There's no need to rush
5 seconds rejuvenates
Tunnel spring water.
5 seconds rejuvenates
Tunnel spring water.
As the title might suggest, a Healing Spring is a fountain, spring, or other body of water that has some magical healing properties.
Common in video games. Usually, characters will be able to quickly recover their health simply by immersing themselves in it. Often they can also bottle it and take it with them to drink and heal themselves later.
Although the water may look exactly like normal water, it may also be sparkly, be a weird color, or have some other aesthetic quality that marks it as magical.
It's also common for a healing spring to host (or be) a goddess, a fairy, a spirit, or some other magical being.
Rarely is it ever explained how the particular body of water gained its healing properties. In a lot of cases, it can be assumed that it was the work of the being that resides in it, or A Wizard Did It. Or the water is just so ridiculously "clean and pure" that it can heal the wounded back to perfect health. Depending on the cause of its abilities, the water may be an example of Revive Kills Zombie.
In the cases of healing springs that are fed by rivers or waterfalls, it also isn't explained how the water suddenly gains its magic healing powers as soon as it flows into the vicinity of the spring. Some video game designers avoid this problem altogether by simply having springs that have no inflow whatsoever. With healing fountains, it can be usually be assumed that the same water is simply cycled through the plumbing indefinitely, also avoiding this problem.
If the Healing Spring is also a Save Point, that's a form of Healing Checkpoint.
A Fountain of Youth often does this as a side-effect. Subtrope of Heal It with Water, which is for when water in general is associated with healing. Evil characters may use a Blood Bath for the same effect.
Compare Healing Potion, Mana Potion, Panacea, Resting Recovery, Trauma Inn, Regenerating Health, Regenerating Mana, Saved by the Phlebotinum. Or Symbolic Baptism for more symbolically tinged plot-relevant effects caused by immerrsion in a body of water. Contrast Grimy Water. Sometimes the site of Purification Bathing.
Whether springs truly do heal is a matter for scientists to decide, but in Real Life, the marketing of a town's spring as "health-giving and rejuvenating" is ancient. The Roman Baths in Britain date to 60 AD. In the nineteenth century, doctors prescribed stays at famous mountain springs and spas to help patients recover. You can still get this sort of a "health holiday" in some countries - most of these towns live from such tourism.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bleach: A secret training room in Soul Society contains a healing pool designed by Urahara that is based on the original more powerful two-pool system invented by Kirinji. Kirinji's invention uses one pool to suck out all damaged reiatsu and blood which is then restored by the second pool. It's so powerful that will kill people who aren't powerful enough to withstand it. As a result, Kirinji can weaponize it in the middle of battle to either kill enemies or heal allies.
- Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children: Aerith assists from beyond the grave by making a spring erupt in her old church. The waters cure anyone of the Geostigma disease.
- In Fushigi Yuugi, Miaka visits one of these (on the advice of Nuriko) when she comes down with a fever.
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon the Series:
- In the movie Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns, part of the plot revolves around a lake with healthful qualities due to the purity of the water. The most extreme result is demonstrated at the climax.
- Also seen in the fourth movie, Pokémon 4Ever. It's a magical spring that Suicune purifies. It can't cure grave injuries.
- Also seen in Pokémon Adventures where Red and Sabrina got serious frostbite due to the actions of Lorelei and have to seek out a particular hot spring to cure it.
- Pokémon the Series:
Comic Books
- Batman villain Ra's al Ghul has a lifespan measured in centuries thanks to the Lazarus Pits. Despite the name, the Pits (usually) can't actually bring the dead back to life. They "merely" rejuvenate the dying. Whether it's old age or mortal wounds, the Pits heal all. However, the same properties of the Pits that can save people on the brink of death will also kill anyone who is still fairly healthy — too much of a good thing apparently. People who are healed by the Pits are also driven into a temporary psychotic berserker state. Ra's daughter Talia was once driven insane by being repeatedly killed and revived by the Lazarus Pit.
- Man-Thing: The legendary Fountain of Youth, which is revealed to be located in the Everglades area where Man-Thing lives, bestows eternal life and youth... as long as you bathe in the magical waters. Whatever you do, do NOT drink from it, as it will result in a painful transformation into eternally suffering ghoul-like creatures, as what happened to the first Spanish explorers to reach the area.
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): In the Golden Age Paradise Island was home to a fountain of youth the Amazons used water from for healing, though they usually preferred their more controllable magi tech the Purple Ray. They also used the fountain to maintain their eternal youth, though the undiluted waters were dangerous to baseline humans.
