In sale salus: health provision from salt and saline wetlands in Europe

Among the often cited 14,000 uses of salt, many are related to wellness and health. Its different physical-chemical properties allow many health-related applications of salt itself, brine, mother lay and saline muds. Salt can be used as skin rubs or in blocks, for building halochambers; inhaled as aerosols or even ionised by lamps. Brine can be ingested or used for bathing and exercising in it. Mother lay is usually employed as a basis for cosmetics and skin treatments and muds are traditionally applied directly on the skin for similar ailments. Many of these applications have been known since the Antiquity and are still in use today. Some have disappeared or are only known at local scale, while others are growing in popularity, amid the surge of spa and wellness facilities worldwide. The also increasingly popular natural and alternative treatments have included salt-related healing. In this contribution, we will review among others the traditional uses of brine and salt for health provision; the therapeutic and wellness uses of mother lay and mud as a side activity for traditional salinas, some of which have built ad hoc spa and wellness centres; the now widespread phenomenon of salt caves and mines for halotherapy and the historical spas built around saline lakes, now in disuse. Some treatments can also be applied away from the source of salt, in homes, clinics or urban wellness centres. Examples from many European saline sites, be it mines, solar evaporation salinas, graduation and seething sites, as well as saline lakes, will be drawn. A distinction will be made among those treatments that have been acknowledged by medical science and are applied under professional supervision, as opposed to those that have a weaker scientific support, as well as those that mainly rely on popular belief or superstition.