Hot Springs
SASKATOONEXPRESS - June 10-16, 2013 - Page 19
A pretty spa city in Arkansas
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OT SPRINGS, Arkansas — Jeff Heitzman can’t keep his hands out of hot water. But it’s a small price to pay for getting his message across to tourists visiting this pretty spa city. The genial park ranger is testing the steaming waters for the benefit of the tour group that is checking out the natural springs that gave the city of Hot Springs its name. With about 36,000 residents, the city in southwestern Arkansas is about an hour’s drive from Little Rock. Sharing the geology and history of Hot Springs is a labour of love for Heitzman. Coming out of the ground at 61C, Travel the water from the springs has no harmful bacteria. It is of such high quality no treatment is necessary, explained Heitzman, handing out paper cups to visitors to sample the water for themselves. “Not bad, when you consider that the water you’re drinking is more than 4,000 years old,’’ he said to his visitors, most of whom head back to the water fountain for seconds. People have been coming here to “take’’ the waters for generations. In fact, the lure of this spa city can be traced back to the First Nations people that discovered the hot springs that bubble out of the wooded hillside and form part of Hot Springs National Park. The flow from the 47 springs in town is about 700,000 gallons a day, much of it piped into the bathhouse spas along Bathhouse Row, an area of the city under the control of the National Park Service. While there are a few open pools for visitors to see, there are four with public access. Local residents come here to fill up plastic containers to take home. The park is one of the oldest and small-
PETER WILSON
Jeff Heitzman of the U.S. National Parks Service takes visitors on a tour along Bathhouse Row (Photo by Peter Wilson) est in the United States. It’s home to Historic Bathhouse Row, the finest collection of historic bathhouses of its kind in North America. In the early 1900s, doctors sent patients to Hot Springs to take advantage of the healing powers of the spring waters. Known as America’s First Resort, Hot Springs is a colourful mix of old and new with traditional and modern spas treatments, gallery-lined streets, music and film festivals, extensive outdoor activities and folk tales galore. In the early days, it became a popular destination for baseball teams arriving by train to begin spring training and recuperate in the bathhouses. Babe Ruth was one of the baseball stars who helped popularize the resort. During the days of prohibition, Hot Springs had a more or less open-door
policy to gambling and booze, (thanks to a complicit city hall), which added to its visitation numbers and also attracted a host of legendary gangsters from the north. Hot Springs was Las Vegas decades before the Nevada city had its first roulette table. A priority for today’s Hot Springs visitors is a tour of the Gangster Museum of America on Central Avenue. Here, they can learn all about the characters that frequented the community during its heyday, including such notables as Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, Bugs Moran and Frank Costello. On the Arlington Hotel’s fourth floor, guests can see the state room where Capone preferred to stay during his visits. He would book the entire floor, securing not only rooms for his “gang,’’ but also providing a protective shield for himself should trouble break out. Conveniently,
just one floor below, Arlington’s bathhouse facilities were within easy reach of the mobster. They are still there today, but now clients can take advantage of an intriguing array of inexpensive spa services. There’s a huge revival of the bathhouse experience in the city. An example of the restoration can be found at the Quapaw Baths & Spa. The 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival building is the first of the restored bathhouses to reopen. It features communal and private bathing in the therapeutic thermal waters as well as a day spa, steam cave and a juice bar. There’s much to see and enjoy in Hot Springs, which is also famous for being the city where former President Bill Clinton was raised. For more information on sites, activities and accommodation, visit www. hotsprings.org.
Superbug potent enough to take down Leaf Nation
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octors have nightmares. CRE stuff. But there are two things you They’re not the usual nightshould really know about CRE: mares of sitting naked in Grade 12 1. If you catch it, you only have a 50-50 math class being taught by a stegosaurus chance of surviving. as your teeth slowly fall out. 2. It is here. Nope. We have nightmares about taking out the wrong kidney, takWhy is it here? ing out night nurses or ordering 1. Antibiotic overuse. This takeout with a side of bacteria is normally where I tee off gone wild. and berate you for coming Fortunately, there are very to the clinic for antibiotics few stegosauri left in schools, but for a cold or flu or earache. there is a new superbug, a rogue But most of you folks have bacteria gone wild. This one figured it out. In the past isn’t just super, it is super super several years, I’ve noted kryptonite resistant. Welcome fewer requests for antibiotics to my nightmare. Welcome to and fewer people demanding Doctor bacteria Alice, the one we didn’t treatment for a cold. There ever want to see; the one that no are still a few who do, of antibiotic can touch. course. They apparently don’t think they Until now, the superbugs you have should suffer with a cold while everyone heard of like MRSA, the NDM-1 plasmid else should. They want the instant magic of New Delhi, C. difficile etc., were not cure we’ve been keeping to ourselves, completely resistant to every antibiotic. often coming up with brilliant statements But this new one is. If you’re not scared, like: get scared. It’s called Carbapenem-resis“I simply can’t be sick doctor. I have tant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and it does to go on a trip to Drumheller to see the
dr. dave hepburn
ML70538.F10 Mary
stegosaurus festival.” “It starts in my head but it always goes to my chest.” Yes, Bloggins, that’s what a cold does. But it’s still just a cold, so get a grip. “Well, my doctor always gives me antibiotics.” In the past, weaker doctors may have given antibiotics for ear infections and coughs (competent doctors do not). 2. As the world shrinks, medical problems expand. In Third World countries (where antibiotics are plentiful and education is not), antibiotics are being doled out like Kleenex at a Calgary Flames game. Compounding this is medical tourism. Folks scamper off to East Sunilolroniastanya for a really cheap sale on a tummy tuck or facelift or a tummy lift into a face tuck. During this trip, they pick up a few falafels and a little CRE, bringing both back to North America. Though they may be asymptomatic, they might still be colonized with CRE and falafel crumbs. British Columbia already has special protocols in place to deal with sick patients who’ve come from places like Greece, the
Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. But here is the scary part. There are now actually protocols in place for patients who have been in hospital in the United States. A couple hundred hospitals in 41states now have confirmed cases of this deadly CRE. The countermeasures include keeping patients isolated/quarantined as CRE is shed in the feces of patients who are infected or carrying the bacteria. This is yet another good reason to not go to hospitals and clinics unless you have to. Apparently there are sick people there. Can you catch something in the waiting room? Absolutely. If you use doorknobs, touch a chair or run your hands through the hair of the patient sitting beside you, you could catch a nasty bug. The blockbuster movie Contagion showed the entire world, or at least Toronto, grinding to a halt as an unstoppable microbe destroys the Argonauts, the Blue Jays and most of the Leafs’ defence. Could this actually occur? Possibly. This would mean that the Leafs will never again win Lord Stanley’s Cup, prolonging the nightmare of those of us of Leaf Nation.