- In Wonder Woman (1987) Poseidon and his Nereids turn the ocean around Themyscira into one for Diana to recuperate in after she gains serious injuries prevents Ares from starting a nuclear war.
- Xanadu: The Unicorn Pool's major magic is its ability to heal nearly any wound, but it's weak treating dragons.
Fanfiction
- In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "My Unsmurfy Valentine", the Wellspring of Hope has pure clear waters that can heal even good cherubs that are poisoned by lust arrows. Eros the rogue cherub tries to poison the well with a lust arrow, but unfortunately for him, his effort fails, as the waters are self-regenerating.
- In The Journey of Graves fanfic series, there is something called a Lazarus Pit that can heal even the most grievous injuries. The tradeoff is that the healing process is utterly agonizing. The Marshals' Academy has one in their basement that is used to heal trainees who injure themselves performing stupid stunts. This both heals them quickly and teaches them not to be idiots. As part of his self-imposed Training from Hell, Graves would repeatedly use the Pit to heal himself every time he pushed himself too far with his training. This ends up being one of the reasons he is Made of Iron enough to survive everything his career would throw at him. It turns out the Lazarus potion was originally part of the creation process of revenants, undead supersoldiers. As Discord explains to Graves, dunking himself into the Pit so many times had effectively made him into someone who was almost as durable as a revenant.
- In OSMU: Fanfiction Friction, Orla and Oswald come across one of these, a small stream emitting a golden light, following their fight with a ferocious dragon on the island of Hy-Brasil. It heals both Orla's battle wounds and Oswald's Patoisitis (an odd disease which makes you speak in a thick Jamaican accent instantly.
Films — Live-Action
- A Cure for Wellness is this trope played for horror, set in a Swiss spa where executives go to escape the stresses of modern life. Turns out its run by a Mad Scientist and the healing waters are killing them while their bodies are used to filter a toxin that has this trope.
Literature
- American Gods: The Norns grant The Undead Laura a drink from the Well of Urd — the water of Time, from the spring of Fate — which purges her body of decay, clarifies her memories, and gives her insight into what she needs to do. By all accounts, it's a fantastically rare privilege.
- The Faerie Queene: There's a spring of silver water in Eden called the Well of Life with the properties of good medicine. It happens to be just behind Redcrosse when he falls to the dragon, and when he rises from the water next dawn, he is so fully restored the dragon thinks he's fighting a different knight.
- Horus Heresy: In The Last Church, the Lightning Stone that the titular church was built around produced a spring that could heal wounds and illnesses. Revelation tries to debunk with stories surrounding such sites, saying that they end up having the opposite effect from all the sick people contaminating the water.
- Implied Spaces features pools that can both heal and resurrect people. The "water" is actually a silvery, computer-linked nanotech soup.
- The Silmarillion features a lake that possesses healing powers (due to being blessed by Ulmo), most notably used to restore Túrin from his Heroic BSoD. It is later destroyed by Glaurung, the first dragon.
- The Crystal Waterfall from the first Sorcery! book can restore the health and luck of anyone who bathed in it to maximum setting, and cure dieseases as well - which is great, since it's located a day away from a plague-infested village.
- In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
- The waters of the well in the hidden orchard can cure harmful magical effects. Depending on the nature of the magic, this can take the form of Holy Burns Evil; though luckily for someone being healed of something evil (as Eustace is from a curse), the incineration is instantaneous and doesn't harm them.
Then he caught hold of me — I didn’t like that much for I was very tender [...] and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming [...] I found that all the pain had gone from my arm.- Contrast with the pool on Goldwater\Deathwater Island, which is initially mistaken for one of these, as the clarity and beauty of the water looks so inviting and refreshing that everybody who sees it thinks it's perfect for a dip. Until they notice the gold statue of the diver who thought the same thing.
- In The Witchlands, the chief difference between a living Origin Well and a dead one is that the former can heal any person submerged in its waters, regardless of how close they are to death.
- Xanth does this often and by name: the characters of the various books frequently find themselves searching for/happening upon a Healing Spring, which they do in fact simply call "a healing spring" (there are quite a few). There are also "Love Springs" that, like this trope, do exactly what you think they do.
