1 · Position
Jean-Louis and Nathalie Poiroux became interested in traditional medicine and spent eighteen months across five regions — China, India, Japan, Siam and Morocco — collecting beauty rituals, massage techniques and product ideas in a small notebook. When they got back at the end of 2000 the word *spa* was so unfamiliar in France that callers mistook the name for the Société Protectrice des Animaux and asked about their pets. The first Cinq Mondes opened in Paris in December 2001, at 500 square metres, and drew more than a thousand press articles in a year.
2 · ⚑ Why this belongs in the Library, and what it costs
Franchise requests arrived at once, mostly from luxury hotels, and the treatments now run in more than a thousand spas across thirty-odd countries. Partners get the five signature treatments — Ayurvedic massage, traditional Oriental massage, Kobido — with extra training available for Shirodhara or four-hand work. This is the §20 question in its clearest form: a named ritual, collected in one place, performed in another by someone trained to a manual. The Library records it beside Palazzo Versace and Rossano Ferretti because it is the same arrangement, and the honest observation is that a guest cannot tell from the treatment list which of the three they are buying.
3 · Candour
The founders say they were careful not to misuse what they were shown and worked with scientists and traditional practitioners; the Library records that as their account. Ancestral rituals taken from five cultures and sold as a French premium brand is a transaction with an obvious objection, and the entry states it rather than resolving it. *Rituels de Beauté du Monde* is a registered trademark, which is the sharpest fact in the file: the traditions are old and the words are owned.