After its decline in the Middle Ages, bathing achieved new popularity as a medicinal treatment for both men and women. In England this revival occurred in the 17th century when certain medical men held that bathing in fresh water had healing properties. The resultant spas, which were developed at freshwater springs to effect such "cures," expanded rapidly as the number of their devotees increased. By the mid-18th century, rival practitioners claimed even greater health-giving properties for sea water both as a drink and for bathing. An economic benefit resulted when, tiny, poverty-stricken fishing hamlets became famous through the patronage of the wealthy in search of health as well as pleasure. When the early colonists left England in the first half of the 17th century, the beliefs and practices they had acquired in their original homes were brought to the new world. Thus, it is important to note that during this period in Europe, swimming was a skill practiced by few, primarily soldiers and sailors. It was not until the second half of the century that bathing for therapeutic purposes was becoming popular in the old world. The earliest reference to women's bathing costume has been quoted previously in Winmann's amazing description of mixed bathing at Zurich. He referred to women, wearing only drawers, bathing with men as a custom no longer practiced when he wrote his book in 1538. One of the earliest illustrations of bathing costume I have located is part of a painted fan leaf, about 1675, that was reproduced in volume 9 of Maurice Leloir's _Histoire du Costume de l'Antiquite_ in 1914. In one corner of this painting, which depicts a variety of activities going on in the Seine and on the river banks at Paris, women are shown immersing themselves in water within a covered wooden frame. They are wearing loose, light-colored gowns and long headdresses. An English source of the late 17th century described a very similar costume. The ladye goes into the bath with garments made of yellow canvas, which is stiff and made large with great sleeves like a parson's gown. The water fills it up so that it's borne off that your shape is not seen, it does not cling close as other lining.[9] [9] CELIA FIENNES, _Through England on Horseback_, as quoted in IRIS BROOKE and JAMES LAVER, _English Costume from the Fourteenth through the Nineteenth Century_ (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), p. 252.