Live-Action TV
- On Good Eats, in the episode "Water Works", Alton explains that natural spring water was used in times past to cure various ailments. Many times, this actually worked, since the water may have contained minerals many people were deficient in, or simply because when visiting these springs, the Delicate and Sickly in question would be away from the crowded and unsanitary town or city in which he/she lived (which probably caused them to get sick in the first place). Since only the very wealthy could afford to make the long journeys abroad necessary to access these springs, this led to the practice of doctors near the springs bottling the water to sell and export. This practice continues today, although it's (usually) more about convenience than improving one's health. (And in fact, the bottled water may be just ordinary filtered tap water.)
- Duncan is dragged into one by Methos in Highlander in an attempt to cure him of the Dark Quickening. He ends up battling his good side against his evil side using the sword of his father, and the good side wins.
Myths & Religion
- A theme which is common in Christianity. The Welsh hymn Cwm Rhondda/Bread of Heaven has the lines
Open now Thy crystal fountain, where Thy healing springs doth flow...
- From The Bible itself: The pool of Bethesda in John chapter 5, as explained in the King James Version and other similar translations made from the Textus Receptus:
In these lay a great crowd of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water. After the stirring of the water, whoever stepped in first was healed of whatever disease he had. (John 5:3-4, Modern English Version)
- Such springs also appear frequently in Celtic Mythology. In particular, the Tuatha de Danann prepare one in anticipation of the first Battle of Moytura, and a member of the Fianna is given access to one during the Battle of Ventry.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Module UK1 Beyond the Crystal Cave. Drinking from the Fountain All Heal will cure any illness or disorder (magical, emotional, spiritual, physical or mental), with a few exceptions. It can restore lost things: Character Levels, Hit Points, The Six Stats and memories. It can cure any disease, neutralize any poison, and even exorcise evil spirits.
- Under the 3.5 Edition rules for Taint, there are sacred springs that will heal physical corruption from exposure to evil, though they require days of rest and meditation to work.
- Vampires in GURPS Fantasy can only heal their injuries by immersing themselves in baths of blood.
Video Games
- Super Adventure Island II has hot springs throughout the game world.
- Age of Mythology lets you create one with Forseti' God Power. It can't be destroyed, but if the enemy gets more units than you around the spring, they'll capture it and it will start healing them instead, so defending a Healing Spring should always be a priority.
- Age of Wonders has healing springs which can become dangerous poison springs if the land around is changed into wasteland.
- ANNO: Mutationem: Throughout various areas, there are teleport springs that also function as a Warp Whistle, instantly recovering Ann's health and healing whatever Status Ailment she's afflicted with.
- Brave Fencer Musashi has a rare example of a healing spring at the top of a mountain which allows you to take some with you and use later. It's a laughably weak curative item (Restores 10HP and cures poison), but it's a required MacGuffin at one point to cure a child that's turning into a Vambee.
- Breath of Fire I has one about halfway through the first dungeon, which is generous: you play through it with only Ryu, who's combat repertoire is attack, defend, run, and use (very limited) items. No healing spells or other restoratives. Strangely, this has the consequence of making the second dungeon rather difficult, since it doesn't include such a spring.
- Breath of Fire II has rare pools of 'clear water' which the playable characters can drink from to restore their health.
- A mysteriously sparkling pool of water can be found in the hotel basement in Chzo Mythos: Trilby's Notes. As this is a point-and-click adventure game without a health meter, it does not heal Trilby: rather, it restores his mental balance, bringing him back from the Dark World. The origin of this power is never explained, making it a slight case of What Happened to the Mouse?.
- Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle had these in the randomly generated dungeons. In the first area they replenished your health infinite times, but in the later areas they only worked every few minutes.
- Death Stranding: There are a few hot springs scattered around the map where Sam and his BB can take a bath and rest. The benefits range from restored and (temporarily) enhanced stamina or charging the batteries of Sam's gear. During the missions where you're tasked with transporting live human cargo, taking a bath with them will restore their health.
- Most maps on Delve Deeper have healing springs that will rejuvenate your dwarfs without them having to rush to the mine entrance (which will also restore their HP).
- Diablo series:
- Diablo (1997) has blood fountains and purifying springs, which provide an endless supply of health or mana at a rate of one point per click. Keep in mind a high level character will have hundreds of points in either stat. It also has murky pools, which are single use and randomly change your attributes by moving a single point from one attribute to another, which is unlikely to either be beneficial or even help you all that much when it is, considering you will have tens of points into all of them by the time you start finding these.
