The Washing of the Waters, Part 4

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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

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 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

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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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, 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. 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, 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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. 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.

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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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 of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. Times