The Washing of the Waters, Part 4

The idea of healing via immersion in sacred or special waters dates back to prehistory, and it’s still alive and well in the modern world. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe consider the myth, history and reality and healing waters. (part 4 of 4)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're
back with the fourth and final part of our series
on the healing waters, the belief held by many throughout

(00:25):
history that you could cure your illnesses and improve your
health by bathing or immersing yourself in water, often water
with special properties, maybe water of a certain temperature like
hot baths or cold baths, or water from a special
source such as a particular warm mineral spring. Now. In

(00:45):
previous episodes, as a brief refresher, we talked about the
prehistoric emergence of bathing culture and the ancient religious associations
between bathing and spiritual purity in the realm of healing.
We talked about ancient Greek and Roman theories of medicine,
such as humoral theory, which sometimes had the consequence of

(01:06):
recommending bathing as a cure for all sorts of health problems,
and we also talked about the importance of baths and
spas in the culture and civic infrastructure of the Roman Empire.
We discussed some interesting and strange examples of spas with
alleged healing powers that contain living organisms such as bloodworms
or fish, that are themselves thought to in some way

(01:29):
be a mechanism of healing. And in the episode just
previous to this one, we discussed an I thought fascinating
medical history paper from a few decades back, analyzing records
of treatment that made use of the thermal waters of Bath, England,
and this paper argued that while yeah, most of the
conditions people thought could be cured by bathing in hot

(01:51):
springs throughout history, we're probably just benefiting from the placebo effect.
There is pretty decent evidence for thinking that the immersion
treatments at Bath were genuinely directly effective at curing paralysis
caused by chronic lead poisoning, because, according to the author,
sitting up to your neck in warm water increases the

(02:12):
rate in which your body purges lead content through urine. Anyway,
after all that, we're back today to finish off this
series with a few more interesting tidbits. Now, one of
the things I did want to briefly talk about is
that a lot of the mineral springs with alleged healing
powers that we've mentioned so far have been in places

(02:33):
that were formerly part of the Roman Empire, and I
think this should not be surprising, given the importance of
bathing in Roman culture in general, but especially in the
Greek and Roman theories of medicine we discussed in the
previous parts of the series, and in fact you can
still see like the lingering effects of this. There are
alleged healing spas all throughout Europe that go way way

(02:55):
back that can be traced back to Roman times. But
I don't think we should assume that the association of
some forms of bathing with healing is just like an odd,
unique belief contingent on some amount of Roman cultural heritage,
because I think it seems that people in many places
around the world, at various times have come to think

(03:18):
that they can be healed by bathing, by bathing in general,
or through the specific waters of some particular mineral spring.
And so you can find examples of this from around
the world. There was one that I ended up doing
kind of a deep dive on. I was reading about
the Kittagada Hot Springs of Uganda. So the Kittagada Hot

(03:39):
Springs are they're a system of geothermal springs in southwest Uganda.
I've seen the name Kittigada translated as both warm water
and as warm place or good place. And there's a
town of the same name located about two kilometers northwest
of the springs. And these waters are said to collect

(04:01):
in two side by side pools, and they are believed
by many to have healing properties, so much so that
they are or at least they were, as of the
sources I was reading, which were some Uganda newspaper articles
from roughly ten years ago or so. At that time,
they were being visited by hundreds of people every day,
both locals and tourists, tourists from within Uganda and tourists internationally.

(04:27):
And I was reading about the springs in a series
of articles from a Ugandan English language newspaper called New Vision,
which is based out of Kampala. So one of the
articles is called the Healing Hot Springs. It was published
in February twenty fourteen by Chris Mugasha. And in this
article the author actually describes a visit he had to

(04:48):
the springs and describes some basic facts about them and
sort of how they're used by the people. So Rabbi
attached some pictures of the Kitagada Springs. You can see
that they are surrounded by some very interesting rock formations.
I don't know exactly what sort of geology forms the
rocks like this, but you can see that all around
the pools there are these strange, beautiful, interesting kind of

(05:12):
like crags poking up in all directions. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
this sense of the rocks being burst out by swelling
from beneath. Yeah. So, according to Mugosha's article here, the
springs are divided into a section that's used by men,
and then a section used by women and children. And
then also there are some people who don't actually want

(05:33):
to stay in bathe in person with everybody else, and
he says they bring jerry cans and fill them up
with hot spring water to carry back home. And the
thermal pools also vary by temperature. There's one area that
apparently as comfortably warm water, while the other has water
that the author describes as hot enough to prepare porridge

