Medicine: Saratoga Spa

Out of Saratoga Springs, N. Y. over the two miles to Saratoga Spa last week swarmed horseowners, trainers, jockeys, stablemen, gamblers, tipsters, touts. In the same direction swarmed Saratoga storekeepers, hotel keepers, boarding house keepers, restaurateurs, druggists, doctors, lawyers, undertakers, servants, socialites, priests, preachers, rabbis. In the same direction sped Governor Herbert Lehman, Mrs. Lehman, George Foster Peabody, many another dignitary.

Altogether about 5,000 people collected at Saratoga Spa. Governor Lehman mounted a platform, formally opened seven new buildings clustered around Saratoga’s mineral springs dedicated to the curing of heart diseases, constipation, gout, rheumatism, nervousness and a stack of diseases which have not yet been catalogued.

The seven buildings (with two old bath houses and a new hotel) constitute Saratoga Spa. They cost the State of New York $6,000,000 plus a $3,200,000 loan from RFC. Saratoga Spa is the only establishment of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.* In equipment and luxury it surpasses the German Spas whose regimens of catharsis and bathing it imitates. With only two bathhouses operating last year Saratoga Spa gave 101,449 treatments at $1.25 to $1.75 a bath, $1.50 to $2.00 a colonic irrigation, 1¢ a tumbler of mineral water. With the whole establishment running, Saratogans expect 25,000 visitors to take the Saratoga cure each year and spend some $5,000,000 in the city where heretofore bank accounts fattened only during the August races.

Ten thousand ears cocked toward Governor Lehman’s dedication: “. . . Saratoga Spa is not only a place for the chronically ill, but for those who although not afflicted with any organic or functional disorder, still are in need of rest and recuperation from unusual physical or nervous strain.”

Ten thousand ears stayed cocked while Pierrepont Burt Noyes read lengthy telegrams. Mr. Noyes, president of Oneida Community Ltd. (silver plate), managed the spending of the last $4,500,000 on Saratoga Spa and is going to remain with the management to give the Spa éclat. Up to now Jews who learned the wisdom of mineral baths in Germany and Austria have been the most numerous and constant users of Saratoga Spa.

Mr. Noyes’s most significant telegrams were from Bernard Mannes Baruch (in Paris): “This is a particularly happy day for me as the dream of my father to have a place where the suffering could be healed and made better able to face their daily problem comes true.” And “Bernie” Baruch’s brother, Dr. Herman Benjamin Baruch, wired: “This indeed is a permanent monument to our dear father . . . Dr. Simon Baruch.”

Dr. Simon Baruch (1840-1921), German-born Jew of Spanish ancestry, graduate of the Medical College of Virginia, was an assistant surgeon in the Confederate Army. While in a Federal war prison he wrote a book on gunshot wounds. Excited by the hydrotherapeutic cures of Vienna’s Dr. Wilhelm Winternitz, Dr. Baruch dived into the subject, wrote two text books, got the first U. S. municipal bath houses established in Manhattan in 1901, was hired (1913) to evaluate the medicinal values of Saratoga Springs. The Mohawks venerated the mineral waters of Saratoga Springs. American “Continentals,” sickened, wounded and soiled by the Revolutionary War, went there to cleanse and heal themselves. After the Revolution George Washington, whose wife spent considerable part of her wartime grass-widowhood at Virginia’s warm springs, tried to buy Saratoga Springs, failed. Gideon Putnam bought 300 acres around the springs, built a hotel, made the place a health resort. In 1825 John Clarke, who started the first soda fountain in Manhattan, began to bottle and sell carbonated water from Saratoga. By 1883 Saratoga hotels had a capacity of 12,500, sheltered 100,000 costive, gouty, giddy visitors a summer season. To entertain the visitors the Saratoga racetrack was built and gambling establishments were opened. To contain a Saratoga season’s clothing and finery the huge Saratoga trunk was invented.

