TEPID BATHS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 134, 3 December 1938, Page 8

TEPID BATHS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —For the last twenty or twentyfive years the swimming clubs, swimming enthusiasts, and in latter year's the life-saving clubs have been asking the City Council for a tepid bath in the capital city, and at one time a large amount of money was set aside for this project, which, I believe, the council has now used in a different direction. Are our "City Fathers" all past the days of swimming and bathing, for no encouragement has been given to the deputations? It seems we will have to replace our "City Fathers" with "City Sons" in future.

Here in the capital city we are worse off for baths than are many of the small provincial towns. Does our council realise how many people go from Wellington and the surrounding districts to Napier every year to use the hot salt baths there, and if a tepid bath with hot salt baths was erected here it would hold all these' people who go away for this treatment as well as bring in many visitors from outside districts. I feel convinced that the payments for the hot salt baths would pay all attendants' wages and the attendance to the tepid baths would surely pay interest on the outlay, and, even if this were not so it is an excellent project for the health of the community and would be well worth the cost.

The Hospital Board has been publishing some alarming figures lately of moneys to be expended on increasing hospital accommodation. Surely the council realises the health properties of hot and tepid sea bathing, and if these facilities were available in the city, the amount necessary for upkeep of hospitals would undoubtedly be less. If money is spent on the health of the community there must be a saving in the curing of disease. —I am, etc., OLD WELLINGTONIAN.