(05:53):
or cook an egg. Yeah. This is a feature of
various hot springs that I was reading about. You know,
just because it's a hot spring, does I mean you
can or should get into it. There are some very
dangerous hot springs out there in the world, and you
should definitely obey any signage or rules and regulations surrounding them.
But then there are also plenty of complexes where if

(06:14):
you know the right place to go in a spring complex,
then you'll be all right because that's where the water
will be warm and not hot enough to cook eggs. Right.
And it seemed from what I was reading that the
area with water hot enough to cook an egg may
still be used for some things. But I doubt people
are like getting in that water and hanging out there
for a long time because you don't want to be

(06:35):
the egg. So this is this topic. This is not
something I research, but this might be something we might
have to put a pin in to come back to
in discussing like the history of cooking, you know, because
we've talked about the importance of natural springs, both hot
and cold, to ancient peoples. I wonder how this factors
or doesn't factor into the history of boiling as a

(06:59):
cooking method. I have no idea, but that is an
interesting question. Yeah, maybe before we had fire, did anybody
ever try to like boil their food in a hot spring.
I don't know what evidence of that there would be
left over if they did. Yeah, that would be the
thing right anyway. So the author here says that people
visit the springs for multiple reasons. So some people it

(07:20):
seems to be just recreational. People come for pleasure and
relaxation and the hot waters. Maybe they come after work
to chill out, or they come to admire the area's
natural beauty. But he says that the majority of people
there are looking for healing of some kind. And an
earlier article in the same newspaper I read in New Vision.

(07:41):
This article was by Ali Wasaswa from August twenty thirteen,
mentions people coming to the springs hoping for cures to
a wide range of health issues, both minor and severe.
So this includes everything from acne to cancer. And while
many people claim to have experienced improvements after bathing in
the water, was was article sites some doubts about the

(08:04):
efficacy of these cures from a researcher named Moses Kakaya
who was affiliated with an organization called Save for Health
Uganda that appears to be a Ugandan public health in
geo and the article says that this team investigated the
springs and said they found the waters had no special
healing properties. Mugosha's article mentions that to the extent the

(08:28):
waters do have any healing properties. If they do, those
could possibly be based in specific mineral contents of the water.
We've discussed some possibilities of those kinds with other springs,
but also that the claims of healing could simply be
from the heat of the water, feeling good, alleviating pain
and swollen joints and things like that, or just from

(08:48):
easing stress, you know, helping people relax and other quote
psychotherapeutic effects. Now, this article and another article also by
Mugasha from the month before mentioned threats to the springs,
which is something I think we haven't really thought about
that much yet, but that hot springs are not necessarily

(09:09):
an eternal phenomenon, or even a semi eternal phenomenon, because
even though they are heated by you know, the rocks
from deep down below they you know, they still are
subject to hydrodynamic effects and so like changes of what's
going on where water drains, where water goes can affect
how a hot spring works. And so these two articles

(09:30):
mentioned some threats to the springs. So the article from
a month before by the same author reports complaints from
locals that construction from a nearby highway has had negative
effects on the springs. Basically, it seems that they're claiming
water from a nearby wetland system was diverted because of

(09:51):
roadwork and this has led to flooding of the spring.
And of course, flooding of the spring is like mixing
water from other sources, which causes the water to become tepid.
Nobody wants to travel to a tepid spring. Yeah, And
the later article by Mgosha also mentions changes in weather
patterns suit a climate change possibly having an effect, because

(10:13):
changing rain patterns mean that the increased flooding of the
nearby river also means that it runs over into the
spring and this results, I think, if I'm understanding right
once again with the river water coming into the spring
water and you know, kind of like diluting it. Yeah,
absolutely to your point. I mean, these springs like this

(10:33):
are environmental conditions and they can be altered either intentionally
or accidentally exactly. And so this article describes people who
were local people who are trying to protect the spring
having to like stack up essentially sort of sandbags like
bags of gravel to try to block the flow, the
inflow of water from other sources into the spring. Oh wow.

