The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-10-15
The Bn,h-HUu,e Matter

To the Editor Of the Journal and Courier
Concerning the communication OF
your correspondent III. T. B." in last
Fridays issue, kindly allow me to make
the following observations:
l. As to whether we shall have a
| bath house or not, the question is no
| longer open for discussion. The people
asked for 1t and the city government
granted it and appropriated the money.
| If the bath-house Is not erected it will
| be because few men array themselves
against the city government and the
people.
2, Concerning the suggestion that the
city help the factory owners to put up
shower baths for the workingmen, I
would say that II the city owned the
factory it might work very WELL but If
the factory owners who have water and
heat at hand do not care to take as
good care Of the men as they do Of their
horses 1 am not in favor of helping them
financially.
3. The article quoted from the Phil
adelphia medical journal contains some
good points, but as whole 1t Is stupid
and behind the times. Who does not
know that alongside every swimming
pool there are spray baths to obviate
the very difficulty described by this
medical expert. who has the ternerity
to tell us that "the city poor Is a small
part of the whole body Of citizens ?"
No date is given the article. How old
is this opinion? When was it written?
For over one hundred years the city Of
Liverpool has given it's citizens public
baths and the scheme has been COM
mended all over the world by the best
men in the medical profession.
Pliny may not have been n medical
expert. but he was keen observer, and
he said that for six hundred years Rome
needed no medicine but her public
baths The drug business could not
have been very prosperous in those
days when the swimming pools of Do
cletian accommodated between three
thousand and four thousand bathers at
one time and in a structure which ri
vailed the Parthenon in beauty. With
the same precautions being taken there
is nc more danger of spreading disease
indeed, not nearly as much--as there
is in the sulphur heths Of Sale Lake
City or at Lexington Spa In England.
For twenty-five years municipal ex-
perts and medical authorities In Great
Britain have agitated the matter of
baths until there Is not city of the
size of New Haven in the British Isles
without a. public bath-house,
In the public baths of London the
public school schildren are taught to
swim, and about ten thousand certifi-
Gates are given yearly, swimming les
sons being in the regular curriculum.
The bath-house movement In Amer
lea is only about ten years old and has
had practically no opposition. The op-
position in New Haven is purely one of
apathy.
Your correspondent III. T. b." quotes
an obscure publication, or a writer who
is still more obscure. ! have in front
Of me a photography of one hundred
and thirty three books, pamphlets and
advocating the public baths and
covering the agitation of all civilized
I will quote one article, not
at all because it is the best, but because
il is right here at home in New Haven.
From an article in the Yale Review of
May, 1897 I quote: by a public bath
Is meant an establishment where hot
or cold bath may be had the year round
One must refer to the experience Of