CHAPTER VIII.

THE BATH.

... Quadrante lavatum,

REX IBIS. HOR. _Sat._ i. 3.

It is amusing to hear people talk of cleanliness as they would of

charity or sobriety. A man can no more be clean than learned by

impulse, and no more by his will understand cleanliness than solve

equations. Cleanliness has the characters of virtue and of vice--it is

at once beneficial and seductive. It is also a science and an art, for

it has an order which has to be taught, and it requires dexterity and

implements. It has its prejudices and superstitions: it abhors what is

not like itself, and clings to its practices under a secret dread of

punishment and fear of sin. It has its mysteries and its instincts:

it regards not the eye or favour of man, and follows the bent of its

nature without troubling itself with reasons for what it does; it

has its charities and its franchises: the poorest is not without the

reach of its aid, nor the most powerful strong enough to infringe its

rights.[17] It is suited to every condition: men and women, the young

and the old, the rich and the poor, the hale and the sick, the sane and

the insane: the savage can enjoy it no less than the refined. The most

polished have prized it as the chief profit of art; the simple receive

it as the luxury of Nature--a cheap solace for the cares of life, and a

harmless medicament for the infirmities of man.

The philosopher prized it as essential to happiness,[18] the austere

to virtue, the dissolute to vice.[19] To corrupt Greece and Rome it

furnished a gratification that was innocent; to the rigid sectarians

of the Koran an observance that was seductive; multiplying the

sensibilities and strengthening the frame, it increased to all the

value of life. No sacrifice is required for its possession. Nothing

has to be given up in exchange: it is pure gain to have, sheer loss

to want. Like the light of heaven, those only walk not in it who are

blind. Where not practised, it is not inducements that are wanting, but

knowledge: “they don’t know how.”[20]

Our body is a fountain of impurities, to which man is more subject

than the beast.[21] The body of man, far more than that of the brutes,

is exposed to be contaminated; and by an artificial mode of life and

food, he has further multiplied his frailties. By casing his body in

closely-fitting clothes--integuments rather than covering--he has shut

out the purifying elements. Without the means of cleanliness of the

brute, he is also without the guidance of its instinct; what then, if

in the culture of his body, he should lose the light of reason? If

reason and not instinct be his portion, it is because he is endowed

with a mechanism, to keep which in order instinct would not suffice.

What if that mechanism receive at his hands not such care as would be

bestowed upon it, if it belonged to the beast of the field or the bird

of the air!

What filth is to the body, error is to the mind; and therefore if we

are to use our reason in regard to the former, we must have a standard

of cleanliness as well as of truth; such a rule we can owe neither to

freak nor fashion. We must look for one tested by long experience and

fixed from ancient days:--this standard is THE BATH. This is

no ideal one; it is at once theory and performance; he who has gone

through it, knows what it is to be clean because he is cleansed. I

shall use as synonymous the words, “cleanliness,” and the “bath.”

I must beg the reader to dismiss from his mind every idea connected

with that word: unless I thought he would and could do so, I should

persist in speaking of _Thermæ_, _Balneum_ or _Hamâm_, but I trust I

may venture to naturalize, in its true sense, the word in our tongue as

a step to naturalise the thing in our habits.

A people who know neither Latin nor Greek have preserved this great

monument of antiquity on the soil of Europe, and present to us who

teach our children only Latin and Greek, this institution in all its

Roman grandeur, and its Grecian taste. The bath, when first seen by

the Turks, was a practice of their enemies, religious and political;

they were themselves the filthiest of mortals; they had even instituted

filth by laws and consecrated it by maxim.[22] Yet no sooner did they

see the bath than they adopted it; made it a rule of their society, a

necessary adjunct to every settlement; and Princes and Sultans endowed

such institutions for the honour of their name.[23]

In adopting it, they purified it from immorality and excess, and

carrying the art of cleanliness to the highest perfection, have made

themselves thereby the most sober-minded and contented amongst the

nations of the earth. This arose from no native disposition towards

cleanliness, but from the simplicity of their character and the poverty

of their tongue.[24] They had no fallacious term into which to convert

it, and no preconceived ideas by which to explain it. Knowing they were

dirty, they became clean; having common sense, they did not rush on a

new device, or set up either a “water cure,” or a joint-stock washing

company; but carefully considered and prudently adopted what the

experience of former ages presented to their hands.