(10:55):
Now I was trying to find a scientific paper directly
testing the leedged healing properties of this spring in particular
because again, you know, one of the articles mentions an
investigation by that Ugandan Public Health NGEO about its medical properties.
I didn't come across anything, so I can't comment with
any confidence about whether these springs would have any health

(11:19):
effects other than placebo. But especially since that paper we
read in the last episode arguing that that spot therapy
could have actual effects on chronic lead poisoning in particular,
and again that was the argument, was that it worked
by increasing the rate at which lad is purge from
the body through urine. I wonder, you know, I wonder
if there are other conditions where people might be getting

(11:42):
some health improvements through a surprising mechanism other than just maybe, say,
you know, the very real effects of relaxing in nice
warm water. Yeah, you always have to at least keep
keep the door open to such a possibility, even if
in many cases it seems perhaps unlikely based on what
we understand currently. Now, as long as we're speaking about

(12:04):
you know, other international examples of healing waters. I felt
like we should at least acknowledge that the River Ganges
in India and Bangladesh has long been held as a
traditional place of healing via immersion. Again, not a natural
you know, spring, hot spring and cold spring, etc. But
but a great river. Yeah, this is actually a subtopic

(12:25):
that I became very interested in when we first started
looking at the series, But then I got kind of
overwhelmed and I was like, Oh, it seems like the
Ganges would have to be an entire series on its own. Yeah. Absolutely,
there's just so much to it. You've you've got glacier
snow and perma frost melt. You've got discussions of supposedly

(12:46):
beneficial bacteria, phages, antibiotic resistant bacteria that are that are
not beneficial. Then you have you have to deal with
topics such as pollution as well as all of this
on top of a rich tradition of religious significance. So yeah,
I think it's it's something we'd have to come back
to and cover in more depth in the future. But

(13:06):
at the same time, we didn't want to give the
impression that we were just overlooking it. Right now, another
example of spring and spa culture. I wanted to bring
up just briefly, is, of course Japan. Japan has a
very rich tradition of spas and thermal springs, and I
believe we previously alluded to the Japanese macaques who famously
immersed themselves in hot springs and also do so communally.

(13:31):
So that's a great example of non human primates engaging
in this very activity that humans have enjoyed for so long.
So I've read that they're somewhere in the neighborhood of
twenty five thousand hot spring sources or on sin throughout Japan.
I got an email recently about a tour of hot
springs in Japan eighteen days long. Looked amazing, but just

(13:54):
you know, it basically shows that, yeah, you can travel
to Japan and largely just do hot springs and it'll
be enough to fill eighteen days worth of travel. Now,
one in particular that I thought was pretty interesting, and
I have to I have to stress this is not
actually an example of a spring system where you can
do much or really any bathing. But it's called Chinoki Jigokku,

(14:18):
and it's in Beppoo, Japan, and here you'll find the
eight hells of Beppoo. I think I've sometimes seen the
count of seven, but I believe eight is the right count.
There's and these are translated, of course from the Japanese.
There's sea hell, white pond Hell, devil mountain Hell, mountain Hell,
alligator Hell, cooking pot hell, which this is actually the

(14:41):
case cooking pot hell. These are all thermal springs, and
as the name implies, many of them are really hot.
Cooking pot hell is where you can actually cook food,
and there there's a long standing tradition of cooking food
in this particular thermal spring. There's tornado Hell, and then
there is blood pond Hell or bloody hell pond. Is
it red? It is very red. Yeah, you can look

(15:02):
up pictures of this. It's it's all. It's too hot
to get into it. It's basically hot enough to cook
food in itself. It has a deep red color that
I believe is due to both like clay content and
iron oxide. I would have assumed red bacteria. All of
these hells, all these ponds, these are tourist destinations. You

(15:23):
can go and visit them, and I think they have
if I'm understanding correctly from the information I was looking
at they have smaller pools for like soaking your feet
in as a visitor. So even though you can't stick
your feet directly into many of these hells, and I
think Alligator hell As actually has alligators in it, and
you don't want to stick your feet in there either,
But at any rate, they do have some smaller pools

(15:46):
that I guess are fed or partially fed by the
actual spring waters that you can get your feet wet in.
I had no idea there were alligators in Japan. They
might be imported. I'm not sure what their their status is.
Oh interesting, they're definitely alligators here, no matter where they
came from. I don't care where your alligators come from.
I just want them to be alligators. They've got to

(16:07):
be alligators in Alligator hell Yes, the end to the end.
I believe they come through on that front. All right, Well,
let's get back into the healing waters, though, away from
the alligator waters and the egg boiling waters. So we've

