ALAIN MESSÉGUÉ’S HERBAL PHILOSOPHY

In the Mességué household, the tradition of herbal cures is most certainly not a rare occurrence, nor is it due to a passing fad. If this needed to be demonstrated we can refer to some official documents going back to the 17th and 18th centuries, which attest how the ancestors of Alain and Maurice habitually exploited the healing properties of aromatic and medicinal plants. But this is not all: traces of this family custom are to be found a long time before that, right back in the Middle Ages.

In the Provençal language, “Mességué” was the name given to the official responsible for the control of harvests, plants and forests. As the first-born son, Alain Mességué, in accordance with a tradition held dear by true Gascons (he was born in Bergerac), followed in the footsteps of his father Maurice. But to the ancestral knowledge of the curative powers of herbs he added the therapeutic benefits of dietetics and of many other naturopathy techniques, learned during his studies of Physical Therapies at Tolosa in the 1970s. He perfected these techniques over 35 years as practitioner, with the help of the various medical teams that he gathered around him, until by the beginning of the 1980s he had gained international renown, as his numerous books translated into many languages demonstrate. The Alain Mességué Hotel & Spa puts into practice this whole range of knowledge: here, tradition, Alternative Medicines, and modern techniques are applied to the quest for wellness.