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the mountains encouraged health; travelers usually felt its effect as soon as they arrived at the first spa. Emphasizing his wife’s full restoration of health, George T. Sinclair proclaimed: ‘‘There is nothing in medicine to compare with change of air.’’ His wife, moreover, was ‘‘a living monument of the value of the waters of the Rockbridge Alum springs.’’ ‘‘This climate of itself would restore most people to health,’’ concluded Samuel Hoffman during one of his many trips to the Virginia Springs. By the 1850s, visitors to the Virginia Springs mentioned the invigorating air, variety of food, and kinds of exercise almost as often as they discussed the mineral waters used. According to Jane Caroline Pettigrew, the ‘‘bracing air’’ acted upon her son ‘‘like champagne on older people—he laughs out with sheer life & spirits, & shouts . . . from glee & good health.’’26 With further changes in orthodox medicine after 1850, the Virginia Springs waters looked more valuable than ever for curing illnesses or promoting continued good health. ‘‘I think the Virginia Mountain Air & Sulphur Waters the best medicine we can take,’’ W. H. Collins declared to his brother-in-law in 1856. Increasingly, orthodox physicians embraced the idea of a healing nature and changed their thinking about therapeutics to focus on helping nature heal the body. In Dr. Jacob Bigelow’s Brief Exposition of Rational Medicine (1858), mineral waters appeared, along with electricity , under ‘‘rational’’ or ‘‘natural’’ methods of cure. Bigelow declared that particular springs exerted ‘‘beneficial effect[s]’’ on ‘‘particular maladies ,’’ and proclaimed watering places ‘‘arks of refuge to multitudes of chronic valetudinarians.’’ In 1858 Dr. P. B. Tindall, resident physician at Sweet Springs, happily acknowledged the role of nature in medical therapeutics : ‘‘We must come back to elementary principles, and substitute natural agents for artificial ones.’’ He heartily endorsed the Virginia Springs as the preeminent therapy: ‘‘We must measurably throw away the nauseous drugs of the apothecary, and substitute in their stead the mild and salubrious beverage of mineral waters.’’27  ‘‘Every Day Var[ies] a Little’’ Whether or not they were ill, all of the springs visitors bathed in or drank the waters. While mid-nineteenth-century orthodox medicine regarded and treated the sexes differently, men and women at the Virginia Springs 78 Ladies and Gentlemen o n d i s p l ay shared the same routine, drinking the waters at the same times and often in the same quantities.1 Doctors prescribed, and experienced visitors suggested , that a newcomer start out slowly and gradually increase the amount of water consumed in order to condition the body and soften the harsh effects of the minerals. First, an imbiber had to get accustomed to the taste, temperature, and, if at a sulphur spring, smell of the waters. Levin Joynes found Salt Sulphur’s waters ‘‘eggy in the extreme’’ and could not believe those who told him that ‘‘they have become fond of it.’’ Sarah Garland thought that White Sulphur water smelled ‘‘just as disagreeable as the atmosphere at home after an explosion on the rail road.’’ After her first dose of Stribling’s Springs waters, Susan Stuart wrote home to her mother: ‘‘Oh!! aint it awful? And don’t it smell?! It made me sick for an hour.’’ After finishing a glass, the drinker might experience warmth around the stomach and a feeling of dizziness. Some visitors enjoyed the sensations; others detested them and never grew accustomed to the smell or the effects. The regimen for bathing echoed that for drinking, with certain kinds of baths prescribed for certain problems. The actual process took various forms, depending on whether a visitor was trying to cure a specific problem or just enjoying him- or herself. These rituals of health were as important to spa life as rituals of sociability.2 The daily regimen varied little from spring to spring or over time. Since almost everyone followed the same schedule, drinking or bathing in the waters were social occasions. In 1839 travel writer Mary Hagner outlined a day’s schedule at White Sulphur Springs. The first trip to the springhouse occurred before breakfast, when anyone who wished to drink the waters and ‘‘exchange the salutations of the day’’ congregated. ‘‘This is an exciting time,’’ Hagner noted, ‘‘and for one hour, the whole area around the spring is crowded with the old, the young, the gay, and the invalid.’’ At 8:00 a.m., the guests breakfasted on breads and ‘‘all the other necessaries to anticipate the finest appetites.’’ After breakfast, light...

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