Bath chair

“ Asking whether a hot, cool or cold bath is preferred, he goes into the bathroom, spreads a bath mat on the floor, a big bath towel over a chair, with the help of a thermometer draws the bath, and sometimes lays out the visitor's clothes. As few people care for more than one bath a day and many people prefer their bath before dinner instead of before breakfast, this office is often performed at dinner dressing time instead of in the morning. ”

“ During the same year, (1810) , a sixth well was opened on the north side of the river, where a magnificent suite of baths and a spacious pump-room are erected, at the expense of twenty-five thousand pounds; there are twenty in number, hot, cold, tepid, vapour, and shower; one of them being a chair bath, which is an admirable contrivance to immerge the invalid, on the chair where he was undressed, into the bath, in a secure and easy manner.—These baths are spacious, and admirably constructed with Dutch tiles, and most of them have the accommodation of dressing-rooms. ”

“ To improvise a vapour bath, place an ordinary cane chair over a bucket of hot water, let the patient be seated on the chair and a blanket be wrapped entirely round and over him, head and all if he can bear it, wrap another blanket round to cover in the bucket. Have three or four bricks in the fire, and when very hot place first one, and as that cools then the other in the bucket. The steam will be very hot but the patient must try and bear it. Sulphur can be added to the water, if a sulphur bath is desired.
Most women require a rest in the middle of the day, and are the better for it. ”

“ There is nothing costly or difficult about them; one can have a very good sweating bath, at a pinch, by having a pan of warm water under a chair with a couple of blankets around him to enclose the vapor, and heating a couple of bricks or stones or anything to put in one after another, and sitting on the chair—it is a very wholesome sweat, too, and not to be sneezed at if one wishes to do what is salutary, and thinks of the sense of a thing, and not what others do. ”

“ People who are not well should never be allowed to lock themselves in the bathroom alone.
Getting Ready a Tub Bath
The bathroom should be well aired but warm. The water in the bath tub helps to warm it up. A bath towel or bath mat should be spread beside the tub on the floor and a chair with a blanket and a bath towel on it for the person to sit on while she is drying herself. The water should be about 105 degrees or a temperature that the person finds comfortable. Always let a patient try it herself with her hand and arm before getting in. ”

“ The baths take such a little time, not over six or seven minutes for them each day, and every third day skipped, that there is a good deal of time left on the hands of the people here; and those who can't play tennis or bowl, and don't want to spend the whole time in the pavilion listening to the music, go about in bath-chairs, which, so far as I can see, are just as important as the baths. ”

“ A spare chair should be available if natives of chair rank are likely to be met. An india-rubber or canvas bath is also necessary for other purposes. When bathing in the open, as before said, drawers at least should always be worn out of respect for native sentiment. ”

“ These bath chairs are a great feature in all the watering places of England. They are drawn by a man or a donkey. The first day I took a man, an old sailor, who talked incessantly of his adventures, stopping to rest every five minutes, dissipating all my pleasant reveries, and making an unendurable bore of himself. The next day I told the proprietor to get me a man who would not talk all the time. ”

“ The bather should apply the soap and water to her own skin, and that she may use it freely and in her own comfortable bedroom, the bath-mat, which I have described, is indispensable. It never wears out, gives no care, and is on the whole, a most happy device. ”

“ These precautions will allow of the wondrous amount of splashing which invariably marks the progress of a man’s bath, while the furniture for such a room should be regular dressing-room furniture, removed as far as possible from the spot sacred to the bath. ”

“ Each lady bather should have a private dressing and reposing room, even if only formed by dwarf wooden partitions.
An arrangement may be designed whereby the bather enters first a room fitted with a number of dressing-boxes, and then passes through the frigidarium on his way to the hot rooms, whence he returns after his bath. Where the establishment is on a large scale, the arrangement may lead the bather first to a room fitted with dressing-boxes, then to the hot rooms, and finally, by way of the plunge bath, into a commodious and separate cooling room. ”

“ And if you haven't a cook a little bell-ringing in the basement does no harm.
But the most extraordinary thing about the modern bath is that there is no provision for shaving in it. Shaving in the bath I regard as the last word in systematic luxury. But in the ordinary bath it is very difficult. There is nowhere to put anything. There ought to be a kind of shaving tray attached to every bath, which you could swing in on a flexible arm, complete with mirror and soap and strop, new blades and shaving-papers and all the other confounded paraphernalia. ”

“ A portable bath was part of the furniture of every decent house—we had one so large that the frequent monthly nurse made her bed in it—but, like the warming-pan, it was not for common use; it was a medical appliance chiefly. Such is the case, I find, in many English houses still. We children were severely scrubbed and scoured in washing-tubs every Saturday night—"tub night"—and we did a great deal of sea bathing in summer; between whiles we ran constant risk of being sent from table to obliterate the line of demarcation between the washed and unwashed portions of face and neck. ”

“ The servants pull off your boots, and help you to get ready, and then fix a waist-cloth, which reaches the knees, very tightly round the waist, fastening it with a particular twist. The bath-man taking your hand, raises the curtain over the arched door of the bath-room, and leads you carefully in. The reason is that the floor being very smooth and wet, you are exceedingly likely, without great care, to have a dangerous fall. ”

“ But if we cannot make the bathroom what it ought to be, the supreme and perfect shrine of the supreme moment of the day, the one spot in the house on which no expense or trouble is spared, we can at least bring the bath itself up to date. I don't now, as I did, lay much stress on having a bath with fifteen different taps. ”