(16:30):
we've already talked a bit in these episodes about traditional
healing waters potentially having something specific in them, something in
the contents of the waters that enable healing in human bathers,
and in some cases these springs end up having something
in them that some cases where a particular element in

(16:53):
the water is also utilized in modern medical treatments one
way or the other. So it's tempting to wonder, well,
if these springs maybe offer the same benefits for those
who simply immerse themselves in the water or drink of
the waters. Okay, so not that this would happen, but
for example, it would be like, you know, a set

(17:15):
of menifin is the is the active ingredient in tile
and all, and then maybe we discover, oh, there is
a spring that naturally has a seed a minifen content
in it, and you wonder if we're people like getting
their their pre tile and all tile and all from
this spring. Oh, well, that would that would be a
bad idea for a number of obvious reasons there, thinking

(17:37):
about you know, controlled dosages of something in a general
medication versus how much are you getting out of the water,
how much are you if you're drinking it or potentially
absorbing it through your skin. Yes, calibration of dosage would
would seem to be a big problem with this, so
so definitely something to keep in mind as we go
into a couple of specific examples, and I think both

(18:00):
pretty fun specific examples too, in that they both have
connections to our home state of Georgia. Here in the
United States, we don't often get to cover things that
are that are present in Georgia or Georgia history. So
we're going to start with lithia water. This is mineral
water marked by the presence of lithium salts. Now, to

(18:20):
be clear, most of what we're talking about with lithia
water concerns its consumption, though I have read that Sweetwater
Park Hotel this is a luxury resort which operated in
Lithia Springs, Georgia during the heyday of lithium water tourism
in Georgia's Douglas County also offered lithia vapor baths, which

(18:41):
were said to be very popular. I included an old
illustration of what this, I guess may have consisted for
you here, Joe. Okay, So what we're looking at here
appear to be wooden boxes in which men are situated
with their heads poking out of a hole in a
wooden plank, so it's like they're in a pillory. But
there well, I guess without the wrists poking out so

(19:02):
it's just the head poking out of the pillory and
then there is steam shooting out of the edges of
the box, so you can you can tell it must
be quite warm and moist on the inside. Yes, now
none of this is going on today, But um, I
don't know. Do you ever make it up to Sweetwater
Creek State Park, Joe, this is the same Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a great place. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful place. But back

(19:26):
in the day, uh, back at the like the the
the end of the eighteen hundreds beginning of the nineteen hundreds,
this was a very popular destination for well to do
folks such as the Vanderbilts such as Mark Twain. This
particular Sweetwater Park Hotel was again luxury resort. People came
from all over to partake of the of the healing

(19:49):
powers of Lithia waters. The hotel burned down in nineteen twelve,
so you know, it's not even there is an historical
location anymore. This is funny that you mentioned Mark Twain
because he also came up in a in a research
tangent that I ended up not including. But he he
wrote a piece about a place like a spa. He
went to somewhere in Europe. I think it was in France,

(20:10):
and it's called I don't even know how to pronounce
the name of this place. The name it was called
ai X. Do you know how you say that? I
do not. Let's call it I. He went to he
went to I in I think it's France, and he
wrote a piece about it called I Paradise of the
Room Attics. So I guess Twain was into various kinds

(20:32):
of like hot wet healing. Yeah. Well, and he was,
he was very well traveled for the day. Yeah. So
I was reading a little bit more about this, uh,
this whole fad around lithia waters, and I was reading
a paper titled Lithium Treatment in Clinical Medicine History, Current
Status in Future Use, published in the Journal of Sell
Science and Therapy in twenty seventeen by Duval and Galachio.

(20:57):
And this was interesting point that lithia water became a
health fad around eighteen fifty and was especially big and
again the late eighteen hundreds. In early nineteen hundreds, it
was thought to treat gout, anxiety, various nervous conditions, and
a whole slew of other ailments. So similar situation that

(21:18):
we found, you know, discussing any of these hate healing waters,
what does it treat well? What you got going on? Right,
A lot of things. So it's interesting they mentioned gout
because that did come up in the paper about Bath,
specifically as one of the lead poisoning associated conditions that
the physicians at Bath thought could be cured by long

(21:41):
periods of immersion. But another thing about gout at Bath
was one of the purposes of like recording all this
data at the charity hospital there to say, you know,
we really can prove that these waters are providing a benefit,
was to try to attract rich patients who had gout. Well.