I have said that the Saracens, like the Romans, have left behind them,

_temples_, _fortresses_, and _baths_: national security reared its

battlements, public faith its domes, and cleanliness, too, required

its structures, and without these no more could it exist, than

defence or worship. I shall not weary the reader with ground-plans or

“elevations,” and shall confine myself to the leading features, in

so far as they are connected with use. They are vast and of costly

materials, from their very nature. Before describing the Moorish bath,

I must request the reader to accompany me through the bath as it is

used by the Turks, which, as more complete and detailed, is more

intelligible.

The operation consists of various parts: first, the _seasoning of the

body_; second, the _manipulation of the muscles_; third, the _peeling

of the epidermis_; fourth, the _soaping_, and the patient is then

conducted to _the bed of repose_. These are the five acts of the drama.

There are three essential apartments in the building: a great hall or

_mustaby_, open to the outer air; a middle chamber, where the heat is

moderate; the inner hall, which is properly the _thermæ_. The first

scene is acted in the middle chamber; the next three in the inner

chamber, and the last in the outer hall. The time occupied is from two

to four hours, and the operation is repeated once a week.

On raising the curtain which covers the entrance to the street, you

find yourself in a hall circular, octagonal, or square, covered with

a dome open in the centre: it may be one hundred feet in height; the

Pantheon of Rome may be taken as a model. This is the _apodyterium_,

_conclave_ or _spoliatorium_ of the Romans. In the middle, a basin of

water, the “sea” of the Jews, the “piscinum” of the Romans, is raised

by masonry about four feet; a fountain plays in the centre. Plants,

sometimes trellises, are trained over or around the fountain, and by it

is placed the stall to supply coffee, pipes, or nargelles. All round

there is a platform, varying in breadth from four to twelve feet, and

raised about three; here couches are placed, which I shall presently

describe. You are conducted to an unoccupied couch to undress; your

clothes are folded and deposited in a napkin and tied up; you are

arrayed in the bathing costume, which consists of three towels about

two yards long and under a yard in width, thickened in the centre with

pendant loops of the thread, so as to absorb the moisture, soft and

rough without being flabby or hard, with broad borders in blue or red

of raw silk. This gives to this costume an air of society, and takes

from it the stamp of the laundry or wash-house. One is wrapped with an

easy fold round the head, so as to form a high and peculiar, but not

ungraceful turban; the second is bound round the loins, and falls to

the middle of the leg; this is the ordinary costume of the attendants

in the bath, and appears to be the costume known in antiquity as

περίζωμα [perizôma], _præcinctorium_, and _subligaculum_, and which

have been of difficult interpretation, as implying at once a belt and a

clothing. The third is thrown over the shoulder like a scarf: they are

called _Pistumal_, as are all towels, but the proper name is _Futa_, a

word borrowed, as the stuff is, from Morocco. While you change your

linen, two attendants hold a cloth before you. In these operations,

which appear to dispense of necessity with clothing and concealment,

the same scrupulous attention is observed. It extends to the smallest

children. I have been on a bathing excursion to the sea-side, where

a child under four years was disappointed of his dip because his

bathing drawers had been forgotten. There is nothing which more shocks

an Eastern than our want of decorum; and I have known instances of

servants assigning this as a reason for refusing to remain in Europe,

or to come to it.

Thus attired, you step down from the platform height; wooden

pattens,--_nalma_ in Turkish, _cob cob_ in Arabic,--are placed for your

feet, to keep you off the hot floors, and the dirty water running off

by the entrances and passages; two attendants take you, one by each arm

above the elbow--walking behind and holding you. The slamming doors are

pushed open, and you enter the region of steam.

Each person is preceded by a mattress and a cushion, which are

removed the moment he has done with them, that they may not get damp.

