HEALING WATERS
Geographies of Health
Series Editors
Allison Williams, Associate Professor, School of Geography and Earth
Sciences, McMaster University, Canada
Susan Elliott, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences,
McMaster University, Canada
There is growing interest in the geographies of health and a continued interest in what has more traditionally been labeled medical geography. The traditional focus of medical geography on areas such as disease ecology, health service provision and disease mapping (all of which continue to reflect a mainly quantitative approach to inquiry) has evolved to a focus on a broader, theoretically informed epistemology of health geographies in an expanded international reach. As a result, we now find this subdiscipline characterized by a strongly theoretically-informed research agenda, embracing a range of methods (quantitative; qualitative and the integration of the two) of inquiry concerned with questions of: risk; representation and meaning; inequality and power; culture and difference, among others. Health mapping and modeling, has simultaneously been strengthened by the technical advances made in multilevel modeling, advanced spatial analytic methods and GIS, while further engaging in questions related to health inequalities, population health and environmental degradation.
This series publishes superior quality research monographs and edited collections representing contemporary applications in the field; this encompasses original research as well as advances in methods, techniques and theories. The Geographies of Health series will capture the interest of a broad body of scholars, within the social sciences, the health sciences and beyond.
Also in the series
Towards Enabling Geographies:
Disabled Bodies and Minds in Society and Space
Edited by Vera Chouinard, Edward Hall, and Robert Wilton
ISBN 978 0 7546 7561 7
Geographies of Obesity: Environmental Understandings of the Obesity Epidemic
Edited by Jamie Pearce and Karen Witten
ISBN 978 0 7546 7619 5
Theres No Place Like Home: Place and Care in an Aging Society
Christine Milligan
ISBN 978 0 7546 7423 8
Healing Waters
Therapeutic Landscapes in Historic and
Contemporary Ireland
RONAN FOLEY
National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland
First published 2010 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright Ronan Foley 2010
Ronan Foley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Foley, Ronan.
Healing waters : therapeutic landscapes in historic and contemporary Ireland. -- (Geographies of health)
1. Hydrotherapy--Ireland. 2. Hydrotherapy--Ireland--History. 3. Therapeutics, Physiological--Ireland. 4. Therapeutics, Physiological--Ireland--History. 5. Health resorts--Ireland. 6. Health resorts--Ireland--History. 7. Health behavior--Ireland. 8. Health behavior--Ireland--History.
I. Title II. Series
615.8'53'09415-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foley, Ronan.
Healing waters : therapeutic landscapes in historic and contemporary Ireland / by Ronan Foley.
p. cm. -- (Ashgates geographies of health series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-7652-2 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-3155-8630-4 (e-book)
1. Landforms--Ireland. 2. Landforms--Northern Ireland. 3. Landscapes--Ireland. 4. Ireland--Historical geography. I. Title.
GB436.I73F65 2010
304.209415--dc22
2010004876
ISBN 9780754676522 (hbk)
ISBN 9781315586304 (ebk)
ISBN 9781317123422 (ebk-ePUB)
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Table
List of Boxes
Preface
Writing a book is often a personal journey and for me this is particularly germane. With a background initially in historical geography and later in GIS, my own personal development as a health geographer is a relatively late one. But having worked at doctoral level on access to services for informal carers in Southern England, my attention slowly shifted from an empirical and material interest in mapping and explanation, to a more nuanced interest in people and the spatial understanding of health behaviours. In considering the experience of carers lives and the complex reasons that underpinned service utilizations and behaviours, I began to understand that there were complex negotiations, especially prominent in health and social care, between individual circumstances, experiences, feelings and responses and the constraints, wider spaces and cultural settings in which these operated.
As I began to teach courses in health geographies, initially at the University of Brighton and later at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, that interest in explaining how people, place and health could be understood led naturally to an interest in the cultural turn and its associated theoretical perspectives. That interest has led me to the study of the material elements of therapeutic places and the extent to which those places are culturally constructed around metaphors of health and water. However, some of my inbred empiricism (expressed by an interest in how the real world actually functions) never left me and drew me back to an interest in grounded therapeutic landscapes. But it is not an either/or perspective and I have become increasingly interested in taking a more relational approach which additionally explores experiences and inhabitation. This book is therefore a critical analysis of a set of healing places that are real and imagined, tangible and intangible, historic and contemporary and are shaped by a constant balancing act between inner meaning and outer context.
When asked if his work was inspired by other musicians, the great American guitarist, Leo Kottke once wrote, we all go through someone. This is certainly true in my more humble case, given the breadth of the material I have drawn from across a range of different geographies (cultural, medical, economic and tourist) and wider disciplines (anthropology, folklore, medical and social history). Acknowledging that this book cannot possibly cover all of these literatures in detail, the citations and quotes used should point readers to the excellent work of other writers and researchers. Much of that wider research focuses primarily on a particular place or a specific time period, though a few take a broader perspective in looking at a particular type of place in a particular time period. However, there is limited cross-fertilization of either place or period. I feel that a book that attempts, even in a broad way, to look at different types of therapeutic landscapes at different times in different places, may extend the canon. In particular, there are connections, both empirical and theoretical, that link therapeutic places, and this is especially true of the watering-place in its multiple forms.
