“Taking The Waters” At Bath

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31942, 20 March 1969, Page 6

“Taking The Waters” At Bath

N.Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent) BATH. To most residents of Bath, the West Country spa, “taking the waters” consists simply of a glass of luke-warm, rather brackish water drawn from the fountain in the pump room, quickly swallowed, and immediately chased by a pot of coffee.

Over the last 180 years

Bath's elderly citizens and its visitors have gathered in the crystal • chandeliered pumproom to admire the potted plants, nod to the string quartet, gossip, and take the waters.

Any effect that the waters have, say many doctors, is purely incidental. Some claim it is a powerful laxative —one heroic seventeenth century gentleman used to down seven pints a day—others allege it is no more therapeutic than ordinary water with iron tablets dissolved in it.

But although Britain suffers no national concern over its liver the reason why France’s spas are so wellattended—an average 6000 people flock to the pumproom every week. These people, on the whole, take the waters for fun. The serious business of water-taking goes on over the road from the pump-room at Bath’s treatment centre where some 3000 rheumatic, injured or paralysed patients are sent every year for a sluice, shower, spray or pummell. Last year Bath administered 42,000 treatments—--2000 up on the 1967 figure—but the spa director, Mr John Nunn, says that other British spas are not in such a fortunate position. Ten years ago Britain boasted eight fully operational spas. Cheltenham closed its treatment centre in 1949, Buxton five years ago, and Harrogate is due to shut in March.

The five surviving treatment centres are at Bath, Leamington (40,000 treatments a year), Woodhall (40,000), Droitwich (30,000) and Llandrindod (7000). But, says Mr Nunn, Droit-

wich and Llandrindod are both as ailing as their patients. Where Bath’s treatment centre scores over the others, he says, is that it operates as the outpatients’ department to the local rheumatic hospital, the Royal National, which is situated in the middle of the city. Bath is also the only spa in Northern Europe with natural hot springs—500,000 gallons of water at a constant 120 degrees gush up every day. The decline of other spas, says Mr Nunn, is caused

! directly by the installation in r new hospitals of hydrotherapy units which replace 1 the old spa therapy with , cheaper, more easily control- > lable treatment. t Whether mineral waters • have any advantage over , ordinary heated water • remains a hotly debated topic in medical circles. i Mr Nunn is hopeful; i “Bath's springs provide a 1 never-failing supply of heated t water, and its minerals make r it more buoyant than ordinary water, so movement for . rheumatics is easier.” I Mr T. Riches, general sec-

tretary of the Rheumatism and Arthritis Association, is non - committal: "Mineral waters are of benefit to some,, no use to others. But spas are uneconomic to run, and although I’d hate to see them disappear completely, it looks as if their days are numbered.”

Dr M. Mason, the medical secretary of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Council, is emphatic. “There is no more magic in the spa water than in the hospital pool,” he says. But perhaps the most telling comment comes from the staff at Bath’s treatment

centre. They complain that the ferric oxide in Bath's

water discolours and eventu-j ally rots their clothes, and leaves a heavy sediment in the pipes, but they predict that if the minerals were i filtered from the water.] patients would lose their faith in its healing powers. Many doctors feel that 99' per cent of the cure can be. attributed to the rest and) relaxation offered by the spa towns. Most are situated in elegant towns, with excellent hotels, interesting shops, and good theatres. Several run annual festivals.