- Diablo II has wells. A character can drink about half the water contained in one to restore a decent chunk of health, mana, and stamina. There are also shrines with the same effect, but theirs is a one-time deal while the wells restores itself after some time.
- Divinity: Original Sin II: If the player character shows compassion at the Sanctuary of Amadia, the goddess blesses the pool beneath her statue in a rare act of Divine Intervention. Creatures gain Regenerating Health while in the pool, and one NPC in a Sidequest can enter to be cured of a Forced Transformation.
- It's possible to make one of these in ZDoom Wars by tagging a sector as type 196. Players in it will heal 1 HP per every 32 tics (about one second).
- Healing Springs can be encountered out in the field in Dragon's Dogma. They restore health and stamina as well as removing all debuffs and even giving you a buff that temporarily prevents status ailments. If you have an empty bottle, you can bottle up some of the water to make a healing item that restores life to all party members.
- Mother:
- There's a Healing Spring in EarthBound (1994)'s Saturn Valley, and another in Tenda Village. They only heal status ailments.
- Mother 3 has hot springs you can use to recover HP and PP. It goes as far as including a hot spring in a present box, being the second-to-last spring in the entire game.
- Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes: The hot spring available to construct at the Headquarters both heals and provides a temporary boost to all party members' maximum hit points.
- They've made sporadic appearances in the Final Fantasy games. Most frequent in III, but even VII had a few bizarre appearances of them.
- An interesting example is in Final Fantasy VIII when the party is stuck in Timber, unable to visit the nearby hotel. The player can hear about the so-called "Owl's Tears" owned by an old man. If the player visits him, he will invite you to just drink water straight from his tap. The tap water fully heals the party.
- The Final Fantasy Legend has them here and there as squiggly-shaped tiles.
- Hades: Fountains that restore health appear after the first three boss fights and before the final boss. They can also randomly show up as breather chambers in Tartarus, Asphodel, and Elysium if Zagreus commissions the work orders for them.
- Humming pools of bluish glowing water found in Half-Life's Xen slowly replenish health when stood in. In the alien "factories", blue vertical tanks have the same effect.
- Many Story of Seasons games include a hot springs that steadily restore your stamina as long as you stay immersed.
- Helen's Mysterious Castle: The one on the fourth floor has a sign saying so.
- Hollow Knight has a few hot springs that restore both health and Soul.
- Ib has a variant to do with vases. The characters' Life Meters are represented by roses and dipping a rose into a vase heals them completely. These vases are normally one-use only, but there are some special blue vases that are infinite-use...for when you're REALLY going to need them.
- In KanColle, the repair function for the shipgirls involves immersing in a hot springs-style bath.
- The Kid Icarus games have these. Pit really enjoys them in Kid Icarus: Uprising. Like everything else in the game, they're Lampshaded to hell and back.
Pit: A. HUGE. HOT SPRING!
Viridi: Apparently, Underworld monsters value relaxation, too.
Pit: But why can't they relax somewhere else? THIS IS MY SPECIAL ME TIME! - La-Mulana: The Video Game Remake has two hot springs where Lemeza can go to recover health.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Several games have Fairy Fountains that players can stop at to top off their health, thanks to the resident fairies having magical healing abilities.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
- The Goron Hot Springs slowly heal players back to full health. There's a sidequest where you need to bring a barrel of spring water to a lethargic Goron to wake him up; the problem is that the water needs to be hot, the barrel has only a single hit point, and getting hit by an enemy makes Link drop the barrel.
- Springs in Hyrule contain the spirits of light, which turns out to be a plot point: when Zant throws Midna into one, the mere presence of the light spirit nearly kills her due to being a Twili, and only after Zelda gifts Midna most of her life force can she move around in the light world again.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: While she doesn't actually bathe in the spring itself, the dragon Faron usually has a basin filled with spring water from the Skyview Spring when she needs to heal. When Link meets her, her basin is too empty to heal her injuries taken from a battle with Ghirahim, so she tasks Link with acquiring some of the springs water before she'll open the next dungeon's entrance.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Southeast of Goron City is a network of hot springs that provide a gradual recovery of Link's health for as long as he's bathing in them.
- Little King's Story: Your workers can dig up hot springs from steaming cracks in the ground, which will restore your follower's health. The larger the pool, the more often it can be used before drying up, though once found a spring will remain a permanent fixture of the landscape and just requires time to refill.
- MediEvil has a rather non-standard example are the 'fountains of rejuvenation', springs of green energy that Dan can stand in to refill his health and his life bottles, a total of 600 energy contained within each.
