Crossword Dictionary
Spa
A spa is a location where mineral-rich spring water (and sometimes seawater) is used to give medicinal baths. Spa towns or spa resorts (including hot springs resorts) typically offer various health treatments, which are also known as balneotherapy. Such practices have been popular worldwide, but are especially widespread in Europe and Japan. Day spas and medspas are also quite popular, and offer various personal care treatments.
The practice of “taking the waters†for therapeutic purposes reached its heyday in the 19th century, but springs have been considered places of healing at many times and in all parts of the world. The founding of Bath in England is attributed in legend to Bladud, son of Lud Hudibras and father of King Lear, who in 863 BC was cured of disease by immersion in the steaming swamps. Roman colonists developed a considerable spa there and also at Buxton, Derbyshire. After the departure of the Romans the baths seem to have been long neglected, but many churches were built on sites of ancient places of healing throughout Europe, and cures were attributed to immersion in fonts fed by the springs beneath the sanctuary. In the early 18th century some Roman baths were rebuilt, many new “watering places†were established, and spas became fashionable secular centres of resort for the upper classes at the most seasonable times of the year. For the ill and infirm many spas provided year-round treatment centers under varying degrees of medical supervision.
Spa therapy is based on both the drinking of and the bathing in certain waters containing properties believed to be of medicinal value. Mineral springs usually contain noticeable quantities of salts in solution—including carbonate and sulfate of lime, common salt, iron, and sulfur. Magnesia and many trace minerals, notably lithium, also constitute medicinal waters. Thermal springs are derived from two sources: meteoric waters that rise from considerable depths along fissures of penetration; and volcanic waters, which reach the surface in the form of either geysers or hot springs. Most thermal water contains mineral substance in solution.