Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/453

Rh various processes of the aliptae seem to have been carried on very systematically. The hot baths appear to have been open from 1 r.M. till dark. It was only one of the later emperors that had them lighted up at night. When the hot baths were ready (for, doubtless, the plunge baths were available at an earlier hour), a bell or ces was rung for the information of the people. Among the Greeks and Romans the eighth hour, or 1 o clock, before their dinner, was the commonest hour for bathing. The bath was supposed to promote appe tite, and some voluptuaries had one or more baths after dinner, to enable them to begin eating again; but such excesses, as Juvenal tells us, occasionally proved fatal. Some of the most effeminate of the emperors are said to have bathed seven or eight times in the course of the day. In early times there was delicacy of feeling about the sexes bathing together ; even a father could not bathe with his sons, but latterly, under most of the emperors, men and women often used the same baths. There frequently were separate baths for the women, as we see at Pompeii, or at Badenweiler ; but although respectable matrons would not go to public baths, promiscuous bathing was common during the empire. The public baths and thermae were under the more immediate superintendence of the aidiles. The charge made at a public bath was only a quadrans or quarter of an as, about half a farthing. Yet cheap though this was, the emperors used to ingratiate themselves with the populace, by making the baths at times gratuitous. Wherever the Romans settled, they built public baths ; and wherever they found hot springs or natural stufae, they made use of them, thus saving the expense of heating, as at the myrteta of Baiae, or the aquae solis of Bath. In the cities there appear to have been private baths for hire, as well as the public baths ; and every rich citizen had a set of baths attached to his villa, the fullest account of which is given in tc Letters of Pliny, or in Ausonius s Account of a Villa on the Moselle, or in Statius s De Ealnco Etrusco. Although the Romans never wholly gave up cold bathing, and that practice was revived under Augustus by Antonius Musa, and again under Nero by Charmis (at which later time bathing in the open sea became common), yet they chiefly practised warm bathing (calida favatio). This is the most luxurious kind of bathing, and when indulged to excess, is enervating. The women were particularly fond of these baths, and were accused, at all events in some provincial cities, of drunkenness in them. The unbounded licence of the public baths, and their connection with modes of amusement that were con demned, led to their being to a considerable extent proscribed by the early Christians, The early fathers wrote that bathing might be practised for the sake of cleanliness or of health, but not of pleasure ; and Gregory the Great saw no objection to baths being used on Sunday. About the 5th century many of the large thermae in Rome fell into decay. The cutting off of the aqueducts by the Huns, and the gradual decrease of the population, contributed to this. Still it is doubtful whether bathing was ever disused to the extent that is usually represented. It was certainly kept up in the East in full vigour at -Alexandria and at Brusa. Hot bathing, and especially hot air and vapour baths, were adopted by the Mahometans ; and the Arabs brought them with them into Spain. The Turks, at a later time, carried them high up the Danube, and the Mahometans spread or, it may be more correct to say, revived their use in Persia and in Hindustan. The Crusaders also contributed to the spread of baths in Europe, and hot vapour baths were specially recommended for the leprosy so prevalent in those days. After the commencement of the 13th century there were few large cities in Europe without hot vapour baths. We have full accounts of their regulations, how the Jews were only allowed to visit them once a week, and how there were separate baths for lepers. In England they were called hothouses. Erasmus, at the date of the Reformation, spoke of them as common in France, Germany, and Belgium ; he gives a lively account of the mixture of all classes of people to be found in them, and would imply that they were a common adjunct to inns. They seem after a time to have become less common, though Montaigne mentions them as being still in Rome in his day. In England the next revival of baths was at the close of the 17th century, under the Eastern name of Hummuns, or the Italian name of Bagnios. As these, like more recent revivals of them, were avowedly on the prin ciple of the Turkish baths, that species of bath must be briefly noticed. But before doing so, we must observe that there were several considerable epochs in the history of baths, one in the commencement of the 18th century, when Floyer and others recalled attention to cold bathing, of which the virtues had long been overlooked. In the middle of the century also, Russell and others revived sea-bathing in England, and were followed by others on the Continent, until the value of sea-bathing became fully appreciated. Later in the same century the experiments of Currie on the action of complete or of partial baths on the system in disease attracted attention ; and though forgotten for a while, they have borne abundant fruit in more recent times.

Modern Baths.—It is uncertain how far the Turkish and Egyptian and even the Russian baths are to be regarded merely as successors of the Roman baths, because the principle of vapour baths has been known to many nations in a very early period of civilization. Thus the Mexicans and Indians were found using small vapour baths. The ancient inhabitants of Ireland and of Scotland had some notion of their use, and the large vapour baths of Japan, now so extensively employed, are probably of independent origin. We extract at some length accounts of Turkish and of Russian baths, as they illustrate the practices of the ancient Roman and of modern Turkish baths. The first is taken, from Lane s work On the Modern Egyptians : &quot; The building consists of several apartments, all of which are paved with marble, chiefly white. The inner apartments are covered with domes, which have a number of small glazed apertures /or the admission of light. The bather, on entering, if he has a watch or purse, gives them in charge to the keeper of the bath. The servant of the bath takes off his shoes, and supplies him with a pair of wooden clogs. The first apartment has generally three or four leewans (raised parts of the floor used as couches) cased with marble, and a fountain of cold water, which rises from an octagonal basement in the centre. One of the leewans, which is meant for the higher classes, is furnished with cushions or mats. &quot; In warm weather bathers visually undress in this room ; in winter they undress in an inner room, called the l&amp;gt;ey- towwal, or first chamber, between which and the last apartment there is a passage often with two or three latrines off it. This is the first of the heated chambers. It gene rally has two raised seats. The bather receives a napkin in which to put his clothes, and another to put round his waist ; this reaches to the knees, a third, if he requires it, is brought him to wind round his head, leaving the top of it bare ; a fourth to put over his chest, and a fifth to cover his back. When the bather has undressed, the attendant opens to him the door of the inner and principal apartment. This in general has four leewans, which gives it the form of a cross, and in the centre a fountain of hot water rises from a small shallow basin. The centre room, with the adjoining ones, forms almost a square. The beytowwal 