Sigfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 678. Giedion devotes the entire last part of “The Springs of Mechanization” to the “mechanization of the bath.” There are several drafts of this chapter in his archives, and he also has notes from an exhibition on the same topic in Zurich. Omissions include the following, from the first draft: “All bathing is concerned with the care of the body. One of man’s primary needs, at all times, has been to live in harmony with his own body and to maintain the balance of this delicate instrument.” Sigfried Giedion, “The Mechanization of the Bath: External Ablution Total Regeneration,” The Architectural Review 1, gta archives, Zurich, 43-T-15-1947-7.
Eva Stefani, dir., Bathers (Greece: Graal and Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, 2008), video. I thank the director for providing me with a copy of her film.
See also: Margarita Dritsas, “Water, Culture and Leisure: From Spas to Beach Tourism in Greece during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries” in Water, Leisure and Culture: European Historical Perspectives, eds. Susan C. Anderson and Bruce H. Tabb (Oxford, New York: Berg, 2002).
See: Michael A. Osborne and Richard S. Fogarty, “Medical Climatology in France: The Persistence of Neo-Hippocratic Ideas in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 86, no. 4 (2012): 543–63.
Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 56.
Constantinos Trompoukis, Vasilios German, and Matthew E. Falagas, “From the Roots of Parasitology: Hippocrates’ First Scientific Observations in Helminthology,” Journal of Parasitology 93, no. 4 (2007): 970–72, 970.
Jole Shackelford, “The Chemical Hippocrates: Paracelsian and Hippocratic Theory in Petrus Severinus’ Medical Philosophy,” in Reinventing Hippocrates, ed. David Cantor (Routledge, 2001), 59–88.
Lyon, France became a medical epicenter for the Neo-Hippocratic thinking.
Francis R. Dieuaide, “Tropical Diseases and Geopathology,” Science 102, no. 2661 (1945): 656–58; Frederick Sargent, “Geopathology, a Branch of Biometeorology,” Science 103, no. 2671 (1946): 316–17.
See: Olle Selinus, “Medical Geology: An Opportunity for the Future,” AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 36, no. 1 (February 1, 2007): 114–16; Olle Selinus et al., eds., Essentials of Medical Geology (Springer, 2012); Syed E. Hasan, “Medical Geology,” in Encyclopedia of Geology 2nd edition, eds. David Alderton and Scott A. Elias (Elsevier, 2021): 684–702.
See: Bernard Toulier and Caroline Rose, Villes d’eaux: Architecture Publique Des Stations Thermales et Balnéaires (Paris: Dexia, 2002); Lisa Tannenbau, “Soaking in architecture,” in Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture, ed. Kim Sexton (Routledge, 2017). Espace thermale’ (“thermal space”) is an architectonic concept that goes beyond the built form to describe locales created by natural pools for bathing, places with or without buildings and structures. These could be natural formations or human interventions. And unlike baths or bathhouses, establishments at thermal springs can be hard to account for in conventional architectural vocabulary.
“Spa Opening Edition,” The Saratogian, July 26, 1935.
This quote is from Eugenios Fokas, who was both the personal doctor to and the son-in-law of the dictator Metaxas. Eugenios Fokas, Η οργάνωσης των Ελληνικών Ιαματικών Πηγών {The Organization of the Greek Healing Springs} (Athens, 1955), 9. Private archive accessed and translated by the author.
“ΤΑΙΠΕΔ: Παραδόθηκε το ‘Ξενία Κύθνος’ και οι ιαματικές πηγές στον επενδυτή” (“TAIPED: ‘Xenia Kythnos’ and the thermal springs were handed over to the investor”), Business Daily, July 18, 2022, ➝; see also Maria Paraventes, “Israeli Investor Takes Over Iconic Kythnos Xenia Tourism Venture,” GTP Headlines, July 20, 2022, ➝.
“LamiaReport.gr: Παρουσίαση ΤΑΙΠΕΔ για τα Ιαματικά Λουτρά Υπάτης,” March 10, 2024, YouTube, ➝.
In Greek, “Στο ΤΑΥΠΕΔ προσπαθούμε να ειμαστε αρκετά εξωστρεφείς, ταξιδευουμε στο εξωτερικο, προωθούμε όπως θα εκανε οποιος εχει να δωσει ένα προιον στους επενδυτες…” “Επενδυτές για τα Ιαματικά της Υπάτης αναζητά το ΤΑΙΠΕΔ στο εξωτερικό,” Lamia Report, March 12, 2024, ➝.
Silvia Federici, Re-Enchanting the World. Feminism and the Politics of the Commons (PM Press, 2018) 189.
Sigfriend Giedion, “The Mechanization of the Bath,” The Architectural Review (October 1947), 126.