Meskó Csaba: Thermal Baths - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

The swimming pool was open to the two sexes alternatively until 1930, and until 1937 the use of the pool was still reserved for women on mornings between 10 and 12, but all such restrictions were lifted thereafter.

Today, desirable water quality is ensured by the use of an advanced filtering system. With water temperature at 29°C, this is the only “medicinal” swimming pool of Budapest. Generations learnt how to swim here from well-trained instructors.

To this day, only men can use the thermal steam department of the Rudas Baths. Customers can bathe in six medicinal pools of varying temperatures and those wishing to lose weight can do so either in one of the three sections of the dry hot-air chamber or in the two-section humid steam chamber. Services include refreshing massage, chiropody, and, on doctor’s orders, medical massage. The Juventus tub bath department offers radium medicinal baths, family steam chambers and, again on medical orders, underwater massage baths.

Until the first third of the 20th century the baths’ water- supplies were provided by natural springs, but since the 1930s water has been obtained from drilled wells.

On the first floor level of the Rudas Medicinal Baths there is a Comprehensive Physiotherapy Department (a day hospital), providing treatment, at the expense of the national health service, for those with official assignment from their GR

The thermal water of the Rudas Baths can be classified as belonging to the group of mineral waters of low radioactivity containing sodium, potassium with calcium-mag- nesium-hydro-carbonic, sulphate and chloride components, and a significant amount of fluoride. It is indicated for the degenerative ailments of the joints, chronic and semi-acute arthritis, protruded intervertebral discs, forms of neuralgia and calcium deficiency of the bones.

Nearby, at the Buda end of Elizabeth Bidge is a drinking hall which was built as the well-room of the Hungária Well in 1924. In the section sunk into the middle of the well pump there was the well head, through which water gushed to the surface. From 1932 on, the waters of the Attila and Juventus springs were also used in drinking cures. Today’s well pump was opened on 22 June 1965.

Drinking cures based on the waters yielded by the Hungária, Attila and Juventus springs are indicated for chronic catarrhal ail21