(22:03):
It is often referred to as the disease of kings, right,
disease of the upper class clientele. Yeah. Now, the author's
note here that though even though there was you know,
this boom in lithia water and the healing powers of lithium,
the authors know that there was almost no mention of
lithium in psychiatry papers of the time. So bottling lithia

(22:23):
waters became big business, but it took a serious dive
in the US when the US government got involved. So
the US Bureau of Chemistry this was a precursor to
the FDA. They examined the waters on the market and
the lithia waters and there and there was lithia waters
coming from lithia springs in Georgia but also from other places.
And they they tested these waters out and they found
that they contained little to know lithium, and it was

(22:46):
concluded that whatever results people were experiencing were mainly due
to just drinking water. Oh that's interesting and yeah, which
kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier,
like earlier in the last episode, Like even if the
treatment itself was doing nothing else, then perhaps you're drinking
more water than usual, you're drinking less beer or what
have you. Yeah. Yeah, So when this happened, when the

(23:09):
US Bureau Chemistry chimed in well lithium proponents, they pivoted
more to the use of lithium tablets, which the authors
here point out could be properly measured, you know, you
could be a little more certain about how much lithium
you're giving people. But then there was kind of like
a power creep with the lithium tablets. The concentrations increased
and the dangers of lithium toxicity became more apparent, all

(23:33):
while the actual therapeutic properties of lithium consumption seemed just unverifiable,
So therapeutic use of lithium eventually just went out of fashion.
I found a couple of the original scathing reviews of
lithiu water from the time period collected in the Checkered
History of Lithium in Medicine by Stroebush and Jefferson in
nineteen eighties Pharmacy in History, Volume twenty two, number two.

(23:56):
Let's hear these reviews. Oh yeah, they're good, so the
US Bureau of Chemistry said at the time, in a
review by Charles Harrington, MD. Quote, this water claims to
be a cure for almost all ills to which flesh
is air and to contain over fourteen grains of lithium
salts per gallon. It proves to be an exceedingly hard water,

(24:16):
practically free from organic matter, absolutely free from lithia, but
rich and undesirable lime salts priceless. Yeah, it really brings
the hammer down. And then there's another case. The Supreme
Court of the District of Columbia had this to say
concerning waters from Buffalo Lithia Springs, Virginia. At the time quote,

(24:40):
for a person to obtain a therapeutic dose of lithium
by drinking Buffalo lithia water, he would have to drink
from one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred and
twenty five thousand gallons of water per day. It was
further testified without contradiction that Potomac River water contains five
times as much lithium per gallon as the water controversy.

(25:01):
Oh amazing. So, like, the one thing you can be
sure about with lithium water is that it doesn't really
have any lithium. Yeah, yeah, I again, these were this
is these were the findings at the time. Now, it's
interesting that you mentioned lithium went out of fashion as
a as a health treatment or a mood treatment, because
while I'm certainly not on the cutting edge of a psychopharmacology,

(25:25):
I do believe that lithium has been used in the
modern era as a as a psychiatric treatment, hasn't it.
Yeah Yeah, And that's the thing that I guess can
for us, like retroactively, can be kind of confusing about
all this because because lithium does become an important treatment,
specifically for bipolar disorder, this wasn't discovered until nineteen forty nine.

(25:48):
That's when American psychiatrist John Kade discovered that it could
be used as a mood stabilizer for bipolar disorder as
opposed to resorting to lobotomy or electro convulsive therapy were
kind of the standards of the day. So that was
nineteen forty nine. The treatment became more prominent and more
covered by I believe nineteen fifty two, and it was

(26:10):
approved by the FDA in the nineteen seventies. And I've
read that it remains an effective treatment, though the authors
of this particular paper about the history of lithium as
a treatment, they point out that it still remains in
some circles somewhat controversial due to toxicity and side effects. So,

(26:30):
you know, it's I guess with it's a similar case
with a lot of medications. You know, it's like there's
it has a definite usage, but you also have to
be aware of the potential side effects to it, and
some discussion still remains. Yeah, So to come back to
wondering if lithia water springs could have offered relief to
individuals suffering from specific neurological maladies, I don't know again,

(26:54):
I you know, no expert on any of this, but
it seems iffy based on what we've looked at, mainly
because of concentration issues with the water itself and the
risk of toxicity and side effects if higher quantities were
obtained from the water, which it doesn't seem like is
necessarily the case with any of these naturally occurring lithia
spring waters. I mean, it seems like from what you've

