We are delighted to announce the publication of Healing with Water: English Spas and the Water Cure 1840-1960 (Manchester University Press 2015) by Dr Jane Adams. This is a major research output from the project ‘Healing Cultures, Medicine and the Therapeutic Uses of Water in the English Midlands, 1840-1948’, led by Professor Hilary Marland at the Centre for the History of Medicine and funded by the Wellcome Trust.

The study provides a medical and social history of English spas and hydropathic centres from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. It argues that demand for healing rather than leisure drove the growth of a number of inland resorts which became renowned for expertise and treatment facilities, aspects that were actively marketed to patients and doctors. The book explores ideas about water’s healing potential and the varied ways it was used to maintain good health and treat a variety of illnesses. Water cures were endorsed by both orthodox and unorthodox practitioners and attracted growing numbers of patients into the twentieth century. The book assesses the influence of spas and hydropathic centres on broader patterns of resort development, leisure and sociability in Britain and considers why support for spa treatment from the National Health Service declined from the 1960s.