Sir Erasmus Wilson

“ The hall is open to the heavens, but nevertheless, a boy with a fan of feathers, or a napkin, drives the cool air upon him." The linen is twice changed; and when the cooling is complete, "the body has come forth shining like alabaster, fragrant as the cistus, sleek as satin, and soft as velvet. The touch of the skin is electric." ”

“ The bath itself (inner chamber) is a spacious vaulted chamber, paved and lined with marble; beside it are four small rooms: a vapour continually rises from a fountain and cistern of hot water, with which the burnt perfumes mingle."
His notice of the process of shampooing differs somewhat from that of others:—"A gentle moisture diffuses itself over the body; a servant comes, gently presses and turns the bather, and when the limbs are flexible, makes the joints crack without trouble, then masses (touches lightly) , and seems to knead the body without giving the slightest sensation of pain. ”

“ But now we reckon a bath fit only for moths and vermin, whose windows are not so disposed as to receive the rays of the sun during his whole career; unless we are washed and sunburnt at the same time; unless from the bathing-vessel we have a prospect of the sea and land. In fact, that which excited the admiration of mankind, when first built, is now rejected as old and useless. Thus it is that luxury finds out something new in which to obliterate her own works. ”

“ Spasm of the stomach, of the bowels, of the ducts of the liver and kidneys, of the muscles. How needless to remind my brethren of their infinite variety; of their fearful agony; of our poverty of means for their relief. But here, again, the Turkish Bath cries out emphatically: 'Behold, we bring succour!' Without going more gravely into the matter, let us smile over the paragraph which I have just cut out of the Cork Examiner. As physiologists, we recognise the point and the value of the illustration; as philosophers, we appreciate the lesson, and become the wiser for its gift. ”

“ Perspiration in the hot bath is no sign of the state of the skin; the head seems to perspire, but it is probably nothing more than the condensation of vapour on the skin; the perspiration of the rest of the skin, if it occur at all, is lost in the water of the bath; and in the very outset of the perspiration, perchance, the pores are chilled and a dangerous shock is communicated to the whole frame. Well may Mr. Urquhart exclaim:—"None but a Frank would call a miserable trough of water a bath." ”

“ A good Frigidarium should be, as its name implies, as cool as possible; a breeze of air sweeping through the room is an advantage; the windows should be open, for the bather courts the cool air, and delights in feeling it play over his heated limbs. The Romans had an open terrace connected with the Frigidarium, in which the bathers could walk, enveloped in their mantle; and a walk in the open air, or in one of the charming garden walks described by Pliny, would be most enjoyable. No wiping, no friction is necessary to dry the skin ”

“ But the practice of the bath proves such an apprehension to be unfounded, and our reason helps us to see that there is in reality no such danger. The ordinary process of taking a cold is as follows: we are warmed by exercise, perhaps somewhat exhausted at the same time; the skin is bedewed with perspiration; the perspired fluid evaporates, producing chill; and the chill occasions a shock to the nervous system and to the whole economy, that results in the reaction known as "a cold." But if we contrast these conditions with those of the bath, we find that there is no parallel between them. ”

“ When the fingers are drawn forcibly over the skin of the practised bather, the white streaks caused by the pressure are instantly restored to their pink hue when the pressure is relaxed; the sanguineous stream seems to follow the pressure like a surge and instantly obliterates its effects; and the skin recoils with a snap like India-rubber when it is pulled away from the body and suddenly released. In the bath there are no wrinkles and no decrepit age; the skin becomes firm and elastic ”

“ And we are led to recognise the truth of my preliminary proposition—that the bath is an instinct, and that, being an instinct, its survival of a race is no longer a wonder, but is a law of nature—a law of the universe. ”

“ We now enter the Calidarium; we are impressed with the sensation of a most agreeable warmth; we look at the thermometer, we find the temperature to be 135° of Fahrenheit; we take our position on one of the seats, or we ascend upon the platform above, and we discover that a hard wooden couch, the dureta, may be the pleasantest couch in the universe. We look around us; the atmosphere is clear, there is no haze upon the window, the floor, the seats, and the walls are dry, and yet there is no oppression to the breathing organs ”

