The English spa 1560–1815: a social history

in the body and in the soul oi passions, and emphasizes the ceaseless interplay of the physical and the psychological. The maladie d'amour is to be remedied by philosophy, by diversion, by diet and regimen, and even through violent medicines (hellebore and the like): sexual intercourse is not an effective cure. In introductory dissertations occasionally teetering on the brink of oversubtlety-they would certainly have proved easier to use had information been conveyed more directly Beecher and Ciavolella emphasize that medicine hardly constitutes the principal context wherein Ferrand's construal of love melancholy is set. They rightly draw attention to occult traditions (sympathy, astrology) and to the neo-Platonic strands brought into focus by Ficino. Not least, they demonstrate the skill with which Ferrand played upon a double register-the high serious and the vulgarly titillating-in a manner which would have borne interesting comparison with the work of Nicolas Venette a couple of generations later. In the light of recent studies of changing notions of sexuality by Thomas Laqueur and others, the welcome appearance of this fine edition whets the appetite for a full investigation of the subsequent history of the medical discourse on the erotic. The need for a new general history of English spas has long been remarked, and Phyllis Hembry's survey has many of the virtues required to fill that gap. Based upon energetic research into local urban and family archives, The English spa offers a richly-textured discussion of the different social ambiences of the various centres, North and South, large and small, hot-and cold-water, and its account of pre-1700 developments is particularly fresh. Ms Hembry shows conclusively the dominant role of the monarchy and court in lending lustre to the promotion of native spas in the Elizabethan age (at a time when Spa itself could be condemned as a sinkhole of treacherous Catholic plotters). The burgeoning spa life of the Stuart age-especially at Tunbridge, Epsom, and a handful of other resorts around London which had their brief moments of glory-was, by contrast, essentially designed to serve aristocratic cliques. By the Georgian era, in further contrast, the more speculative commercial development of the spa town-and this volume is laden with intriguing insights into the heavy capital investment in spa-buildings, hotels, shops, parades and the like occurring for the first time under the Hanoverians-necessarily had to make its appeal to the less exclusive sector of the moneyed gentry and professional middle classes. …