BiblioVault - Books about Springs

Healing Waters

Missouri's Historic Mineral Springs and Spas

Loring Bullard

University of Missouri Press, 2004

Missouri’s mineral springs and resorts played a vital role in the social and economic development of the state. In Healing Waters, Loring Bullard delves into the long history of these springs and spas, concentrating particularly on the use and development of the mineral springs from 1800 to about the 1930s. During this period, there were at least eighty sites in the state that could be described as resorts. Because so many people were drawn to the springs by their faith in the healing virtues of the springwater, towns were frequently founded at the mineral springs. These places fought hard to capture the attention of Missourians who were seeking better health, relaxation, or good times in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Bullard first examines the development of mineral water resorts in Europe from ancient times, early spa traditions in America, and Missouri’s frontier spas. He then discusses the establishment of saltworks at the state’s saline springs and the importance of the early salt trade; the brisk business that grew around the bottling of mineral waters; the use and development of mineralized groundwater resources; the geologic and biologic factors that create Missouri’s mineral waters; and public and professional belief in the curative values of mineral waters.

Healing Waters also traces the demise of Missouri’s mineral water resorts and towns. Well into the twentieth century, when modern medicine had seemingly taken hold, many physicians and scientists continued to proclaim the medicinal virtues of mineral waters. However, by the second quarter of the twentieth century, medical science and popular opinion had discounted the immediate medical usefulness of mineral waters. As advances were made in microbiology and biochemistry, and with the inherent promise of drug cures, orthodox medicine began to turn a cold shoulder on mineral water treatments. Spa treatments, with their long regimens, also did not fit well with the increasingly fast-paced lifestyles of the public.

By visiting the sites, gathering local historical accounts, interviewing local citizens, and photographing remaining artifacts, Bullard has done a masterful job in providing the answers to why these vibrant social centers came to be and why they faded.

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Living Waters

The Springs of Missouri

Loring Bullard

Moon City Press, 2020

In Living Waters: The Springs of Missouri, Loring Bullard explores the rich variety of Missouri springs, placing them in the state’s patterns of settlement and development. From the founding of towns to the establishment of wagon-road rest stops to largely forgotten spas and resorts, Missouri springs were, and continue to be, centerpieces of the landscape. They were once cherished sources of drinking water, their purity unquestioned. They provided power for mills, stock water for manufacturing plants, and source waters for fish hatcheries. Their numbingly cold waters filled swimming pools and trout ponds at scores of camps and resorts, where Missourians escaped the summer heat.

From the earliest times, springs were also sources of fascination. “Where does all that water come from? Why is it so cold?” Bullard gives us the science of spring hydrogeology; at the same time, he reminds us that springs were once revered symbols of renewal, purification, and everlasting life. They are no longer as central to the lives of Missourians. But are they still important to us? The answer to that question (and others) can be found in Living Waters.

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Ottawa Stories from the Springs

Anishinaabe dibaadjimowinan wodi gaa binjibaamigak wodi mookodjiwong e zhinikaadek

Howard Webkamigad

Michigan State University Press, 2014

Sometimes things come to people out of the blue and seemingly for a reason. The Anishinaabe word for this is nigika. The stories contained in this collection reached Howard Webkamigad nearly eighty years after they were recorded, after first being kept in their original copper wire format by the American Philosophical Society and later being converted onto cassettes and held by Dr. James McClurken of Michigan State University. These rich tales, recorded by Anishinaabe people in the Harbor Springs area of Michigan, draw on the legends, fables, trickster stories, parables, and humor of Anishinaabe culture. Reaching back to the distant past but also delving into more recent events, this book contains a broad swath of the history of the Ojibwe/Chippewa, Ottawa, Pottawatomi, Algonkian, Abenaki, Saulteau, Mashkiigowok/Cree, and other groups that make up the broad range of the Anishinaabe-speaking peoples. Provided here are original stories transcribed from Anishinaabe-language recordings alongside Howard Webkamigad’s English translations. These stories not only provide a textured portrait of a complex people but also will help Anishinaabe-language learners see patterns in the language and get a sense of how it flows. Featuring side-by-side Anishinaabe/English translations.