The apartment he now enters is low and small; very little light is

admitted; sometimes, indeed, the day is excluded, and the small

flicker of a lamp enables you to perceive indistinctly its form and

occupants. The temperature is moderate, the moisture slight, the

marble floor on both sides is raised about eighteen inches, the lower

and centre part being the passage between the two halls. This is the

_tepidarium_. Against the wall your mattress and cushion are placed,

the rest of the chamber being similarly occupied: the attendants now

bring coffee, and serve pipes. The object sought in this apartment is

a natural and gentle flow of perspiration; to this are adapted the

subdued temperature and moisture; for this the clothing is required,

and the coffee and pipe; and, in addition, a delicate manipulation is

undergone, which does not amount to shampooing: the sombre air of the

apartment calms the senses, and shuts out the external world.[25]

During the subsequent parts of the operation, you are either too busy

or too abstracted for society; the bath is essentially sociable, and

this is the portion of it so appropriated--this is the time and place

where a stranger makes acquaintance with a town or village. Whilst

so engaged, a boy kneels at your feet and chafes them, or behind

your cushion, at times touching or tapping you on the neck, arm, or

shoulder, in a manner which causes the perspiration to start.

_2nd Act._--You now take your turn for entering the inner chamber:

there is in this point no respect for persons, and rank gives no

precedence,[26] but you do not move until the bathman, the _tellack_ of

the Turks, the _nekaës_ of the Arabs, the _tractator_ of the Romans,

has passed his hand under your bathing linen, and is satisfied that

your skin is in a proper state. He then takes you by the arm as before,

your feet are again pushed into the pattens, the slamming door of the

inner region is pulled back, and you are ushered into the _adytum_,--a

space such as the centre dome of a cathedral, filled--not with dull

and heavy steam--but with gauzy and mottled vapour, through which

the spectre-like inhabitants appear, by the light of tinted rays,

which, from stars of stained glass in the vault, struggle to reach

the pavement, through the curling mists. The song, the not unfrequent

shout, the clapping, not of hands, but sides;[27] the splashing of

water and clank of brazen bowls reveals the humour and occupation of

the inmates, who, here divested of all covering save the scarf round

the loins, with no distinction between bathers and attendants, and

with heads as bare as bodies and legs, are seen passing to and fro

through the mist, or squatted or stretched out on the slabs, exhibiting

the wildest contortions, or bending over one another, and appearing to

inflict and to endure torture. A stranger might be in doubt whether

he beheld a foundry or Tartarus; whether the Athenian gymnasia were

restored, or he had entered some undetected vault of the Inquisition.

That is the _sudatorium_. The steam is raised by throwing water on the

floor,[28] and its clearness comes from the equal temperature of the

air and walls.

Under the dome there is an extensive platform of marble slabs: on this

you get up; the clothes are taken from your head and shoulders; one

is spread for you to lie on, the other is rolled for your head; you

lie down on your back; the tillak (two, if the operation is properly

performed) kneels at your side, and bending over, gripes and presses

your chest, arms, and legs, passing from part to part, like a bird

shifting its place on a perch. He brings his whole weight on you with a

jerk, follows the line of muscle with anatomical thumb,[29] draws the

open hand strongly over the surface, particularly round the shoulder,

turning you half up in so doing; stands with his feet on the thighs

and on the chest and slips down the ribs; then up again three times;

and lastly, doubling your arms one after the other on the chest, pushes

with both hands down, beginning at the elbow, and then, putting an arm

under the back and applying his chest to your crossed elbows, rolls on

you across till you crack. You are now turned on your face, and, in

addition to the operation above described, he works his elbow round

the edges of your shoulder-blade, and with the heel plies hard the

angle of the neck; he concludes by hauling the body half up by each arm

successively, while he stands with one foot on the opposite thigh.[30]

You are then raised for a moment to a sitting posture, and a contortion

given to the small of the back with the knee, and a jerk to the neck by

the two hands holding the temples.

