1908: Tudor Towers Bathhouse
August 13, 2024
By AHNZ
Today in history, 13 August, 1908, The State controlled town of Rotorua opened up a monument to quackery: The Tudor Towers bathhouse.
Government convinced people to line up to be ‘cured’ by electricity and water and is doubtless responsible for much false hope and early deaths unrecorded by State history. It was called “balneology” but you never hear of it these days.
“Rotorua,” he said, “is unique inasmuch as it belongs to the people and is managed by a State Department. I trust the building I am opening may prove a success, both as a pleasure resort and a place where pain will be alleviated and sickness cured.” (Applause.)” – Evening Post (14 August, 1908,) Papers Past
“The Government, of course, has absolutely no business in promoting and exploiting any of the health fads that frequently crop up in human history…In 1908 a new health craze featuring water and electricity cropped up and once again the Government sought to exploit it even if the scientific basis for the medicine was shonky and potentially deadly.” – 1908: Phony Baloney Balneology Boom, AHNZ
When government picks winners, the market’s efficiency dies. In health, that means people do too.
How many people were lured to this government palace? Paid for by our ancestor’s taxes, the proceeds going into government coffers.
We put a great deal of trust and confidence in government by relying on it to run the politics of the country. In a total perversion of that trust our politicians then misuse it to involve themselves in areas of life that are none of their business. And, they place the media organisations and propaganda of The State in service of such gimmicks and programs.
Maybe there were versions of electrified water that really were a useful therapy? But instead of this being a scientific or medical matter it became a political one- recommended by Prime Minister Joseph Ward himself. That means healthy or unhealthy uses were put out of the question.
Worse, entire appropriate treatments or cures were Crowded Out by balneology. Kiwis who might have had good advice and good medicine turned away from it at the advice of their government. Some, in terminal desperation, may have squandered their family’s inheritance travelling to the government’s fountains of therapy and staying there for costly sessions. People even traveled the world trying to get to this hokum by mistaking it for hope.
Only 10 years later, of course, The State did it all again when it promoted placebos as a solution for the 1918 influenza pandemic. We were peddled poison vapors in yet anther substitution of health for Health Theater. Ref. 1918: The Truth about the Influenza Epidemic, AHNZ
Least you think our ancestors were naive and stupid for being led along so easily do not forget that history has already repeated itself. What did you do when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern brought her COVID-19 Quackery to the country in 2020? Like Ward before her, she promoted a set of government-sponsored treatments to the nation and we ate it up.
It would be quite interesting to know if there are more graves in Rotorua due to all the misled people drawn there. And, to know if there were any staff on the inside of the great con that managed to speak out. Of course, that would be the very information that the Government History of New Zealand must not tell. Instead it’s silent on the true history of Rotorua.
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Image ref. Opening the new bath house at Rotorua. Sir Joseph Ward performing the ceremony. NZ Graphic Collection, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. Colour by AHNZ
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