- In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Samus can immerse herself in large Phazon pools to regain energy once equipped with the PED Suit, though there are only two or three such instances in the entire game.
- In The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge, Jack restores health by drinking the water from the fountain in the town square. He also has crystal bottles that he can fill there for portable healing.
- Pandora's Tower: Each tower has a fountain (or two) which Aeron can use to restore his Hit Points.
- In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous you can find a letter about what happened when Drezen was conquered, which describes how it had a holy healing fount. The demons threw a man in then lit a fire under it, boiling him alive for three days as the water simultaneously cooked and healed him.
- Averted, oddly enough, in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire; there's a hot spring in one of the towns, but it doesn't do anything. (Of course, since you literally have to go through the Pokémon Center to get to it, it'd be pointless.) Played straight in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen on One Island.
- In Potion Permit, Cassandra and her friend Olive run the bathhouse in the north of Moonbury Town. You can rest there to recover your HP and stamina.
- In the Prince of Persia Sands games, the Prince recovers health by drinking regular water. Then again, he lives in a desert. (And the musical string is quite, quite nice.)
- Reventure has a fairy fountain hidden below the Dark Lord's fortress. Staying in its waters will gradually restore your Hit Points, and can even heal you above the total you start with. Do this too much, though, and Tim's organs will soak up too much healing energy and explode.
- In Roots of Pacha, there's a hot spring in the Glyptodons' den, where you can recharge your stamina.
- RuneScape has the ogress-run spa resort of Oo'glog, which has several restorative pools available to players who have helped them, with effects such as regeneration and/or boosting of health, prayer, run energy and hunter skills, and marking the player as a follower of the god that the ogre race worships.
- Shantae recovers her health by bathing in large bath houses. Close enough.
- The Hobbit village in Shining Wisdom has a healing well at the back, no explanation is given.
- Healing Springs appear in the Shin Megami Tensei games. However, you have to pay 1 macca for each HP and 3 for each MP.
- Persona: The first Persona also has them, though the prices are far more reasonable. And they're run by a fairy named Trish. Though in Persona 2, she jacks up the prices immensely. First healing costs 5000 Yen and further healings get more expensive by 5000 yen. Stacking up, permanently.
- In Shin Megami Tensei II, at Makai, you could only use a specific spring based on your alignment, if you weren't that, you could still use it but you had to pay 1,000 Macca to use it in addition to the healing costs.
- Some areas in Singular Stone has the Recovery Fountain, which fully recover your current character's HP. They have a long cooldown before you can use them again, though.
- Pools of healing water are present in Starbound throughout the universe, mainly in spring biomes on desert planets. In fact, you can use your Matter Manipulator to gather it up to make a spring of your own or bottle it into healing items.
- Stardew Valley has a bathhouse which becomes available at the start of the first summer. Idling in the water gradually refills your energy meter. According to "Living Off The Land", a hot bath is just that refreshing!
- On the Isle of Teomora in Summoner 2, near Prince Neru's Lair, is the Pool of the Healing Twins.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Every body of water is this in Super Mario 64. Since you drown when you run out of life, and there is only one Life Meter, "coming up for air" will fully restore your life, except for that one body of water in Snowman's Land, which is simply so cold that it will kill you.
- Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars has one in Nimbus Land.
- The assorted hot springs in Shangri-Spa in Paper Mario: The Origami King have various properties aside from topping off Mario's HP, and you need to visit them all to restore Bowser Jr. after Scissors dices him up. One of those springs is good at uncreasing folds. Since she's naturally folded, Olivia is put in mortal peril just from bathing in it.
- Titan Quest: When talking about Belenus of Celtic Mythology in the Flavor Text of Essence of the Light of Belenus:
Belenus is the Celtic god of the sun and the patron of healing springs.
- In TRON 2.0, where glowing water actually heals you, comes from the explanation in the movie that the glowing water is in fact "pure power":
"You forget how good the power feels... until you get to a pure source!"
- In Unreal there is some bright blue water that heals the player. This water is only found in one location and easily missed.
- Warcraft III has fountains of health, mana, and rejuvenation that heal both. They don't discriminate, so trying to keep your army between one and your enemy is helpful. The Night Elf Moon Wells also contain rejuvenating, presumably moon-empowered water.