(27:15):
been talking about that carefully managing dosage of lithium is
one of the crucial factors in modern prescriptions, and so like,
if you're just gulping down water that has some questionable
amount of lithium content, that seems like you're either maybe
not getting enough for it to make much of a difference,
or you risk getting too much and that is highly toxic. Yeah,

(27:37):
And I just I don't think the concentrations in just
out there in the natural occurring spring waters would be
high enough to even relically register for you. Now, you
can still buy and drink lithia waters from from different springs,

(28:00):
though it's not held up as I think the miracle
cure at once was. Though I don't know. It kind
of depends on branding and fads. I guess from what
I can tell, it contains lithium by the micrograms, though,
rather than the milligrams which would be involved in therapeutic doses.
So I think you'd find yourself, even with you know,
definite lithia water that you might purchase, you'd still have

(28:21):
to drink those gallons of it, those hundreds of thousands
of gallons of it per day to get the levels
that would reach anything like a therapeutic dosage. Now, on
this account of concerning lithia spring water, thanks to our
listener Sean for writing in on this concerning a particular
Irish well, the well at glenn Nanealt. I've read that

(28:43):
this area is also called Valley of the Mad and
made date back to the twelfth century. I don't know
what the lithium levels are at this well. I couldn't
find any data on that, but I don't know. Based
on what we've looked at, I think it's a safe
bet that it did not contain or does not contain
therapeutic amounts of lithium, and that the connection here is
just a coincidence. And also worth noting that lithium springs

(29:06):
in North America likewise, tend to predate any modern medical
or scientific understanding, and were utilized by indigenous peoples long
before the arrival of westerners. Well that's very interesting digression.
What else have you got for me? Oh well, we
should also talk about about potentially radioactive spring waters. Nothing
better for your gout than radioactive spring waters. Yeah, specifically

(29:28):
radium springs. So Tarifa, We've talked about radium on the
show before. But radium is a highly radioactive alkaline earth
metal discovered in eighteen ninety eight by Pierre and Marie Curie.
They discovered it by noting the radioactivity in pitch blend
radioactive uranium rich mineral relative to the uranium it actually contains.

(29:49):
They refine several tons of the stuff of residues down
to zero point one grams of pure radium by nineteen
o two, and they isolated radium in nineteen ten. Now,
radium is important historically, you know, tying into the work
of the curious here, but its commercial uses have long
been very limited. So formally it was used in the

(30:10):
creation of radio luminescent devices, and it was also formally
used in the medical treatment of cancer, but has largely
been replaced by stronger and less costly artificial radioisotopes. One
particular example of the radioluminescent topic here there was a
luminous paint known as Undark, created by the United States

(30:32):
Radium Corporation, noted for its connection to the so called
radium girls factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting
with the stuff. Yes, and that is a ghastly story
if you want to go read more about it. The
luminescent radium paints were used to like maybe illuminate the
watch hands, you know, the dials on little clocks and

(30:54):
watches and stuff, and further glow in the dark purposes.
And it was glowing because the phosphorescent elements in the
paint were being bombarded by radiation from the radium content.
So yeah, obviously that was not good for humans. Yeah,
but at the time this was we have to put
things in context. In the early twentieth century, there was

(31:17):
a great deal of radium fever going on, and there
was also not much in the way of regulation of
the stuff. So there were more than a few medical
quacks out there, you know, jumping in to make some
money off of the radium craze, so you saw products
like radithor salts for supposed medicinal use, or the radium

(31:38):
or revigatur This was a radium aligned water vessel for
your drinking water. But then on the simcount you also
saw various products that either couldn't or just didn't actually
put radium into the product, but really wanted a slice
of the pie, so they included radium in the brand names,

(32:00):
such as Radium Brand Creamery butter. This is an actual
nineteen thirties product included the label here for you, Joe,
with this beautiful image of these these these cattle drinking
from some sort of a pond or perhaps naturally occurring spring.
The sun is rising or setting in the background, and

(32:20):
it says Radium Brand Creamery Butter. Now, can I hope
that this butter had just as much radium content as
the bottled lithia water actually had lithium content meaning none? Right? Right, Yeah,
this apparently had no actual radium in it, but it
was just getting in on the excitement, like radium equals health,
and therefore, you know, there was nobody to say you

(32:45):
couldn't have shouldn't do this, And there are numerous examples
of this sort of marketing, including the non radioactive radium
new Tex condoms of the day, but again not actually
made with radium. Right, And there there are are examples
of actually radioactive quack products from the twentieth century, including
the German dor Mud radioactive toothpaste that was made using thorium.

