Spas from a National Aspect
But brief reflection on the foregoing considerations suffices to make it clear that the various spas and health resorts with which this country, through Nature’s beneficence, has been so bountifully endowed, are but members one of another, in short complementary, not antagonistic, as I fear is sometimes thought. This latter is a view to be discarded in favour of a more rational conception of these various centres from their collective aspect as integral parts of a therapeutic whole.
Now what, in a word, is the outstanding feature of our national life to-day? Co-operation—a veritable furore of national and international effort such as the world has never seen. Spas, too, must fall in line with the national trend, must organise and co-operate, if they would play their full rôle in the drama of reconstruction. Now, from the point of view of the State, the true objective in therapeutics is the achievement and maintenance of national efficiency—the production of healthy citizens, sound economic units. This then is the high purpose with which those responsible for spas must ever be animated—an aim only to be attained by their whole-hearted co-operation one with the other.
The lay custodians, too, of spas must increasingly realise that they do but hold in trust their healing springs to be safeguarded in the interests of the community. Mineral waters, like coal, issue from the bowels of the earth. Both are natural products; both are national assets. I doubt not that the growing movement for effectual popular control so rapidly obtaining a grip over the political and economic life of the nation will shortly be extended to our spas, with, as its outcome, their unification and co-ordination under the controlling influence of a central body of experts vested with plenary powers to inspect, control, and inspire the development of these hydrotherapeutic centres. “Salus populi suprema est lex.”