Not long ago, in the articles “Vacationing at the Slovyansk Resort in the Early 20th Century,” “A Short Story About the “Holy Mountains” Summer Cottage,” and “All of this is Kochetok,” I wrote about the resorts in our region. In my opinion, this topic is so interesting that I’ve decided to revisit it today
Although there was no shortage of resorts in Sloboda Ukraine, by no means all of them were successful. For example, in the second half of the 19th century, a doctor named Stomma, who worked for the State Property Office, conducted a study of the water from one of the springs in the village of Murafa in the Bohodukhiv District. Subsequently, the healing properties of the Murafa sulfur-alkaline mineral waters proved so significant that a volost sanatorium was established near the spring for the use of sick state peasants. The area where the sanatorium was located was quite marshy and consisted of an open plain, unprotected by either hills or forests from the changeable weather. As a result, those who came to the Murafa mineral waters to treat rheumatism or some kind of skin rash fell ill with fever and were unable to take the healing mineral baths. Consequently, over time, the sanatorium and its doctors were disbanded, and further research into the properties of the water ceased.
In the picturesque steppe region of the Valkivsky District, in the valley of the Uda River, lay one of the oldest resorts in our region—Berezovo, now known to most as Berezivka Mineralnye Vody.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, it was believed that the internal and external use of Berezivka mineral waters was “beneficial for anemia, scrofula, rickets, chronic intestinal catarrh, significant loss of strength, disorders of the nervous system, the liver, spleen, and kidneys, chronic disorders of the digestive and respiratory organs, mucous discharge, disorders of the genital organs, and, especially, in women’s ailments.” The properties of Berezovskoye’s waters were compared to those of the famous Belgian resort town of Spa. It was also believed that, in terms of iron content, Berezovskoye’s waters were on par with the most potent springs at the Zheleznovodsk resort.
The resort season in Berezivka began on May 15 and ended on September 1. In the 1880s, apartments and summer cottages there were rented out for the season at prices ranging from 75 to 500 rubles, while hotel rooms cost between 25 and 150 rubles. At the large hotel, guests could enjoy well-prepared home-style meals. The owner herself, Mrs. Gaevskaya, managed the hotel and personally oversaw the quality of the meals served to the summer residents. If desired, guests could purchase beef, milk, bread, poultry, and other groceries from the farm on her estate. There was little in the way of entertainment in Berezivka. In the common lounge, vacationers had access to a library and a grand piano; swings were set up in the park; and there were two rowboats on the pond.
In 1915 guidebooks to resorts and health resorts, the living conditions in Berezivka were described in extremely brief terms: “The health resort is modestly furnished, but offers amenities for an affordable lifestyle.”
The season at Count Ribopierre’s “Holy Mountains” resort, which we are already familiar with, lasted from May 15 to August 20. Doctors of that time wrote candidly about it: “Since Holy Mountains cannot be called a health resort, but only partially falls into the category of health resorts, it is also impossible to specify precise medical indications. It is beneficial for those who are overworked, in need of rest, and seeking to regain their strength after an illness.” The resort grounds featured separate, furnished cottages, as well as a restaurant, a post office, a doctor, and a pharmacy. The resort’s therapeutic treatments included swimming, baths, showers, sun exposure, clean, healthy air, kumis, and kefir. Due to the abundance of amenities, the cost of a vacation and living in the “Holy Mountains” was not inexpensive.
The Slovyansk resort was located in a valley rich in rock salt, coal, mercury, phosphates, and kaolin, bordered by the foothills of the Donetsk Ridge. The surrounding area was exceptionally picturesque: the chalky Holy Mountains, caves, numerous lakes, two large parks, and a pine forest. The climate was moderately warm. At the beginning of the 20th century, four public bathhouses and ten private bathhouses were built for all visitors, along with a hydrotherapy center featuring 60 different types of baths for adults and 30 for children. A mud therapy center with three communal rooms and six private rooms—a total of 26 baths with steam rooms—as well as three sanatoriums and a clinic for women’s diseases; a public health physician also worked there. At the Slovyansk resort, patients were treated for rheumatism at all stages of its development, chronic ulcers and bone thickening, scrofula in its various forms in adults and children, syphilis and skin diseases, nervous disorders and tuberculosis in its first two stages, all kinds of gynecological conditions, disorders of the genitourinary system, obesity, anemia and exhaustion, gout, liver and kidney diseases… In short, there was hardly anything they didn’t treat there.
The patients lived in hotels and apartments; there was no shortage of housing or food, either in the village or in the park and its surroundings. Mail was delivered daily. There were plenty of shops of all kinds where one could buy everything one needed. There were also two shelters for the poor at the resort. Vacationers could enjoy walks in the park and the pine forest, daily orchestra performances, theater shows and concerts, dance evenings, all kinds of games, boating on the lakes, excursions to the surrounding area, to the mines, to the factories, and to the Holy Mountains.
