Murky waters explores the ambivalent representations of spas in eighteenth-century medicine and literature. It gives a wide cultural perspective of the numerous spas, springs and wells of Britain, well beyond Bath, and focuses on specific political and cultural tensions while reasserting the centrality of health in spa towns.

Sophie Vasset is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the Institute for Research on the Renaissance, Classical Age and Enlightenment, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3