Gulov О.А., Khokhlov V.А.

Saki Hydrogeological Regime-Operating Station, the Branch of the Ukrprofzdravnitza Joint-Stock Company, the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, Saki

The old fame (the 1-st — 2-nd centuries A.D.) of mud cure in the Crimean ancient Greek colonies is mentioned in the works of ancient historian Pliniy the Senior and Ptolemey, and also archaeological researches of the territory of the Bospor Reign (the Kerch peninsula). In Middle Ages the mud cure in the Crimea, on the P. Sumarokov’s (1803) testimony, was not halted, saving its primitive technology and religious rite.

The concept of resort (kurort) (German: kur means treatment + ort means locality), as a specific cultural-and-economic phenomenon, appeared in European bourgeois society in the XVIII century. The Crimean peninsula began to be considered a perspective resort region after the empress Catherine II visit in 1787, that fact became a signal for the Russian elite to mastering its recreational dignities.

Climatic dignities of the Crimea did not require proofs because of their evidence, but in the Crimea the village of Saki has got a right to be named the first resort locality, after conducting physical and chemical analysis of silts of Lake Sakskoye in 1807 by the French chemist De Serr, confirming their medicinal properties in accordance with the European concepts. Later similar researches have been carried out by doctor S. Оzhe (in 1928) and by other scientists.

During 1832-1837 in the village of Saki two institutions for mud cure were built for 250 patients a year. Success of the Saki resort impelled to development of mud cure in other regions of the Crimea: in 1859 an institution for mud cure with the use of medicinal seashore mud of Lake Chokrak and volcanic mud of Bulganak was organized in Kerch. Since 1878 Evpatoriya becomes the acknowledged mud resort, using mud of Lake Moynaki up to 1934, and after it using exceptionally Saki mud. During the following years institutions for mud cure began to arise up on different resorts of the Peninsula (Yalta, Feodosiya, Alushta, Sudak and other). But the leader of the Crimean mud cure still was Saki becoming the town-resort of the All-Union significance, and since 2005 — the town-resort having state importance of the Ukraine.

Mastering preservation and development of mud cure on the base of Lake Sakskoye deposit of medicinal mud and brine was not far cloudless, and on some stages it got into some critical situations. It is necessary to consider the whole history of Saki deposit as a long opposition of «industrialists» (salt producers, chemists) and balneologists. «Industrialists» divided the lake into seven isolated pools, using medicinal mud for building of dikes. As a result the supplies of mud went down from 21 million cubic metres to 5.5 million cubic metres, the natural water-salt conditions of the lake and, largely, its biological life and processes of mud formation were broken.

The deposit succeeded to be saved due to active nature protection position of Saki Hydrogeological Station (founded in 1926), as a structural element of trade-union resorts.

For the last years Saki medicinal mud in bulk and packed forms is purchased by about 140 Crimean and Ukrainian sanatoria, and taking into account deliveries of medically-cosmetic mud preparations the amount of users mounts to more than two hundred. That is there is objectively marked growth of interest of health-resorts, balneological, medical and cosmetic establishments to the mud products, and this fact, undoubtedly, promotes the image of the Crimean resorts, as really health ones.

Economic successes of Saki Hydrogeological Station are related largely to development of a new direction in the domestic mud cure — development and production of the preformed medically-cosmetic goods on the basis of Saki mud and some other types of medical hydromineral resources of the Crimean origin. Popularity and demand on these products (including those which export) grows every year.

Thus, in spite of complication and unevenness of development, the Crimean mud cure has been consolidated among priority directions of development of health-resort complex of the peninsula. Potential of mud cure, taking into account supplies of medicinal mud of lakes Uzunlar, Chokrak, Koyash, Dzharilgach, is enormous. Demand and popularity of this type of making people healthy increases every year; this fact is confirmed with the literally pilgrimage of citizens of the Ukraine and contiguous countries for independent («wild») treatment on all salt reservoirs of the Crimea, which a folk rumour and newspaper publications consider to be curative and wonder-working.

The task of balneologists, authoritative and enterprise owner’s structures is to bring this elemental aspiration of population into the civilized channel by the way of further mastering of the deposits and building of modern mud cure complexes.