Renaissance Period: Use of Hot Tubs, Spas and Saunas in France
In the Anglo-Saxon world the enthusiasm of the twentieth-century Frenchman for imbibing his country’s mineral waters is proverbial. It is surprising, therefore, to discover that the French contribution to the resuscitation of the spa in the era of the Renaissance was minimal. For most of the sixteenth century, the nation that has given mankind the waters of Vichy and Evian (to name but two) was largely unmoved by the fad for the hot-spring and the mineral bath that swept the Italian peninsula, crossed the Alps into the territory of’ the Holy Roman Empire, and penetrated even our own shores. It was not that France’s future spas were undiscovered, for many had a Romaro-Gallic provenance. It was rather that the therapeutic potential of mineral waters remained unrecognized by the Gallic medical establishment and hence by the large majority of the court, aristocracy and urban elite who formed their clients.