(33:09):
This was an actual product and you can see some
alarming looking like poster promotional art for this product as well. Now,
all of these quackery uses of radium or bad ideas
because it has no beneficial role in the human body.
It's radioactive, it's toxic. You don't need to be consuming
radium salts. Right, There's not like a hidden upside. Right.

(33:33):
But again, given the enthusiasm for radium during the first
half of the twentieth century, it should also come as
no surprise that people were also game to bathe in
the stuff. So the big one here is not in Georgia.
It is in what is now the Czech Republic Radium Palace,
which opened in nineteen twelve. It replaced a smaller spa
on the property and cashed in hard on radium enthusiasm.

(33:56):
Atlas Obscura refers to the palace as the birthplace of
radio balmeology. It ignited a fad in spas around the world,
anywhere where they were already naturally occurring springs. If you
found that there was any kind of radium content to
the waters, well low and behold, you have a new
way to market your spa, a new way to market

(34:17):
your spring water. Radium palace and its waters fell out
of fashion after the Second World War, but the hotel
was apparently refurbished in the nineteen nineties and it's rather
stunning looking building, and it still offers radium based treatments,
though they're apparently limited by contemporary maximum permitted levels of
radiation doses. But on the same level, this looks like

(34:38):
a very attractive resort, So we kind of have to
take It's kind of like going back to their discussion
of bath, like is it, you know, the communal factors,
the placidibo factors of everything a fella scenario, So I
don't know. But coming back to our home state of Georgia,
Georgia also got in on the action with radium springs.
Radium is still called radium springs Georgia. The spa here

(35:03):
was already a retreat destination in the early twentieth century
offering gambling and naturally occurring hot spring waters. So you
had a lot of folks that would come down from
the cold or northern states during the winter and they'd
enjoy like the pleasant temperatures of just southern Georgia during
the winter, but also these hot springs. It was known

(35:23):
as blue springs at the time, but then in nineteen
twenty five they discovered radium in the water and they
rebranded thus radium Springs. Wow, and you can still visit it.
I actually looked it up and I was thinking, well,
maybe I could go down there for then a rows.
It was like a four hour drive one way, and
so maybe maybe it wouldn't fit into the workweek all
that well, but you can still visit the grounds here

(35:45):
and it it looks rather beautiful. So the supposed health
benefits of radium spring soaking of radium springs spa water,
I think in general is pretty dubious, though I suppose
it's conceivably safe if one is still low the maximal
permissible level of exposure. But yeah, otherwise I don't suppose
you'd really get much out of the experience, again, other

(36:07):
than just sort of the set and setting of the
whole thing. It's worth noting that, of course, there are
multiple springs at Ramsar in around containing radium and thorium,
and this area is known as the most naturally radioactive
place on Earth. The springs here are also used as spas,
and I think we again have to put them in

(36:29):
a larger historic context. People have been coming here for
a very long time and continue to come to Ramsar
in order to enjoy these spring waters. So yeah, they're uh,
these are these are places that were special and important
again before modern science came along to determine exactly what
was going on in the contents of the water. I'd

(36:52):
be very interested to hear from anyone out there who's
had experiences in a in a radium spring what you
thought of it, what the sort of salon it was
with the grounds were, Like, I think it's it's fascinating.
I've not had the experience myself. Yes, uh, same here,
but it's interesting. This has just kind of like opened
up a door into this world of all the strange,

(37:13):
little quirky local thermal springs all all over the world.
So it makes me think we're maybe gonna get some
really good listener mail about this series. Oh yeah, I
want to hear about your your strange local thermal springs
and spas and what's the backstory what goes on there? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(37:33):
because a lot of them have some very rich traditions
behind them, um of perhaps some some quirky history in places,
and and some alleged healing properties. So yeah, we've already
heard from at least a few listeners, so certainly keep
it coming. We've we'd love to to dive into these
over the next several listener mail episodes. All right, Well,
on that note, we're going to go and close it

(37:55):
out for today, but we'd love to hear from everyone
out there, so you know, definitely right in. Just a
reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind publishes its core
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have short form artifact
or monster fact episode on Wednesdays. On Mondays we do
the listener mail, and on Fridays we set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Pauseway.

(38:17):
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello. You
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

(38:38):
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