_3rd Act._--Round the sides there are cocks for hot and cold water

over marble basins, a couple of feet in diameter, where you mix to the

temperature you wish. You are now seated on a board on the floor at one

of these fountains, with a copper cup[31] to throw water over you when

wanted. The _tellak_ puts on the glove--it is of camel’s hair, not the

horrid things recently brought forth in England. He stands over you;

you bend down to him, and he commences from the nape of the neck in

long sweeps down the back till he has started the skin; he coaxes it

into rolls, keeping them in and up till within his hand they gather

volume and length; he then successively strikes and brushes them away,

and they fall right and left as if spilt from a dish of macaroni. The

dead matter which will accumulate in a week forms, when dry, a ball of

the size of the fist. I once collected it, and had it dried--it is like

a ball of chalk: this was the purpose for which the _strigil_ was used.

In our ignorance we have imagined it to be a horse-scraper to clear off

the perspiration, or for other purposes equally absurd.[32]

_4th Act._--Hitherto soap has not touched the skin. By it, however

strange it may appear to us,[33] the operation would be spoiled--the

shampooing would be impossible, and the epidermis would not come off;

this I know by experience. The explanation may be, that the alkali of

the soap combines chemically with the oily matter, and the epidermis

loses the consistency it must have to be detached by rolling. A large

wooden bowl is now brought; in it is a lump of soap with a sort of

powder-puff of _liff_,[34] for lathering. Beginning by the head, the

body is copiously soaped and washed twice, and part of the contents

of the bowl is left for you to conclude and complete the operation

yourself. Then approaches an acolyte, with a pile of hot folded _futas_

on his head, he holding a dry cloth spread out in front--you rise,

having detached the cloth from your waist, and holding it before you:

at that moment another attendant dashes on you a bowl of hot water. You

drop your wet cloth; the dry one is passed round your waist, another

over your shoulders; each arm is seized; you are led a step or two and

seated; the shoulder cloth is taken off, another put on, the first over

it; another is folded round the head; your feet are already in the

wooden pattens. You are wished health; you return the salute, rise, and

are conducted by both arms to the outer hall.

I must not here omit all mention of an interlude in which Europeans

take no part. The Mussulmans get rid of superfluous hair by shaving or

depilation.[35] The depilatory is composed of orpiment and quick lime,

called in Turkish _ot_, in Arabic _dewa_. The bather retires to a cell

without door, but at the entrance of which he suspends his waist towel;

the bath-man brings him a razor, if he prefers it, or a lump of the

_ot_ about the size of a walnut. In two or three minutes after applying

it the hair is ready to come off, and a couple of bowls of water leave

the skin entirely bare, not without a flush from the corrosiveness of

the preparation.[36]

The platform round the hall is raised and divided by low balustrades

into little compartments, where the couches of repose are arranged, so

that while having the uninterrupted view all round, parties or families

may be by themselves. This is the time and place for meals. The bather

having reached this apartment is conducted to the edge of the platform,

to which there is only one high step. You drop the wooden patten, and

on the matting a towel is spread anticipating your foot-fall. The couch

is in the form of a letter M.[37] spread out, and as you rest on it the

weight is everywhere directly supported--every tendon, every muscle

is relaxed; the mattress fitting, as it were, into the skeleton:

there is total inaction, and the body appears to be suspended.[38] The

attendants then re-appear, and gliding like noiseless shadows, stand

in a row before you. The coffee is poured out and presented: the pipe

follows; or, if so disposed, you may have sherbet or fruit; the sweet

or water melons are preferred, and they come in piles of lumps large

enough for a mouthful; or you may send and get kebobs on a skewer; and

if inclined to make a positive meal at the bath, this is the time.

