Pre-pandemic, the wellness economy was worth US$4.2tn, according to the Global Wellness Institute. It's a contemporary obsession now addressed by two British writers, each of whom has set out to explore the origins of wellness. Their two journeys share a vast breadth of historical scope, though their cultural coordinates differ wildly. As bookends for a curious investigation, they make compelling counterparts.
In 'Health, Hedonism & Hypochondria', academic and theologian Ian Bradley focuses his gaze on spas, the "pioneers of the vast modern wellness industry". He begins with Greek and Roman thermal mineral springs, and ends with a rather sad tour of the one-time pinnacles of European spa grandeur (now eclipsed by beach resorts in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean). Building these temples to physical health, Bradley posits, also laid a foundation for a broader social and cultural understanding of wellbeing.
In Retreat, journalist Matthew Ingram also puts therapeutic bolt-holes at the heart of his investigations. But his are retreats formed in the crucible of the countercultural explorations of the Beat Generation, the anti-psychiatrists and the hippies who took eastern philosophies and epically reinterpreted them through a "constellation" of 19th- and 20th-century thinkers and movements including Nietzsche, Gandhi, Wilhelm Reich and psychoanalysis. "It takes the gestalt of the counterculture," he says, "to bring about their coalescence."
Bradley's is a study of western civilisation's indulge-punish relationship with spa culture. The pendulum swings from Roman and Greek sensuality to Christian restraint, and from the religious fanaticism of the Middle Ages to the ritualistic drinking cures championed by Protestant Reformers. Bradley then takes us from 18th-century social hubs (with balls, gambling and concerts) and Belle Époque temples of indulgence to medicalised centres for hydrotherapy and exercise: "the precursors of modern aerobics, Pilates and weight training".