Les hôpitaux militaires pendant la Grande Guerre à Aix-les-Bains

Abstract

Aix-les-Bains was one of the largest spa towns in the world with a hotel capacity of 4,000 beds. During the First World War, the military authorities designated the town as one of the principal places where the wounded from the front lines would be taken care of. Thirty-three sanitary formations were set up, accommodated in hotels, casinos and public buildings between 1914 and 1919. There was a problem in the neutralisation of this part of the Savoy region close to the Swiss border. Another problem, of a logistical nature, was the question of how to transport the wounded to the town. At the front this gave rise to emergency treatments, based on the sorting of the wounded by gravity. In the town itself it was necessary to create the structures and recruit the medical staff, to provide equipment for the operating theatres and for X-ray services and also to provide recreational activities for convalescent soldiers. Since the war dragged on beyond the year 1914, the difficult question then arose of how to reconcile the town’s rôle as a spa and its season, vital to its economic survival. The palace hotels and the casinos had to be opened up again, whilst maintaining the capacities for the war wounded. By 1915, however, the number of people at the town for its spa attractions was practically back to the pre-war levels. Nonetheless, the Great War brought fundamental changes to the activities of the thermal resort and brought about a lasting change in the kinds of people who stayed there. The First World War marked the end, at Aix-les-Bains, of its traditional seasons and its aristocratic clientèle.

Keywords

• First World War
• spa
• hotels
• health resort
• military hospital