However, no matter how the resorts and sanatoriums in our region developed, or whatever healing properties their waters might have had, every year at the start of the season in the empire of that time, the same thing happened: our ancestors flocked to resorts abroad.
There were indeed reasons for this. First, the traditional admiration for everything foreign. Second, local newspapers were harshly criticizing their own country: “The slightest twig is blown out of proportion; conditions are poor, everything is expensive, and life is unbearable…” And third, living conditions, quality, and comfort at our resorts often left much to be desired, while prices weren’t always low. In other words, for the same money but with greater comfort, one could relax and recuperate in Western Europe.
Therefore, at one of the May meetings of the Kharkiv Medical Society in 1910, Dr. M. P. Ryasnyansky raised the issue of convening a congress to discuss matters concerning the state of the resort industry in the country. Some time later, at the meeting on May 29, the previously elected commission presented a report, the gist of which was as follows:
— The state suffers enormous losses because a huge number of wealthy patients seek treatment at foreign resorts. According to rough estimates, they take up to 100 million rubles abroad each year and leave it there.
— If even a portion of this money were spent at local resorts (including those in Kharkiv), it would contribute to their development and improvement, as well as to the elimination of the shortcomings that currently hinder the development of domestic health resorts.
— Many resorts are in no way inferior—and sometimes even superior—to certain renowned foreign resorts in terms of their natural therapeutic qualities, geographical location, climate, scenic beauty, and natural wealth. However, practically nothing is being done to develop most resorts, the largest of which are state-owned.
— With the exception of the Pyatigorsk group of the Caucasian Mineral Waters, all other resorts are extremely underdeveloped.
The lack of purely local—sometimes trivial, yet highly important from a medical standpoint—amenities is the main reason why patients prefer foreign resorts to domestic ones. These same shortcomings, on the other hand, prevent doctors from being confident that a patient sent to a resort will find a living environment there conducive to treatment; consequently, the doctors themselves are compelled to recommend that their patients travel abroad. It is time to begin systematizing our therapeutic resources—including the resorts that have already been sufficiently surveyed—and to study the vast number of locations that the population uses as therapeutic sites, but about which our medical community has either very limited data or, more often than not, no data at all.
In addition to balneological resorts, our climatic sanatoriums and sanatoriums for tuberculosis patients, sea bathing, mud treatments, etc., offer a vast field for study and development. Alongside resorts and their natural therapeutic resources, recent years have seen the emergence of a large number of public and private clinics, sanatoriums, institutes, and other facilities, which focus their activities on providing spa patients with comfort during treatment, a therapeutic living environment, and the application of new—and sometimes very expensive—methods of treatment.
According to doctors in Kharkiv, the best way to resolve all these issues was to organize a special convention of representatives from health resorts, resort doctors, and other individuals involved in this matter. The Kharkiv Medical Society was asked to take the initiative in convening this conference in Kharkiv, as well as:
1) To elect 10 members from among its own ranks to form the convention’s organizing committee.
2) Instruct the board to approach the medical and physics-mathematics faculties of Kharkiv University with a proposal to participate in organizing the congress and to ask the faculties to elect representatives to the organizing committee.
3) Authorize the organizing committee to draft the congress’s bylaws and program.
4) Authorize the congress organizing committee to invite members from other cities to join its ranks.
6) To instruct the organizing committee to develop and implement a financing plan for the congress, allocating 500 rubles from the society’s funds to cover congress expenses.
This report was adopted, and the following members of the Medical Society were elected to the organizing committee: Prof. Georgievsky, Drs. Demyanenko, Zorokhovich, Mamutov, Ryasnyansky, Chunikhin, Trakhtenberg, Shlyapopishkov, Fainshmidt, and Filippov. The committee planned to begin its work in the fall of 1910, when it could be joined by representatives from the aforementioned faculties, as well as invited guests from other cities. The summer, meanwhile, was to be used to promote the idea of the congress itself and to gather materials for its organization.
But something went wrong for the organizers, and the first conference on the resort industry and physical therapy in Kharkiv never got off the ground—it remained only a plan on paper.
However, the health resort industry did develop in our region after all. In 1912, articles with the following content appeared in many Kharkiv newspapers:
A new resort.
The village of Kremennaya in Kup’yans’k County is nestled amid a centuries-old pine forest. Local doctors have recognized the benefits of this area and are sending patients with lung conditions here; last summer, there were already as many as 200 such patients.
And in the summer of 1913, at a public health exhibition in St. Petersburg, the administration of the Slavic Mineral Waters was awarded first prize for its achievements. In August 1919, our city’s newspapers reported on the sale of land plots at the resort, which abounded in mineral waters. It was called “Ukrainka on the Donets.”
So, as we can see, the current problems facing the Sloboda Ukraine resorts were practically no different from those that existed more than 100 years ago…
