Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/63

 impotent, sick, and poor people are allowed to bathe and make themselves comfortable. The water is let out of the baths or tubs every night. They are then carefully cleaned out, and clean water is let in in the morning; a matter to which the Turks pay particular attention. If it is discovered in the least that the bath-keeper has not kept the place properly clean, or has neglected to let the water off every night, he comes in for considerable punishment. A case of this I saw with my own eyes at Constantinople, when a bath-keeper opposite our house—it was said in the imperial bath—was convicted of giving people dirty towels, and was punished as follows by the sub-pasha or supreme judge. That official ordered him to be beaten with a stick, and to receive a thousand blows, i.e. 200 on the back, 300 on the soles of the feet, 200 on the calves of the legs, and 300 on the stomach. After this he was completely swollen up, just like a newly-hatched pigeon, and no one could have told from his appearance whether he was a human being or no. Some may think this incredible and improbable, but it is really nothing more than the truth. Indeed, when I was in prison. I again saw 1,000 blows given to a German, an account of which I shall give below.

There is an innumerable multitude of these baths in Servia. Thrace, and other parts of the Turkish dominions; and I have mentioned how beautiful and clean they are in order that the reader may form some idea of their exceeding cleanliness: for the Turks, regulating their lives according to the Koran, are obliged to bathe every day. Indeed, the women make an exception in favour of the use of the bath at marriage,