“ I will turn to the more agreeable subject—the operation of the bath, which is quite luxurious. The sensation experienced on first entering the hottest chamber is almost overpowering—the heat is extremely oppressive; and at first I believed that I could not long support such a temperature; but after the first minute, I was relieved by a gentle, and afterwards by a profuse perspiration, and no longer felt in any degree oppressed. It is always necessary for each lady to send her own bathing-linen, a pair of high clogs, a large copper vessel for hot water, two copper bowls, and towels. ”

“ And there ought to be rich rugs in it and profound chairs; one would walk about in bare feet on the rich rugs while the bath was running; and one would sit in the profound chairs while drying the ears.
The fact is, a bathroom ought to be equipped for comfort, like a drawing-room, a good, full, velvety room; and as things are it is solely equipped for singing. In the drawing-room, where we want to sing, we put so many curtains and carpets and things that most of us can't sing at all; and then we wonder that there is no music in England. ”

“ Other comforts of the sleeping room where bath-rooms are not attached are plenty of water and bath towels, a washstand for each occupant of the room, generous bowls, a well filled pail with which to replenish the pitchers, foot tub, a portable bath tub, capacious slop jars, a rubber or enameled leather cloth to spread upon the floor, a screen for seclusion’s sake, and room to splash. If the bedroom china, pails and jars be pretty in shape and color, so much the better, but at any rate, let them be large enough. ”

“ Moreover in well-regulated houses, the bath towels should be dried by the housemaid at the fire, and each person should bring his or her towels into the bathroom when he or she is about to use it, and take them away again when the bathing is finished, the brass rod being used merely to hang up the bath blankets, though they also must be duly dried by the fire, and not be laid down on the floor except the bath be in the process of being used. ”

“ To be consistent in our thought of keeping the floor clear, we should have a bathtub that rests upon legs. It should not, if avoidable, be placed under the window, and if it can be several inches from the wall, it is more easily cleaned on the outside, and the space next to the wall need not accumulate—or at least retain—soap, towels, and sponges that elude the grasp of the bather. Tubs come in lengths from four to six feet, and cost accordingly. The comfort of a six-foot bath to persons of any considerable elongation is always manifest, while a four-foot tub is merely better than a footbath. ”

“ The hair-dressing room and accommodation for the chiropodist—if he does not practise his art at the couch of the bather—must adjoin the frigidarium, as also should the attendants' room. A lavatory must be placed in the frigidarium when used as the dressing room. Closet accommodation should be accessible from the same apartment, but should be perfectly cut off from it by means of a passage or lobby. The greatest care should be taken to prevent these conveniences from becoming offensive. Returning from the bath, the sense of smell is peculiarly sensitive, and the slightest odour is detected. ”

“ Even though she has a perfect housemaid, it is not unwise occasionally to make sure herself that every detail has been attended to; that in every bathroom there are plenty of bath towels, face towels, a freshly laundered wash rag, bath mat, a new cake of unscented bath soap in the bathtub soap rack, and a new cake of scented soap on the washstand. ”

“ He next has a shower or douche of cold water, which effects the closure of the gaping pores, and is extremely refreshing. He then envelopes his body in a cotton mantle or sheet, and retiring to a cool room, to which the external air is freely admitted, he sits or reclines, remaining as impassive as possible, until the skin is thoroughly dried, and feels smooth and satiny in every part. The bather then resumes his usual dress, and the process is complete. ”

“ But I discovered nothing to justify my hopes. The place was monotonously like other bath rooms in which I had been. I gave it an exceptionally thorough overhauling, then went carefully over it once more—even resorting to my magnifying-glass from time to time—but all to no purpose; the room was discouragingly wanting in anything that might be regarded as a clew.
In the end I fell to musing over a bar of common laundry soap on the stationary wash-stand. ”

“ When the heat of the system is adequate, the bather may stand or sit in a shallow tub, while he receives the water from a sponge squeezed over the shoulders or against the body. In this form of bathing, the person is more exposed to the cold air, and on this account it is less suitable for very feeble individuals than the first-mentioned method. In the early use of this form of the sponge-bath, the bather should content himself with a single affusion from the sponge; the body should be quickly wiped with a soft towel, and friction applied with a crash towel or a brush. ”

“ The bath-room, with its warm pipes, its great wooden tubs, with the carved gilt garlands round them, its lounges for cooling, its little tables spread with a dainty supper, still preserved a souvenir of Roman luxury. People used to bathe in company, sometimes men and women together (as we still do at the sea-side) , their heads beautifully dressed and adorned with flowers, their bodies hidden up to the neck in their great cask-like baths, where the water was often thickened with scented bran or strewn with a dust of salutary herbs. ”

“ Where the bath-room does not exist it is easy to bathe thoroughly and completely. A wash-basin of water, with a sponge and towel, furnish all that is absolutely necessary. A most convenient bath is the portable thermal bath, an arrangement of rubber cloth that can be opened out to form a square enclosure in which the person sits, with the head in the free outside air, the body enveloped in steam generated by an alcohol lamp. This, followed by a quick sponge-bath of cool water, is a most efficient way of cleansing the skin ”

“ Bathers would like a large pool or tank where, by a system of planks fastened to a central post, two bathers could go alternately up and down, one being in the water while the other was in the air, an arrangement like the see-saw which children are so fond of. It should have sufficient capacity to accommodate a number of bathers at once, and should be as near as possible to the sea, so as to be available by persons in bathing suits, who have already had a salt bath. ”

“ 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. ”