The Sun.
London, England, 1865-04-11 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

Manual of The Turkish Bath. From Writings of
Mr. Urquhart. Edited by Sir John Fife, M.D.
One Vol., pp. 419. Churchill and Sons.
The Subtitle of this comprehensive gathering
together of almost everything of interest that the
curious might desire to learn in regard to the
Turkish Bath expresses in one very simple phrase
the whole secret of the value of that same won-
derful Bath as henceforth, we will hope, one of our
established institutions. " HEAT A MODE OF
CURE and a Source of Strength for Man and
Animals." In that one sentence you have, we repeat,
the whole secret of whatever there is of excellence
in the Turkish Bath made plain to you at a glance
—so legible that those " who run may read"—so com-
prehensible that there can be no possibility of any
mistake at all as to the meaning of it. Ordinarily
a Bath implies water hot or cold. In the Turkish
Bath, however, water plays a merely subordinate
part. What mainly constitutes that "Bath" is Heat,
is Caloric. Heat and Moisture are the benign
agencies employed for the luxury of those in health,
for the alleviation of the sufferings or discomforts
of those in ill-health who resort to the Turkish
Bath—the one seeking in it their cure, the other
resorting to it simply for the purposes of purifica-
tion. The Turkish Bath as a luxury we have already
described at some length in these columns, explain-
ing as accurately as printed characters could enable
us to do so the modus operandi of the finest Turkish
Bath within our own experience—the most luxurious
bath, we believe, anywhere to be found—meaning
the Hammam, in St. James's. Having thus not very
long since minutely described the structure of, and
the system in vogue there at, the Hammam—it was
as recently, by the way, as the 17th of last February
that our account of the Turkish Bath in Jermyn-
street appeared in the columns of The Sun—
we abstain here purposely from any attempt
to relate the same story all over again !
" Twice Told Tales" may be all very well from a
Hawthorne—but, given to the world through the
medium of journalism, they imminently run
the hazard of proving wearisome. Besides, the Tur-
kish Bath as a system has already become so firmly
rooted among our popular institutions that the
mere manner of the thing is by this time very well
known to the generality. If not by actual experi-
ence (more 's the pity !)--at any rate by description !
The sweating, the shampooing, the washing, the
rubbing (in lieu of the obsolete strigil), with the
camel-hair-glove, the lathering, the final sluicing
all over before quitting the washing-room, the
douche, the needle-bath, the plunge in the swim-
ming tank, the cooling room, with its choice of
sherbet or coffee, chibouque or narghile—why, the
loungers in Pall-mall or Piccadilly, the flaneurs of our
West-end pavements, know the whole mystery of
the thing quite familiarly by this time ! They know
it perfectly "by heart," as one may say, through
their own periodical experience of it, some weekly,
some bi- weekly, some even with the utmost regularity
day after day ! It is the philosophy of the whole
thing that is here descanted upon, not the method of
it merely in these four hundred and odd discursive
pages of " The Manual of the Turkish Bath"—
pages many of them, by the way, jotted down in
flying hieroglyphics by the pencil of the stenogra-
pher ! Upwards of the first hundred, for example—
preliminary pages which are among the most interest-
ing in the whole volumes—contain within them the

record by short-hand-writers of Two important
Dialogues between Mr. Urquhart and some Thirty
or Forty Medical and Professional gentlemen.
The First of these Dialogues taking place on
the 27th of July, 1860—the Second of the two
on the 25th of February, 1861, this latter at River-
side, Rickmansworth. Turning over as rapidly and
as carelessly as we may please, the pages of this very
curious Volume, it is impossible not to have our
attention awakened, our curiosity excited, our
liveliest interest kindled by the clear, bold, sharp,
incisive home truths that we find to have fallen
upon these pages, as we turn them, either from the
lips or from the pen of Mr. Urquhart. We will
excerpt here, by way of illustrution, a few utter-
ances of his, taken almost hap-hazard, just as they
happen to meet our glance, while running the leaves
of the "Manual" carelessly 'twixt finger and thumb.
Mr. URQUHART /oqUitur-

" The results of my experience are that I have

the consciousness of possessing ...entire command
over all organic disease by means of the skin, and
can command the skin by heat."—p. 11.
" There is no power by which the proper direc-
tion of nutrition can be attained except through the
skin. The bath does no more than regulate the
nutrition. Scrofula is imperfect nutrition ; cancer
is imperfect nutrition ; indigestion, rheumatism,
gout, neuralgia, are imperfect nutrition. Give a
power by which nutrition can be regulated and you
can immediately control these various diseases."—
p. 14.
" Disease is only filth."—p. 18.
" Your idea is washing a sponge on the outside
my idea is taking and . compressing that sponge."
—p. 20.

"No substance goes out from you by perspira-
tion except the noxious matter that you ought to
get rid of."—p. 21.

" Those only who have gone through the bath
can say, ' Now I know how filthy I have been.' "

—p. 22.
" The luxury, the enjoyment, the curative power
of the bath are inseparable from the shampooing."
—p. 27.

" Our life is electrical no less than sanguineous.
When it is exhausted the muscle suffers, and the
the symptom is pain. Restore the vital
current and develop a larger amount of
electricity, and the symptom disappears, and the
muscle thereupon resumes its power of continued
action ; so that you obtain the results that would
otherwise have to await a prolonged cessation from
labour and the intervention of the restoring influ-
ence of sleep. I come in exhausted—have pain
accompanying that exhaustion. I should have to
lie for hours before the refreshing took place; I
should have to sleep upon it again in order to obtain
it. But Igo into the bath, where, in addition to
heat, I have manipulations and blows if necessary.
I come forth again fit for work, and relieved from
suffering."—p. 72. _ .

" The assumption that the Turks are fat is as
groundless as that their climate is dry. The safe
rule in all such cases is to take the contrary of a
popular notion !"—p. 80.
" He who holds alterations of temperature to be
injurious to man has superadded to a morbid skin
a diseased mind !"—p. 85.

"As to indigestion or dyspepsia, the bath, by
calling the blood to the surface, affords relief to the
stomach."—P. 102.

Cum Cmteris Paribus.

As a mere preliminary to the trial of the Turkish
Bath, a perusal of the contents of this Manual
Ito it, will be found, by reason of its unquestionable
originality throughout, positively refreshing. Its
thoughts are completely new—at any rate, to the
great mass of Europeans. Its facts are derived
from actual experiment, from prolonged and reite-
rated experience. The book takes us out of the
common track—it lifts the reader from those old-
world ruts or grooves in which his notions have
been hitherto [(by the mere force of habit)
running, and takes him in quest of health if
not to " fresh fields and pastures new," at
any rate, to a perfectly novel realisation of
what is cleanliness, of what is physical exhileration.
Hear but the evidence of the old man who entered
the bath nearly bent double, after years of suf-
fering, and who walked out of it, after a very
few hours, erect, and with an elastic step—hear
him exclaiming, " I entered it on all fours,
I leave it with wings !" Or read here, finally,
on page 175, this description of the Bather

emerging from his luxurious enjoyment :—" The
body has come forth shining like alabaster,
fragrant 'as the cistus, sleek as satin, soft as vel-

vet. The touch of the skin is electric. Buffon

has a wonderful description of Adam's surprise and

delight at the first touch of himself.

It is the

description of the human sense when the body is
_ _ .

brought back to its purity." Brought back to- its

purity, it can alone be, effectually, by an agency
such as that of the Turkish Bath—for the

restoration of which to this country we