Manufacturers of soda water pumped so much water out of Saratoga Springs for the sake of the carbonic acid gas that when Dr. Simon Baruch got there the bathing establishments were in a sorry fix. Dr. Baruch found that to take a carbonated water bath he had to fill the tub from bottles of expensive Seltzer water which had been charged from deep-flowing Saratoga Springs water pumped to the surface by greedy bottlers. The State put a stop to that by buying practically all the mineral springs, letting them idle until the water table rose high enough to spurt water into the air. The State now bottles Saratoga waters, sells 24-pint cases for $4 each, expects to sell 400,000 cases a year and with the profits quickly repay the $3,200,000 R.F.C. loan.

All the Saratoga springs spurt supercharged soda water. The kind named Geyser contains bicarbonates of sodium, calcium, magnesium and iron It is antacid, aids digestion, relieves gastric distress. Other Saratoga waters contain chlorides of sodium (table salt), potassium, lithium, ammonium. The kind called Coesa is a mild laxative; the kind called Hathorn, a vigorous cathartic. Dr. Baruch after drinking “not wisely but too well, learned a lesson which I have often taught others —that these waters must be prescribed with care.”

After Governor Lehman and other dignitaries finished reading speeches and telegrams at last week’s dedication ceremonies, he led a large party into the Hall of Springs, a big, pillared and arcaded brick & limestone building. It contains three circular yellow marble fountains, from which well Geyser, Hathorn and Coesa waters. Patients and visitors fill glasses at the fountains, stroll through the arcades sipping and gossiping until the waters work. An orchestra plays in a balcony.

Dr. Walter Stuart McClellan, 40, pipe-sucking, meticulous, pompadoured blond, is the medical director of the Spa. He and two assistants try not to diagnose or prescribe. Patients must go to Saratoga Spa under their own doctor’s instructions. Heart cases are preferred, for the bathing system Dr. Baruch initiated at Saratoga does most good for cardiac conditions. The patient gets into a tub of carbonated water somewhat cooler than body temperature. An attendant puts an inflated rubber pillow under the patient’s head. The patient relaxes for 20 minutes and usually falls asleep as the prickle of gas bubbles against his skin relaxes his capillaries. Relaxed capillaries fill with blood, relieve the arteries and heart of their overload. Dr. McClellan, following Dr. Baruch, says the bathing treatment is risky in cases of severely damaged heart, advanced syphilitic heart disease, cardiac asthma or where fever is present. It is “extremely effective in myocarditis, coronary disease, general arteriosclerosis, variations from normal blood pressure, nervous heart.”

For the sake of heart patients, who tire easily, promenades and the golf course at Saratoga Spa are on level ground. Benches abound. For transportation around the Spa’s 1,200 acres there are ten jinrikishas lugged this summer by stalwart Dartmouth and Rutgers students. One of the Rutgers luggers, sinewy George Gordon, last week gave Mrs. Lehman a ride.

Not all doctors are as enthusiastic as Dr. McClellan about the curative effects of Saratoga waters. Skeptics believe the value of Saratoga and other health resorts is chiefly psychological. Customers who take the “cure” eat, digest, eliminate, bathe and sleep regularly for three weeks. That period usually is the only part of the year when they make any attempt to live systematically. That they “feel fine” may be more the result of sensible living than of the waters of Saratoga.

*Other top ranking U. S. health resorts: White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. (digestive ailments, heart and skin diseases); Hot Springs, Va. (digestive ailments, heart diseases); Hot Springs, Ark. (digestive and rheumatic ailments, heart diseases); Bedford Springs, Pa. (digestive ailments, gout); French Lick, Ind. (gout, obesity, digestive and kidney ailments, heart diseases); West Baden, Ind. (stomach, intestinal, liver, kidney ailments); Manitou Springs, Colo. (gastric ulcers); Clifton Springs, N. Y. (digestive ailments, heart and skin diseases).