The hall is open to the heavens, but nevertheless a boy with a fan of

feathers, or a napkin, drives the cool air upon you. The Turks have

given up the cold immersion of the Romans, yet so much as this they

have retained of it, and which realizes the end which the Romans had

in view to prevent the after breaking out of the perspiration; but

it is still a practice amongst the Turks to have cold water thrown

upon the feet. The nails of hands and feet are dexterously pared with

a sort of oblique chisel; any callosities that remain on the feet

are rubbed down: during this time the linen is twice changed.[39]

These operations do not interrupt the chafing of the soles,[40] and

the gentle putting on of the outside of the folds of linen which I

have mentioned in the first stage. The body has come forth shining

like alabaster, fragrant as the cistus, sleek as satin, and soft as

velvet. The touch of your own skin is electric. Buffon has a wonderful

description of Adam’s surprise and delight at his first touch of

himself. It is the description of the human sense when the body is

brought back to its purity. The body thus renewed, the spirit wanders

abroad, and reviewing its tenement rejoices to find it clean and

tranquil. There is an intoxication or dream that lifts you out of the

flesh, and yet a sense of life and consciousness that spreads through

every member. Each breastful of air seems to pass, not to the heart

but to the brain, and to quench, not the pulsations of the one, but

the fancies of the other. That exaltation which requires the slumber

of the senses--that vividness of sense that drowns the visions of the

spirit--are simultaneously engaged in calm and unspeakable luxury:

you condense the pleasures of many scenes, and enjoy in an hour the

existence of years.

But “this too will pass.”[41] The visions fade, the speed of the blood

thickens, the breath of the pores is checked, the crispness of the skin

returns, the fountains of strength are opened; you seek again the world

and its toils; and those who experience these effects and vicissitudes

for the first time exclaim, “I feel as if I could leap over the moon.”

Paying your pence according to the tariff of your deserts, you walk

forth a king from the gates which you had entered a beggar.

This chief of luxuries is common, in a barbarous land and under a

despotism, to every man, woman, and child; to the poorest as to the

richest, and to the richest no otherwise and no better than to the

poorest.[42] But how is it paid for? How can it be within the reach

of the poor? They pay according to their means. What each person

gives is put into a common stock; the box is opened once a week, and

the distribution of the contents is made according to a scale: the

master of the bath comes in for his share just like the rest. A person

of distinction will give a pound or more; the common price that, at

Constantinople, a tradesman would pay, was from tenpence to a shilling,

workmen from twopence to threepence. In a village near Constantinople,

where I spent some months, the charge for men was a halfpenny,[43] for

women three farthings. A poor person will lay down a few parahs to show

that he has not more to give, and where the poor man is so treated he

will give as much as he can. He will not, like the poor Roman, have

access alone, but his cup of coffee and a portion of the service like

the rest.[44] Such rules are not to be established, but such habits

may be destroyed by laws.

This I have observed, that wherever the bath is used it is not confined

to any class of the community, as if it was felt to be too good a thing

to be denied to any.

I must now conduct the reader into the Moorish bath. First, there was

no bath linen. They go in naked. Then there is but one room, under

which there is an oven, and a pot, open into the bath, is boiling on

the fire below. There were no pattens--the floor burning hot--so we

got boards. At once the operation commenced, which is analogous to the

glove. There was a dish of gazule, for the shampooer to rub his hands

in. I was seated on the board, with my legs straight out before me; the

shampooer seated himself on the same board behind me, stretching out

his legs. He then made me close my fingers upon the toes of his feet,

by which he got a purchase against me, and rubbing his hands in the

gazule, commenced upon the middle of my back, with a sharp motion up

and down, between beating and rubbing, his hands working in opposite

directions. After rubbing in this way the back, he pulled my arms

through his own and through each other, twisting me about in the most

extraordinary manner, and drawing his fingers across the region of the

diaphragm, so as to make me, a practised bather, shriek. After rubbing

in this way the skin, and stretching at the same time the joints of

my upper body, he came and placed himself at my feet, dealing with my

legs in like manner. Then thrice taking each leg and lifting it up, he

placed his head under the calf, and raising himself, scraped the leg as

with a rough brush, for his shaved head had the grain downwards. The

operation concluded by his biting my heel.

The bath becomes a second nature, and long privation so increases the

zest, that I was not disposed to be critical; but, if by an effort of

the imagination I could transport the Moorish bath to Constantinople,

and had then to choose between the hamâm of Eshi Serai or my own

at home, and this one of the Moors, I must say, I never should see

the inside of a Moorish bath again. It certainly does clear off the

epidermis, work the flesh, excite the skin, set at work the absorbent

and exuding vessels, raise the temperature, apply moisture;--but the

refinements and luxuries are wanting.

