Healing Waters

Wisconsin Bookwatch, Feb, 2005

Healing Waters

Loring Bullard

University of Missouri Press

2910 LeMone Boulevard, Columbia, MO 65201

0826215548 $19.95 1-800-828-1894

Healing Waters: Missouri's Historic Mineral Springs And Spas is a straigh forward history of the use and development of mineral springs in Missouri from 1800 to the 1930s. From the earliest spa traditions in America and Missouri's frontier spas to the businesses that flourished bottling mineral waters, the nature of mineralized groundwater resources, the repercussions of establishing saltworks at the state's saline springs, and more, Healing Waters offers a thoroughly researched, in-depth historical tour. Healing Waters concludes with a survey of why mineral springs fell into disuse, with a patricular eye on how discoveries in microbiology and biochemistry led to a general repudiation of mineral water health benefits in favor of drug-related treatments. An excellent sourcebook, as approachable to the lay reader as to the historian.