Healing water from within
The drinking cure is the oldest and at the same time most underestimated form of healing-water application: instead of bathing in the spring water, you drink it — in prescribed quantities, over days or weeks, usually in the morning and directly at the spring. The minerals of the respective spring work through the digestive route; classic fields of use are gastrointestinal complaints, metabolism and urinary tract, depending on the spring profile.
Pump rooms, colonnades, cure cups
An architecture and etiquette of its own grew up around the drinking cure: pump rooms and promenade halls in which the water could be drunk while strolling even in rain, and the characteristic cure cups with a drinking spout that allow sipping while walking. The Bohemian spas around Karlovy Vary and Mariánské Lázně took this culture to perfection; in Germany the tradition-rich healing spas — Bad Kissingen with its seven healing springs, for instance — carry the same line.
How a drinking cure works
In the cure context the drinking cure is prescribed by a doctor: which spring, what quantity, at what time of day — that depends on the spring profile and the concern, because healing waters are mineralised to different degrees and not every water suits every stomach. As a rule of thumb of the spa towns: drink slowly and in sips, ideally on an empty stomach, and carry out the cure over at least one to three weeks. Whoever tries it without a prescription starts with small quantities.
The drinking cure today
In a spa hotel the drinking cure is usually met in its light form: as a healing-water fountain in the spa, as a counterpart to the tea bar or as an accompanying element of fasting and detox programmes. The full form — the daily walk to the spring, cup in hand, the promenade hall in view — belongs to the most beautiful rituals of the classic spa towns and is one more reason to travel to a genuine healing spa.