A great deal of learning has been expended upon the baths of the

ancients, and a melancholy exhibition it is--so much acuteness and

research, and no profit. The details of these wonderful structures,

the evidences of their usefulness, have prompted no prince, no people

of Europe to imitate them, and so acquire honour for the one, health

for the other. The writers, indeed, present not living practices, but

cold and ill-assorted details, as men must do who profess to describe

what they themselves do not comprehend. From what I have said, the

identity of the Turkish bath, with that of the Romans, will be at once

perceived, and the apparent discrepancies and differences explained.

The _apodyterium_ is the _mustaby_ or entrance-hall; after this comes

the sweating-apartment, subdivided by difference of degrees. Then two

operations are performed, shampooing, and the clearing off of the

epidermis. The Romans had in the _tepidarium_ and the _sudatorium_

distinct attendants for the two operations; the first shampooer

receiving the appropriate name of _tractator_; the others, who used the

strigil, which was equivalent to the glove, being called _suppetones_.

The appearance of the strigil in no way alters the character of the

operation. They used sponges also for rubbing down, like the Moorish

gazule. They used no soap; neither do the Moors;--the Turks use it

after the operation is concluded. The _Laconicum_ I understood when

I saw the Moorish bath, with the pot of water, heated from the fire

below, boiling up into the bath. I then recollected that there is in

the Turkish baths an opening, by which the steam from the boilers can

be let in, although not frequently so used, nor equally placed within

observation. Many of the Turkish baths have, doubtless, been originally

Greek. The change in respect to the use of cold water is compensated

for[45] by the cold air of the outer room, into which the Turks come,

and is preserved in the partial use of cold water for the feet. The

hot-water reservoirs, the _labrum_ and _solium_, are still to be seen

in the private baths; they are in those of the Alhambra. When used,

the character of running water, an essential point among the Turks,

is given to them, by a hole being left below, which is unplugged,

and a stream kept running in above from a cock. It would appear that

the Romans followed the same method. The _piscinum_ of the Romans

is found in the Moorish gardens. In the use of depilatories, or the

shaving off the hair, the practice of the Turks is exactly that of the

Romans; the parts of the bath appropriated to that purpose being the

same. The _olearea_ are alone wanting. The Mussulmans would consider

this smearing of the body with oil or ointments not as a part of the

bath, but a defilement, for which the purification of the bath was

requisite.[46]

The Romans used the bath to excess, taking it daily; the Mussulmans

restricted its use to once a-week. The Romans entered the bath

naked; the Mussulmans have introduced a bathing costume; the Romans

allowed the two sexes to enter promiscuously, the Mussulmans have

wholly separated them. Preserving the good, they have purified it

from excesses, which, to a people of less discrimination, might have

appeared to constitute its essential characters, or to be entailed as

its necessary consequences. Our studies and learning have furnished

us with no such results. These very excesses have been assigned as

a reason for the disuse of the bath by the early Christians. If the

explanation were true, the difference between the Christians and the

Mussulmans would amount to this, that the first could see and reject

the evil, the second perceive and select the good.

There is one point connected with the bath on which I must say a

few words, especially as in this case our usages do not present any

obstacle to the adoption of a good habit, and I have repeatedly had the

gratification of finding that the suggestions which follow were of use.

Those who wash the rest of their body, often except the head;--the

practice of smearing it with oil almost universally prevails. The

Easterns do the reverse--they shave it. A greater comfort there cannot

be than a bald pate. Washing the head is in no case prejudicial. Unless

you wash the head, the washing of the body is neither complete nor

satisfactory: the refreshment of washing the head may often be procured

when it is impossible to wash the body. Soap and water are injurious,

not to the hair, but to the hair-dressers. The men in the East have

no hair to show, but if soap and water injure the hair, whence comes

the luxuriant abundance of that of the women? The hair of the head,

like the fur of animals, is made to bear rain and wind, and to be a

protection against them. You cover it up! The fur of animals thickens

and strengthens when exposed to air and wet. Your hair falls off, and

you oil it. If it grows weak, change its habits. If it is not washed,

and if it is oiled, begin to wash it, and leave off oiling it.

