Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/450

434 discovered. During the Saxon period the chief events in its annals are the foundation of an abbey by Offa in 775, and the coronation of Edgar in 973. In the reign of William Kufus the city was reduced to ashes, but it soon recovered its prosperity under its abbot John of Villula, and his successors. Richard Coeur de Lion granted its first charter as a free borough, and about the same time the foundations were laid of its wool manufactures. In 1297 the city was first represented in parliament ; in 1447 it obtained a charter from Henry VI., and one from Queen Elizabeth in 1590. In the 18th century it became the most fashionable watering-place in England, and was greatly extended under the direction of the architects Wood.

1em  BATH, a city and port of the United States of North America, chief town of the county of Sagadahock in Maine. It is situated on the W. bank of the Kennebec, about twelve miles from the sea, and forms a station on the branch railway from Brunswick to Rockland. The prosperity of the town depends almost entirely on its ship ping and fisheries ; and its manufacturing industries are nearly all auxiliary to the one department of shipbuilding, in which it competes with the chief American centres of the trade. It has a fine custom-house built of granite. The city was settled in 175G, incorporated in 1780, and raised to the rank of a city in 1850. Population (1870), 7371.  BATH,. See and.  BATHGATE, a town of Scotland, in the county of Liulithgow, 19 miles from Edinburgh, and 26 from Glas gow, with both which it has direct communication by railway. The town is irregularly built, and has no buildings of importance except a well-endowed academy. The district is rich in limestone, coal, shale, and ironstone, which afford employment to a large part of the population. Paraffin and chemicals are extensively manufactured, and there are glass-works and flour-mills. Population (1871), 4491.  BATHS. In the ordinary acceptation of the word a bath is the immersion of the body in a medium different from the ordinary one of atmospheric air, which medium is usually common water in some form. In another sense it includes the nature of the different media that may be used, and of the various arrangements by which they are applied. Perhaps the simplest method of presenting a general view of the whole subject is first to give an outline of the history of baths in all ages, and next to give some account of the principles on which baths act on the human system.

Ancient Baths.—Bathing, as serving both for cleanliness and for pleasure, has been almost instinctively practised by nearly every people. The most ancient records mention bathing in the rivers Nile and Ganges. From an early period the Jews bathed in running water, used both hot and cold baths, and employed oils and ointments. So also did the Greeks ; their earliest and commonest form of bathing was swimming in rivers, and bathing in them was practised by both sexes. Warm baths were, according to Homer, used after fatigue or exercise. The Athenians appear for a long time only to have had private baths, but afterwards they had public ones : the latter seem to have originated among ths Lacedaemonians, who invented the hot-air bath, at least the form of it called after them, the Laconicum. Although the baths of the Greeks were not so luxurious as those of some other nations, yet effeminate people were accused among them of using warm baths in excess ; and the bath servants appear to have been rogues and thieves, as in later and larger establishments. The Persians must have had handsomely equipped baths, for Alexander the Great admired the luxury of the baths of Darius. But the baths of the Greeks, and probably of all Eastern nations, were on a small scale as compared with those which eventually sprung up among the Romans. In early times the Romans used after exercise to throw themselves into the Tiber. Next, when ample supplies of water were brought into the city, large piscinae, or cold swimming baths, were constructed, the earliest of which appear to have been the piscina publica (312 B.C.), near the Circus Maxitnus, supplied by the Appian aqueduct, the lavacrum of Agrippina, and a bath at the end of the Clivus Capi- toliuus. Next, small public as well as private baths were built ; and with the empire more luxurious forms of bathing were introduced, and warm became far more popular than cold baths. Public baths or balnea; were first built in Rome after Clodius brought in the supply of water from Prceneste. After that date baths began to be common both in Rome and in other Italian cities ; and private baths, which gradu ally came into use, were attached to the villas of the wealthy citizens. Maecenas was one of the first who built public baths at his own expense. After his time each emperor, as he wished to ingratiate himself with the people, lavished the revenues of the state in the construction of enormous build ings, which not only contained suites of bathing apartments, but included gymnasia, and sometimes even theatres and libraries. Such enormous establishments went by the name of thermae. The principal thermae were those of Agrippa 21 B.C., of Nero 65 A.D., of Titus 81, of Domitian 95, of Commodus 185, of Caracalla 217, and still later those of Diocletian 302, and of Constantine. The technical skill dis played by the Romans in rendering their walls and the sides of reservoirs impervious to moisture, in conveying and heat ing water, and in constructing flues for the conveyance of hot air through the walls, was of the highest order. The Roman baths contained swimming baths, warm baths, baths of hot air, and vapour baths. The chief rooms (which in the largest baths appear to have been mostly distinct, whereas in smaller baths one chamber was made to do duty for more than a single purpose) were the fol lowing : (1.) Tho apodyterium or spoliatorium, where the bathers undressed ; (2.) the alipterium or unctiiarium,v?ker.e oils and ointments were kept (although the bathers often brought their own pomades), and where the aliptce anointed the bathers ; (3.) The frigidarium or cool room, cella frigida, in which usually was the cold bath, the piscina or baptisterium ; (4.) The tepidarium, a room moderately heated, in which the bathers rested for a time, but which was not meant for bathing ; (5.) The calidamum or heating room, over the hypocaustum or furnace; this in its com monest arrangement had at one end a warm bath, the alveus or calida lavatio ; at the other end in a sort of alcove was (6.) The sudatorium or laconicum, which usually had a labrum or large vessel containing water, with which bathers sprinkled themselves to help in rubbing off the perspira tion. In the largest baths the laconicum was probably a separate chamber, a circular domical room with recesses in the sides, and a large opening in the top ; but there is no well-preserved specimen, unless that at Pisa may be so regarded. In the drawing of baths from the thermaa of Titus (fig. 1), the laconicum is represented as a small upola rising in a corner of the calidarium. It is known that the temperature of the laconicum was regulated by drawing up or down a metallic plate or clypeus. Some think that this clypeus was directly over the flames of the hypocaustum, and that when it was withdrawn, the flames must have prung into the laconicum. Others, and apparently they aave Vitruvius on their side, think that the clypeus was 