This chapter examines the ways in which Britain’s sick poor sought and received medical care in spa cities. Spas were ubiquitous, located throughout the British Atlantic world, in Ireland and in Jamaica, England and Scotland, Virginia and Wales. The chapter also examines the ways in which Britain's sick poor sought and received medical care in spa cities. France was a popular destination for higher-status Britons to take the waters, and the lower-status people in their employ sometimes also sought treatment at spas. Mineral water treatments were free, and the medical infrastructures created at spas allowed marginalized people degrees of bodily agency that they may not have experienced within parish or hospital relief systems. The regime as a whole was believed to encourage the expulsion of unnecessary or harmful spirits and humors, to improve circulation, loosen strained sinews and muscles and improve flexibility, clear complexions and heal skin, make women more fertile, and bring strength to enervated, paralyzed, or benumbed limbs.
...MoreBook David Hitchcock; Julia McClure (2020) The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450-1800.
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