Every week an Eastern lady has her hair thoroughly washed at the bath.

It is first well soaped and rubbed. They are very particular about

soap, and use none but that made of olive oil. The Castile soap,

which in this country is sold at the apothecary’s, is the soap the

least injurious to the skin. This is twice repeated. After the soap,

they apply a paste of Armenian bole and rose-leaves. This is rubbed

into the roots of the hair, and left to imbibe all the grease of the

head; it is then, like the soap, washed off with bowls of hot water,

and leaves the locks perfectly clean and silken. From time to time

they dye it. On these occasions an attendant mixes up a handful of

henna-dust in hot water, and thoroughly smears with it the hair, which

is then turned up into a ball and bound tightly with a napkin. In this

state they go through the bath. When the napkin is removed, and the

henna-paste washed out, the hair, if before black, will have become of

a bronze auburn, and if grey, red. The bath occupies from three to four

hours, with the smoking, chatting, music, and dancing, which accompany

it, in an atmosphere that excludes every unpleasant sensation. The

women are not, like the men, contented with the bathing-linen and

apparatus, which they find there; but are followed by female slaves,

who bear bundles of towels in silk and satin wrappers, boxwood pattens,

incrusted with mother of pearl, silver basins and bowls, or sometimes

enamelled ones, and aloe-wood and ambergris to perfume both the

apartment and their coffee. This finery is less than what they indulge

in in their private baths.

The Romans and Greeks, in like manner, were accompanied by their

slaves, and did not trust to the service of the _thermæ_. Each person

brought his strigil and his anointing vase (strigilis et ampulla,

λήκυθος καὶ ξύστρα [lêkythos kai xystra]),[47] or sent them by his

slave. The practice furnishes the familiar metaphors which express the

different conditions.[48] The strigil was the sign of comfort, and

also of sobriety and industry. It was, according to Cicero, necessary

to the happiness of the Roman citizen; it had to do with the fortunes

of the Roman state. Rome was indebted to her strigil as well as her

sword for the conquest of the world.

This constant washing occasions, it may be supposed, an enormous waste

of water. A Turk uses less water than an English gentleman. It is

true, every Turk, high and low, uses the same quantity, and washes in

the same manner; but the utensils and conveniences are differently

adapted. There are no wash-hand basins and ewers in bedrooms, no

foot-pans, hip-baths, shower-baths, &c. They do not dabble in dirty

water, defiling a great quantity. They wash under a stream of water,

running from a fountain, urn, or ewer. A handful serves to moisten

the soap and to rub with it, and a couple more rinse it completely

off. The fountains are placed in the passages, staircases, &c. By the

mosques, and in the streets, they are so arranged that, by sitting on a

step, you can wash the feet and the head. When you wash in a room, one

attendant brings the basin, _laen_, with its pierced cover and kneels

before you; another the ewer, _ibrik_, with its long, narrow neck to

pour the water.[49] In the bath, steam and perspiration cleanse, and

two or three large saucerfuls suffice for rinsing;--fifty persons may

be bathed with the water that serves to fill our trough for washing one.

What a difference it makes in domestic comfort to be certain that every

person around you, and every thing you touch and eat are absolutely

clean! After this manner of life, the habits of Europe are most

painful: you are constantly oppressed with the touch, or sight, or

knowledge of things which, by the European, are not considered clean,

and submitted to as unavoidable. It would but faintly describe my

impressions to say, that I felt as if passing from a refined to a rude

condition of society. Neither do we know how to cultivate or handle the

body. One of the first thoughts was, “What shall I do in sickness?” All

Europe’s seductions and luxuries put together will not make up for this

one.

