'The senior Priestess of the Bath, Martha Gunn, is daily employed in pickling beauties in Neptune's brine, which she recommends as the best preservative for female charms hitherto discovered'
Brighton Herald, 1807

Brighton's fame as a health resort began in the 1750s when Dr Richard Russell of Lewes claimed that drinking and bathing in seawater could cure many illnesses. Bathing was seen as medicine rather than pleasure and dippers and bathers were paid to roughly plunge visitors into the sea.

	Silver cup presented by Princess Poniatowsky to Sake Deen Mohamed in 1825, after the Princess was cured of 'Tic Douloureux ' and rheumatism by the treatments of Sake Deen Mahomed.

Russell's ideas became popular, but physician John Awsiter realised that sea bathing was too rigorous an experience for many. So, in 1769, he built hot and cold indoor seawater health baths in Pool Valley. Brighton's most famous baths were built by Sake Deen Mahomed, who was born in India and moved to Brighton in 1786. He set up the first 'Turkish' baths in the country and offered indoor bathing, steam rooms and massage, then known as shampooing, as medical cures.

In 1825, Brighton's fame as a health resort led Dr Struve of Dresden in Germany to build an artificial spring in Queens Park. He copied healing waters from other famous resorts by adding mineral salts to ordinary water. Brighton's healthy image encouraged fashionable visitors to come to the town and in turn bought wealth and prosperity.

See objects on display in the Health section of Images of Brighton Gallery