“ Now, if to drain the system of its impurities, to cleanse and purify the blood of the animal economy, three grand systems of drainage are required, the inference is plain, that one would not be enough—that two might perform the office, but with a strain upon the machinery. But to be perfect, to perform the office completely and efficiently, to be, in fact, in health, to constitute health, all are needful. ”

“ He must not persist; force is antagonistic to the animal economy; he must succumb, and essay to bring about perspiration by the steady use of the vapour bath,—by such a bath, in fact, as the middle room of the Turkish bath. I know many persons who have never perspired, to whom the luxury of the bath is consequently lost. I know others who cannot perspire in dry air, but can do so in vapour. How frequently we are brought to reflect on the wisdom of the Turks, who have added so much vapour to their bath since they received it as an inheritance from the Romans. ”

“ Now, and before he can claim to select his place on the divans, he pays a further tribute to the god of purity: the outer layers of his scarf-skin must be peeled away—he must yield up his skin to the ordeal of the glove, the gazul, or the soap; and then, semi-purified, he may range at will the apartment—he may explore at leisure the mysteries of the bath.
We seat ourselves on the clean marble at the edge of the Lavaterina; our host plays the soft pad of gazul over the head, the back, the sides; we complete the operation on the limbs and feet ourselves ”

“ M. Savary then draws the following picture of the sensations of the bath:—"Coming from a bath filled with hot vapour, in which excessive perspiration bedewed every limb, into a spacious apartment and the open air, the lungs expand and respire at pleasure: well kneaded, and, as it were, regenerated, the blood circulates freely, the body feels a voluptuous ease, a flexibility till then unknown, a lightness as if relieved from some enormous weight, and the man almost fancies himself newly-born and beginning first to live. ”

“ Among the labourers in hot rooms, or in proximity with hot furnaces, as in the manufacture of glass, enamel, porcelain, and gas, the working of engines, and the smelting of metals, perspiration is very profuse, and the lost fluid is replaced by the drinking of water, or more commonly of thin gruel; restoring the balance of fluids not by mere water, but actually by a nutritive drink. Look at these men, working in the open air, or in the midst of thorough draughts, with rivers of perspiration streaming down their athletic frames, and ask their history; they are healthy, long-lived and happy. ”

“ We then dress ourselves for the bath: we wind a long strip of Turkish red twilled cotton around our hips, in the fashion of a cummerbund or kilt; it descends nearly to our knees; we fold another strip turban-wise around our head; and behold! we are ready to enter the region of heat. We need no wooden pattens, no cob cob; on the clean India matting of the Frigidarium, where shoe-leather never treads, there is no dust; on the floor of the Calidarium we shall find neither slop nor excessive heat ”

“ In the practised bather the perspiration comes almost at call; it comes soon, freely, abundantly: but in the neophyte, the perspiratory fluid is slow to emerge from its pores; it comes unwillingly and in insufficient quantity. Each succeeding bath, however, exhibits an improvement; and, in time, the perspiration obeys the word of command in the pupil as well as in the master.
I have assumed for the skin the possession of a power of nutrition, and have in this way brought it into the category of the digestive organs ”

“ If the skin be in the torpid and atrophied state I have already described as the consequence of our present habits of life, this source of interchange, of nutrition, will be valueless: but if, by improving the health of the skin through the agency of the bath, or by any other method that can be devised, we render its function more active and energetic, we necessarily make nutrition also more active and complete. ”

“ That the skin of man can support the temperature of a climate such as that of Britain, when trained to it from the cradle, is perfectly clear; our forefathers, the ancient Britons, wore no clothes. The Roman invaders of Britain tell us of the "naked savages of Scotland." The inhabitants of the Tierra del Fuego at Cape Horn, a country colder [118] than Britain, have no other clothing than a hide which they hang on their windward shoulder; and their children may be seen, perfectly naked, gambolling on the sea-shore, and scrambling in the bottoms of the boats that come off to the passing ships. ”

