabeth Meier. “Mineral and Thermal Spas in France.” The French Review, vol. 54, no. 4, 1981, pp. 566–572. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/391139. Accessed 24 Feb. 2021.
- Brockliss, L.W.B. “The Development of the Spa in Seventeenth-Century France.” Medical History, Supplement No. 10 1990, pp. 23-47. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/85a4/4c6b9caab12ded2f94ae0a354da2e1e372d4.pdf
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van Tubergen A, van der Linden S. “A brief history of spa therapy.” Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 2002; 61:273-275.
- Palmer, Richard. “‘In This Our Lightye and Learned Tyme’: Italian Baths in the Era of the Renaissance.” Medical History, vol. 34, no. S10, 1990, pp. 14–22., doi:10.1017/S0025727300070964.
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