The origin of ‘spa’ can be traced to a municipality located in the Belgian province of Liège. The town is best known as home to the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, which hosts the annual Formula One Belgian Grand Prix.
Even Britons of the Victorian era were known to travel widely to soak in the benefits of these wells of rejuvenation – they served as a recovery recourse for battle-weary Roman soldiers, to cure wounds and ailments. The hot wells the Romans found were called aquae and the treatments they underwent here were known as sanus per aquam, or spa. Further, the Middle East offered fertile grounds for the birth of the mud-bathing treatment, complete with the mineral-rich silt of the Dead Sea, to zap away skin ailments.

Ancient Egyptians capitalised on the therapeutic nature of the mud of the Nile delta, that brought along with it minerals and deposits from the high mountain ranges of Ethiopia. The white ass was especially prized in the Land of the Pharoahs owing to its glow-gifting and medicinal properties. Egyptian queen Cleopatra is known to have daily bathed in ass milk, as did Poppaea, the wife of Roman Emperor Nero. It is believed that Cleopatra maintained 500 she-asses to fill up her pool for her daily bath!
In Finland was born the sauna – it started as a timber-clad pit in the ground, where logs were burned to heat large stones. Once the logs burned out, the stones retained their heat and people would sit in the cabin and sweat. Much like what the Ottomans did in their hammams or Turkish baths.

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