The term is derived from the name of the town of Spa, Belgium, whose name is known back to Roman times, when the location was called Aquae Spadanae<\/i>,\u00a0sometimes incorrectly connected to the Latin word \u201cspargere\u201d meaning to scatter, sprinkle or moisten.\u00a0The word spa itself denotes \u201cfountain\u201d. Some experts also suggest that the word \u201cspa\u201d originated from the name of the Belgian town named Spa where a curative natural spring was discovered in the 14th century.\u00a0Since medieval times, illnesses caused by iron deficiency were treated by drinking chalybeate (iron-bearing) spring water (in 1326, the ironmaster Collin le Loup claimed a cure,\u00a0when the spring was called Espa<\/i>, a Walloon word for \u201cfountain\u201d).<\/p>\n
In 16th-century England, the old Roman ideas of medicinal bathing were revived at towns like Bath (not<\/i> the source of the word bath), and in 1596 William Slingsby who had been to the Belgian town (which he called Spaw<\/i>) discovered a chalybeate spring in Yorkshire. He built an enclosed well at what became known as Harrogate, the first resort in England for drinking medicinal waters, then in 1596 Dr Timothy Bright after discovering a second well called the resort The English Spaw<\/i>, beginning the use of the word Spa<\/i> as a generic description.<\/p>\n
It is commonly claimed, in a commercial context, that the word is an acronym of various Latin phrases such as \u201cSalus Per Aquam<\/i>\u201d or \u201cSanitas Per Aquam<\/i>\u201d meaning \u201chealth through water\u201d.\u00a0This is very unlikely: the derivation does not appear before the early 21st century and is probably a backronym as there is no evidence of acronyms passing into the language before the 20th century;\u00a0nor does it match the known Roman name for the location.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our venue is calm and serene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spa","latest_post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Spa-and-Salon-WordPress-theme-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortunespa.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}