The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-19 00:00:00

THE PURGATORY OF THE BATH.

Long and persevering homilies from the medical
profession on the virtues of water on the functions
of the skin, have had the happy effect of establish-
ing the cold bath amongst our permanent English
institutions, and spreading widely the habit of
employing frequent and tonic ablutions with cold
water, which may be described as amongst the chief
fortifiers of the British constitution, and the wonder,
but not the envy, of continental nations. The cold
bath is certainly better understood in England than
anywhere else. But it may reasonably be doubted
whether the warm bath has been studied with equal
success. Our notion of warm baths includes merely
a great deal of hot water, or hot vapour, and a cer-
tain proportion of soap, or medicinal tincture, ac-
cording to the purposes of the bath. This was not
the hot bath of the ancients : this is not the hot
bath of the orientals. They employed a far more
ingenious and a far more effective combination of
hot air, hot vapour, hot water, and skilful frictions.
Such were the baths which Hippocrates, Galen, and
Celsus prescribed : such were the baths of which
Homer. sings the praises in the " Odyssey," and
w. inch Herodotus says that even the Scythians used
the Trojan War. These were the baths of which
Justin records that the Romans taught the art to
the Spaniards as early as the Second Punic War ;
and of which Julius Caesar brought the secret even
to these islands. Of the stately erections consecrated
to the service of the bathers remains are yet widely
extant—monuments of luxury and splendour. The
art has long
fallen into abeyance in the west, but
has survived in the east. Its restoration has been
amongst the consequences of our Crimean War.
The luxuries of the Turkish bath were then so
widely felt that the attempt to introduce it into
Great Britain has met with a deserved success.
The credit of this revival is greatly due to Dr.
Naughton, who has energetically pressed on the
construction of such baths in Ireland, where they
have been in use now some time, and are effecting
a revolution in bathing, which has only recently ex-
tended to London.
In these Turkish baths, soap and water are purely
secondary agents ; they are considered asbarbarous,
clumsy, and effete means of cleansing. The bather
is first conducted into a room, which is practically
a large oven, lighted from the top, and filled with
moist air. This is very far, however, from being
vapour bath; the quantity of watery vapour is small,
and does not affect the transpiration of water by the
skin. Of course a profuse sweating is induced, and
the skin is thoroughly softened. It is a hot bath
without water, or rather with the aid of very little
water. From this chamber he passes to another,
th,ecalidarium, where, freely perspiring, he is rubbed
with towels or goat's-hair gloves; and so great is
the effect of the prior treatment that the softened
outside rolls off in thick flakes, and a new skin is
found beneath of which the subject of the operation
little dreamed. No one who takes a Turkish bath
for the first time but must be astonished at the quan-
tity of unnecessary cuticle which he carries about
with him. Adepts tell you that "it requires great
dexterity to perform this well without rubbing some
places too much and others too little." Now comes
a drenching with warm water and soap, which is
not the most agreeable part of the bath, and may be
considered partially unnecessary. Then the bather
passes back to the tepidarium
to-vels ;'
and where he is dried
and clothed in warm , after a
where,pau pause,
thence to the frigidarium, or cool chamber,
still clothed
in warm
towels,' he sips coffee, smokes
narghilet, and indulges in beatific sensation a which
only those caa know who have passed through the
three purgatories of the bath. The Turkish bath is
an agent of such great power in restoring the active
functions of the skin, and the results of its ap-
plication are so peculiarly agreeable and invigorat-
ing, that it will probably excite the attention of
medical practitioners in its relations to disease. It
is a powerful agent, of which the virtues are appa-
rent ; but incautiously employed by persons liable
to congestion of the head or organs of the chest, it
is not free from dangers, as some unfortunate cir-
cumstances have already proved.—The Lancet.