Introduction

This chapter outlines the tradition of annual spa visits suggests a series of propositions about the 19th-century social and political culture. It looks at what happened at the intersection of three cultural 'spaces' – medical, social and political – in a specific historical context, 19th-century Europe. Every summer between 1814 and 1914, continental watering places became a microcosm of cosmopolitan aristocratic Europe, incorporating its conventions, tastes and interests, among which politics was the dominant one. Leisurely spa cures formed part of the elite's life because medicine relied on the healing effects of time and rest. The lifelong routine of annual spa visits also spoke to aristocracy's firm control of their lives. Extended spa cures fitted into the generally venerated concept of rest and 'satisfied a deep desire that the healing process should proceed within an essentially social environment'. The second proposition is that the social life found at the spas was underpinned by the cosmopolitan nature of European aristocracy.