- In World of Warcraft, Holy Priests can summon a Lightwell, which works similar (although it contains holy energy, not water). Warlocks have a variation in the Soulwell, which contains Healthstones players can use to heal themselves. Shaman have totems that periodically restore health or mana to nearby allies (Lifestream and Manaspring, obviously inspired by this trope). In fact, most of their healing spells are water-themed.
- Funny enough, campfires essentially act like this on a very, very weak level. Standing near a campfire increases a players spirit, which in turn increases his health and mana regeneration slightly.
- In World of Warcraft, Holy Priests can summon a Lightwell, which works similar (although it contains holy energy, not water). Warlocks have a variation in the Soulwell, which contains Healthstones players can use to heal themselves. Shaman have totems that periodically restore health or mana to nearby allies (Lifestream and Manaspring, obviously inspired by this trope). In fact, most of their healing spells are water-themed.
- In Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter, Ramia Villager has a well whose waters fully recover Adol's HP and MP.
Web Original
- In Jreg's The Mental Illnessess, there is the Fountain of SSRI. The fountain spews selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), which are used to treat depressive and anxiety disorders. The fountain grants drinkers immediate positive effects. It's guarded by a horde of neurotypicals (actually medicated depressed people) so they can keep the contents for themselves.
- SCP Foundation has SCP-006
, a spring near Astrakhan, Russia that bestows miraculous regenerative properties to those it comes in contact with. Despite its seemingly-beneficial nature, the Foundation wants it contained and knowledge of its restorative properties kept under wraps, as it's still an anomalous object and the Foundation's mission statement is to keep objects that cannot be explained by current science out of the knowledge of humanity at large.
Web Comics
- The Dementia of Magic has the heavily guarded Healing Springs, that can even resurrect people.
- Phantomarine: The Aquifers are said to have been blessed by the demigoddess Shoshana, and bathing in their sacred waters is believed to slow the spread of the Seabite curse.
- Zebra Girl went into one of these and remembered her mother for the first time in a long time.
Western Animation
- Avatar:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Spirit Oasis, a pond tucked away in the Northern Water Tribe's capital, is home to the Moon Spirit and Ocean Spirit (who appear as koi fish). Its water has healing powers beyond that of normal water, allowing Katara to bring Aang back from the dead.
- In The Legend of Korra, after some fire sages find Korra affected with amnesia, they take her to a spring where she can recover.
- Brickleberry: In "Miracle Lake", Woody discovers that Lake Brickleberry has seemingly miraculous healing powers when Firecracker Jim blows himself up while fishing with dynamite, only to revive after he falls in the water, as well as having his missing limbs restored. Woody and Malloy start a christian revival show centered around the lake, with sick and injured people donating money to be healed, only for the lake to seemingly be used up and lose it's properties after a few weeks. It then turns out that the reason it could heal people was because Dr. Kuzniak had been dumping all his medical waste in it, and the very specific mix of waste in the water gave it the ability to heal. They try to recreate it, but a very minor screwup by Woody (he threw in a stillborn Armenian fetus, when the original mix included an Iranian fetus) causes the lake to instantly kill anyone who bathes in it instead.
- Molly of Denali: In "Hot Springs Eternal,"!Molly reads about how hot springs have minerals that can treat arthritis. This turns out to be true, as Grandpa Nat's arthritis goes away when he swims in the hot springs.
- Steven Universe: "An Indirect Kiss" introduces Rose's Fountain, an artificial fountain constructed by Rose Quartz that she filled with her healing tears. In Season 5 finale "Change Your Mind", Steven gets all the Diamonds to enhance its healing powers enough to cure all the Corrupted Gems at once.
Real Life
- In Shinto belief, evil, death, and curses are seen as literal filth that can be washed away; even regular water can be used, but the water from a Healing Spring is more effective due to its higher purity. Shinto shrines offer washing in extra-pure water as one of their services (whether ritually purified and/or from a nearby spring), and bathing at hot springs is a popular Japanese pastime.
- This is a surprisingly common belief in the western world as well. The idea of spa towns and sacred wells date back to ancient times. Germanic and Celtic peoples, in particular, considered wells and springs sacred sites for healing and would leave offerings in thanks. This is the reason for the superstition of tossing a penny into a fountain for luck.
- The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.
- A list of Scottish "sacred wells".
- the Roman Baths of Bath supposedly drew their water from a healing spring devoted to Sulis Minerva.
- The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.
- Hydrotherapy is most common for physical therapy and mobility rehabilitation. In the past, it was also a common treatment for alcoholism. It's also the real-life basis for the Foot Bath Treatment.