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Springs and Autumns

Baltasar Porcel

University of Arkansas Press, 2000

Springs and Autumns is a compelling novel that chronicles, through the voices of several family members, the intriguing history of an extended Majorcan family. The novel is set in Orlandis (a fictional version of Porcel’s hometown) on the island of Majorca. Even though the novel rises from this specific, exotic island setting, Springs and Autumns ultimately appeals to universal human emotions.

John German has captured the rhythm and poetic nature of Porcel’s prose in his translation of Springs and Autumns. Working from Porcel’s original Catalan and Spanish versions of the text, Getman manages to remain faithful to the feel and tone of Porcel’s narrative while at the same time creating an exceptionally lucid English version.

Although the entire novel takes place as the family gathers at Taltavull Hall for a Christmas Eve dinner, the reader is conveyed to places as far away as South America and Asia, learning along the way about murder, love, rape, incest, travel, discovery, regret, and forgiveness. Porcel accomplishes this through a narrative strategy that pieces together a complex mosaic of the family’s history, with each new narrative layer adding insight to the previous narratives, ultimately creating a complex and engaging novel.

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The Springs of Liberty

The Satiric Tradition and Freedom of Speech

Stewart Justman

Northwestern University Press, 1999

The Springs of Liberty takes up questions of literary history and theory and explores sources of power harnessed by modern political doctrines and the journalism that conveys them to the public. These forces of opinion are traced to a tradition deeper and older than either: satire. In that tradition—its power, diversity, and license—the author locates the spirit of free speech.

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Springs of Scientific Creativity

Essays on Founders of Modern Science

claire Aris

University of Minnesota Press, 1983

Springs of Scientific Creativity was first published in 1983.Mathematician Henri Poincaré was boarding a bus when he realized that the transformations of non-Euclidian geometry were just those he needed in his research on the theory of functions. He did not have to interrupt his conversation, still less to verify the equation in detail; his insight was complete at that point. Poincaré’s insight into his own creativity -- his awareness that preliminary cogitation and the working of the subconscious had prepared his mind for an intuitive flash of recognition -- is just one of many possible analyses of scientific creativity, a subject as fascinating as it is elusive.The authors of this book have chosen to search for the springs of scientific creativity by examining the lives and work of a dozen innovative thinkers in the fields of mathematics, physics, and chemistry from the seventeenth down to the mid-twentieth century. First prepared for delivery in a lecture series held at the University of Minnesota, these essays delve into the social, psychological, and intellectual factors that fostered creativity in the lives of Galilei Galileo, Isaac Newton, J. P. Joule, James Cler Maxwell, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Lord Rayleigh, Elmer Sperry and Adrian Leverkühn, Walter Nernst, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Michael Polyani, and John von Neumann.The contributors are Thomas B. Settle, Richard S. Westfall, Donald S. L. Cardwell, C. W. F. Everitt, Martin J. Klein, John N. Howard, Thomas P. Hughes, Erwin N. Hiebert, Stanley Goldberg, Linda Wessels, William T. Scott, and Herman H. Goldstine.

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Taking the Waters in Texas

Springs, Spas, and Fountains of Youth

By Janet Mace Valenza

University of Texas Press, 2000

"It is well known that Southern Texas possesses a greater variety of Mineral Waters than any other country on the globe" enthused a promotion for one of Texas' many watering spas of the nineteenth century. Though most are closed and nearly forgotten today, Texas spas and resorts once drew thousands of visitors from across the country, seeking healing of body and spirit in the rejuvenating mineral waters.

This book offers the first comprehensive history of Texas' healing springs. Janet Valenza tracks the rise, popularity, and decline of the "water cure" from the 1830s to the present day. She follows the development of major spas and resorts, such as Mineral Wells and Indian Hot Springs near El Paso, as well as of smaller, family-run springs. She also describes how mineral waters influenced patterns of settlement, transportation routes, commerce, and people's attitudes toward the land. Period photos and quotes from those seeking cures offer vivid glimpses into the daily life at the springs, which Valenza lists and describes county-by-county in the appendix.

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