The History of Baths

History of Water Through the Ages Part 3

Ancient Egyptians associated Nile water with fecundity, for humans as well as for crops, and was known as the fattening water, as it had the power to regenerate and enrich. Worship at shrines such as Lourdes and Fatima merely capitalised on the economic benefit to the community.

Late eighteenth-century British doctors’ stressed the emetic and diluent properties of water. Too much food ingested with too much water could lead to corpulence. Too much water with too little food promoted a diet deficient in nutrients; because the food passed through the intestines, too quickly water slowed this process down.

Some of the harmful qualities of water could be neutralised by purification. Water was generally purified by either boiling, by filtering generally through sand, or by the addition of wine or vinegar. Both classical and medieval authors recognized the value of filtration, naturally either through soil, or artificially through wool, cloth or breadcrumbs. It appears that before the concept of water bourn diseases many cultures had observed a link between water drunk and disease. Ancient Roman records state that where public aqueducts had been constructed the administrators had a reasonability to be aware of the quality of the water, if not the knowledge to change it. Water purification has historically taken many forms, from the Chinese preference to boiled water to the addition of wine by the French.

By the seventeenth century, European writers wrote about water properties, but these meant the amounts of salts or gases especially in stream water. A mineral spring included chalybeate, or waters with iron, beneficial to treat anaemia; sulphurous waters, good for skin and scalp problems; acid waters, full of carbonic that gave the stomach a lightness; and saline waters, which were purgatives.

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