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The legend of the miracle quickly spread. The very next year a chapel consecrated to St John the Baptist was built above the spring. The chapel was built by the then owner of Destna, Mr Vilem Rut. The use of spring for spa purposes can be documented only after the Thirty Years' War. At that time, Bohuslav Balbin was working as a professor at the Jesuit college in Hradec (1655-1660) and Destna was already a sought-after place of pilgrimage and medical treatment. The spa was visited in great numbers from the second half of the 17th century onwards. Its importance slowly started to decline only at the end of the 18th century. The spa, together with the famous pilgrimages, came to an end in the second half of the 19th century. The rules of the spa, dating from its heyday and prescribing how the water was to be used, still survive:
“The water from the spring could be used in two ways: for drinking and for bathing. As to the use of the water as a curative drink (Trank-Kur), the rules of the spa provided for the following: Before drinking this water, the body should be first cleansed and removed of all phlegm and inner filth. The necessary order should be maintained in eating and drinking. Two or three days before commencing, each patient should eschew all hard work. He should then drink a mug of this warm water in two gulps every morning at around four or five o'clock on an empty stomach, get into bed and wait until he starts to sweat.” |
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