The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-14 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sin,—Having delayed a reasonable time, I do not see
that the points urged against the indiscriminate use of the
Turkish Bath have been disproved—silence, in fact, must
give a kind of consent to the fact that they aro not de-
void of danger. The indiscriminate zeal of persons in
love with the Turkish bath, puts one in mind of that
sovereign bath—the climax of Shakspere's sonnets—
where Cupid, once upon a time, falls asleep, and places
on one side his brand, of which a maid of Diana's taking
advantage, dipped the red hot iron in a fountain—
" Which borrowed from this holy fire of love,
A dateless lively heat, still to endure—
And grow a sovran Bath, which right men prove
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure."
Like the preternatural philosophy, however, of rope-
tying legerdemain, one must not be misled by all the
fine things said in favour of such baths ; we must separate
poetry from prose.
I think I knew what Dr. Goolden would say in favour of
the bath before I wrote to The Sun. I am ready to agree
with Sir J. Fife that the " classic bath may dry harness or
clean horses, or kiln-dry damaged corn." I only say it is
dangerous in some patients. The poet, we ara told, found
that even this bath was deceitful, made so perfect by the
art of Diana—

Sick withal the help of the bath-desired
And hither hied—a sad distempered guest
But found no cure ; the bath for my help lies.

And so we must often trust rather to nature than factitious
virtues in things of artificial life. We are told that a vast
number of persons who have taken the bath without offer-
ing to it any complaint, and, therefore, discrimination of
cases is unnecessary, and the bath must be more and snore
perfect, according as it becomes all but universal; but this
is the argument, that because a vast number of persons take
patent or quack pills, without offering complaint, or be-
because an infinite number take chloroform or mercury, or
smoke tobacco or drink to excess, and offer no complaint,
therefore drink to excess, and quack medicines and chloro-
form are all free from danger.
The literature of the thermal or Roman baths, of their

mosaics, paintings, and decorations, especially of those of
Titus and Constantine, is very seductive. But we must
not be misled by the, exquisite " Art" of these grand old
times in a matter of modern science, or common practice of
medicine or surgery.
The Romans were indebted to the Greeks for their
knowledge of the "hot air bath," but any ono familiar with
the works of Hippocrates must perceive that it was only in
default of better remedies: herbs, cataplasms, warm fomen-
tations, thermal baths, and finally hot-air baths, were ex-
perimented with. Far be it from us to say that simple
remedies are not often the best, but when our young people
are now-a-days dosed to their eyes with strong mineral
medicines, quack remedies of all kinds, their constitutions
destroyed by tubercle or scrofula, excess of tobacco and
excess of stimulants, any or every form of charlatanism
most advertised, it is plain the conditions are not alike, and
the advice of Hippocrates no longer holds true ; as well
say one-legged dancers are normal phenomena, and to
supersede all other dancers of the old Roger de Coverley
type.

It is probable the ancients never used these high tem-
peratures that are now in fashion. It was after their gym-
nastic feats, not before, that the bath was used, merely as
a deterant. lam very much a disbeliever in the ordinary
canon of the Turkish bath chamber, that "the system re-
lieves itself through the skin of every kind of impurity,
and digestion is promoted thereby." I am satisfied the
Turkish bath may hurt such an affliction as dropsy after
scarlatina, but just as certainly aggravate or kill in other
cases.

Our young men at Eton and such school; misled by
the philosopy of what are called sporting journals, practice
30 hours a week at cricket. This, with a pull of five or
six miles in a boat at a training pace, with Turkish baths
to set them all right, almost invariably sets them all wrong.
It is all very well, and they make no complaint while tak-
ing the bath, but diseased heart and diseased kidneys,
rheumatism, &c., with mercury and scrofula, make sad
havoc of their constitution.

As Roman history is just now a fashion, we shall hear
of these therm and the granite of Egypt, the green
marbles of Numidia, the curious mosaics, the ruins of
the medical bath of Titus Cartralla, or the Auto Mines, or
the often greater details of the baths of Pompeii. We have
endless pictures of these, and in subsequent dark ages
pictures of how legs, too, were cut off with redhot knives,
and the array of strong men present to hold the unhappy
patient while his limbs were sawed and burnt. But it
would be about as logical to follow one as the other. We
have now no burning or tortures, and a far better sur-
gery. Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform, has called a
modern spirit from the vasty deep of physiological lore the
greatest discovery of this century, and so we set little store
on the old archaeologic ruins of therm found at Chester,
at Worcester, at Whitcomb, and half a dozen other places
in Great Britain, but this no more reconciles to strigils and
therma3 than (in these days of homoeopathic high dilutions
and the wisdom they have taught us) the thumbscrews in
the Tower are to the archaeology of their ago. "
In a word, we must not mistake fine writing as to those
ancient bathe by Sir Bulwer Lytton or Mr. Urquhart for
the rigid fact that they require much discrimination in
their use.

Sir C. Blagden has a good deal to answer for, in having
taught the modern world that they may go into an oven
where muffins are baked. He (Sir Charles) entered heated
rooms at 200 deg. F., and a sad Frenchman, not to be beaten,
wont into a chamber in which eggs would fry, water boil,
and mutton chops be grilled; a thermometer on the wall
stood at 212 deg. F. We know what mischief a tempera-
ture of half this amount causes in India—coup de soleil, and
cases of similar mischief, and deaths actually in the
Turkish bath are not wanting even in Great Britain
and Ireland. [Where ? Name !] It would be a
great mistake, therefore, to think, as some in-
judicious writers would have it, that they may
be used indiscriminately ; that for all strange maladies
they are a sovereign cure (as true and wonderful as the
legerdemain of the Davenport Brothers !) ; and that as
they are taken in vast numbers, without complaint or
questions asked, that this is equivalent to saying they are
free • from danger. No doubt archaeology and modern
fashion aro against any one who would set the public right
on the subject ; and our yoUng men at Eton and elsewhere
will go on to the end of the chapter, making an article of
faith of boating matches and " grinders" in consequence of
such idleness ; but still the calm physician will not shut
his eyes to facts that determine all this faulty training and
fashion, as in the highest degree reprehensible, and
strigils and thumb screws must be classed together.-1
am, &C.
CHARLES KIDD, M.D.
Sackville-street, W., March 13.

[Dr. Kidd appears fo us, from the nature of the
close of the very first sentence in the foregoing
letter, to be in ignorance of the fact that his state-
ments (in a former communication) as to the danger
arising from the use of The Turkish Bath, have not
remained, until now, disproved' Those statements
of his, in point of fact, having been then, on the con-
trary, distinctly and catagorically disproved by irre-
fragable statistics, only a day or two afterwards by
the manager of The Harnmara in St. James's. What-
ever " silencer there has been since then, has
been Dr. Kidd's, as the unthinking assailant of a
system of baths about which,
apparently, he knows
just absolutely little or nothing. -2
Suva,]