“ And now comes a deeper descent (four steps) , and behold, I am on the floor of the bath. Still costly marble greets my tread. In the corner opposite the fiery tent is another divan; here, far removed from the torrid meridian, the temperature is still lower (about 150°) , but the atmosphere is everywhere fresh: it is clear that ventilation is perfect, and there are no vapoury mists, no fleeting gauze of ghost-like moisture. ”

“ There can be no doubt that a modified shampooing would form a valuable addition to the Anglo-Turkish bath; that the friction of the skin, the pressing and kneading of the muscles, the traction of the sinews, the playing of the joints, even a certain pressure of the viscera, would be attended with benefit; and when there existed stiffening or thickening from chronic disease, as of rheumatism and gout, of immense advantage. The British shampooer has all this to learn, and we commend to him two considerations—agility and moderation. ”

“ Tears of perspiration collect in beads at the apertures of the pores; tears glide down the surface, and fall from all the salient points of our frame, from our elbows, from our finger-ends; a sweet languor creeps over us, and we feel as though, like a heathen god of old, we were dissolving into a liquid stream. ”

“ Baths of Rome.—When Greece was subjugated by the Romans, the Romans carried back with them to Italy the taste for the bath. They erected thermæ of great magnificence, and in so great number, that at one period there were nearly nine hundred public baths in Rome. Agrippa alone is said to have built one hundred and sixty, while Mecænas has the credit of possessing the first private bath. The most famed of the public baths were those of Titus, Paulus Æmilius, Diocletian, Caracalla, and Agrippa. ”

“ But the poor man's bath will be essentially as perfect as that of Dives, and he will, if he be wise, carry the balance of cost to the education of his children. In a small society of neighbours, clubbing their means, the bath would cost less than the tobacco-pipe; and where the rules of the Bath are rigidly enforced, as they invariably should be, the Bath would become a school of moral discipline as well as physical health, and be a potent counterblast to the public-house. ”

“ In the bath we perspire; in a warm and genial temperature we abstract from the system all the watery fluid that Nature has, at the time, to spare; we rinse off the perspiration with warm water; we shut up the pores by means of cold water; we warm the body anew; we then [136] rest tranquilly until every particle of moisture is removed from the skin; and when we are thoroughly dry, we put on dry and warm clothes. In this process it is clear that there is not even a chink by which a cold can approach us. ”

“ In unwholesome states of the atmosphere, in an atmosphere of malaria, which must necessarily pass into the body with the inhaled air, and being in the lungs must be absorbed by the blood, we naturally inquire by what means we escape the morbid effects of such malaria? The answer is:—the malaria is conducted out of the body as rapidly as it is introduced, by the emunctory organs—by the liver, kidneys, and notably by the skin. If the powers of the skin be weak, then the poisons are detained [126] in the blood, and disease is the result ”

“ All care, all anxiety, all trouble, all memory of the external world and its miserable littleness, is chased from the mind; our thoughts are absorbed in rapturous contemplation of the delights of the New World—the Paradise into which we have just been admitted. ”

“ In the numerous cases arising from sudden changes in the temperature of the body, a copious perspiration, which a stay of more or less duration in the Calidarium is sure to occasion, does, in the great majority of cases, restore the body to the equilibrium of health. After over-exertion, again, the bath is had recourse to. In short, it is looked upon so much in the light of a panacea by the lower orders, that they hardly ever dream of consulting a physician when taken unwell. If the bath fail to cure them, nothing else will succeed. ”

“ Bathing is a process; and that process is an elaborate one. It comes without thought to those accustomed to it, and no form of words can convey it to those who are not. The bath being the practice of a cleanly and polite people, habits of cleanliness and politeness must be observed by those who frequent it. No code of rules and instructions can teach the use of the bath: strangers must learn from the attendants how they are to conduct themselves, and not speculate upon what they do not understand. ”

“ It is one of the marvels of the earth's history, that hot springs, or thermal springs, bubble upwards to the light, not only on Mount Ida, the source of the Scamander, but in countless other places and countries on the world's surface. These hot springs would appear to have invited man to their use by their pleasant aspect and by their warmth; and their enjoyment to have suggested the possibility of contriving artificially a similar luxury nearer to his threshold. ”