The European is clean, in so far as he is so, for appearance; he has

clothes and shoe-brushes, blacking, starch, smoothing-irons, &c.; in

these consist his _neatness_.[50] The clean shirt is put upon the

dirty body; the hands and face being alone open to the air and sun

and the eyes of the neighbours, are washed. Nothing is filthy that is

unseen.[51] The Eastern has no brush or blacking; no care is expended

or expense incurred for neatness. He has his religious ablutions for

prayer.[52] He will not tell you that he washes for his comfort or his

health, but because it would be a sin not to do so.

Whatever proceeds from the body is impure; to touch anything with it is

sinful, were it even a beast. To spit on a dog is wicked.[53] If by act

or accident the Mussulman is rendered unclean he has to wash himself.

The soiling of his carpet may entail the ablution of the whole body;

while it remains unperformed he is _ipso facto_ excommunicated--can

take part in no ceremony, say no prayer. He is strictly in the

scriptural sense “unclean.” All injunctions of the same sort are in

like manner enforced. These are the first lessons taught the child,

and become a second nature; and, re-acting on the belief from which

they spring, give to it that surprising hold over the mind. They pass

through life, generation after generation, without probably a single

instance of the infringement of rules brought into operation every hour

of the day.

Following the instinct of the dog, and obeying the injunction of the

ceremonial law,[54] their canon law inhibits defilement of the public

roads, the streets, water-tanks and courses, fruit-trees, and any

places which serve for resort, shade, repose, or retreat.[55] In “Hadji

Baba” is a ludicrous account of the perplexities of a Persian in one of

the modern adaptations of civilization to cleanliness--his ineffectual

attempts to get at the gushing water, his inability to work the

machinery or comprehend the purpose. In that part of their house there

is a water-cock for use. The flooring is of marble--the water falls and

runs, and high wooden pattens are used. The outer cloth garments are

left outside--the ample sleeves are tucked up. If there be no fixed

pipe a ewer is at hand, and a servant waits outside with basin, ewer,

and napkin. In consequence of the offices attached to every mosque,

their cities do not present offensive smells, disgusting filth and

revolting indecency. One hand is set apart for noble, the other for

ignoble service. The left hand on its dying day has not so much as

touched the mouth; the right is in equal ignorance of other parts of

the body. This is the natural sense of the words: “Let not thy right

hand know what thy left hand doeth.”[56]

I have not hesitated to allude to matters which our false refinement

forbids to mention, and thus the sensibility given us to put away what

is impure is diverted merely to its concealment. The reader must fill

up this faint sketch from his imagination, and when he has done so, he

will understand why an Eastern cannot endure Europe, and why Christians

amongst Mussulmans are called “dogs.”[57]

Why should the ladies of the East have enjoyments from which ours are

debarred, and sensations too of which they know nothing? It may be said

the Turkish ladies so make up for their “exclusion from society:”--they

have no balls or operas, morning concerts or fancy fairs, and therefore

they take up with these merely sensual indulgences. They would no more

exchange their bath for your balls, than you would your balls for a

Yankee camp-meeting. There is no necessity for exchange. Why not have

both? Would it be no comfort, no pleasure, no benefit to an English

lady, on returning from a ball, and before going to bed, to be able,

divested of whalebone and crinoline, and robed as an Atalanta, to enter

marble chambers with mosaic floors, and be refreshed and purified from

the toil she has undergone, and prepared for the soft enjoyment of the

rest she seeks? The hanging gardens of Babylon were devised by the love

of Nature of a Median woman; the palaces and groves of the Azahra laid

out by the taste of a Numidian:--why should not England owe to the

delicacy of an Englishwoman[58] the restoration of the _thermæ_?

Our intercourse with the lower orders is broken off by there being

no settled occasion on which we are in contact with them, and by the

want of cleanliness in their persons. Here both classes are constantly

brought into the presence of each other. Contempt and distaste are

removed on one side, degradation and irritation on the other: they know

one another: the intercourse of various ranks requires and sustains a

style and demeanour which strike all Europeans, who are astonished

that the bearing of the peasant is as courtly as that of the Pasha:

he is as clean as the Pasha. Think of a country where difference of

rank makes no difference of cleanliness! What must Easterns think

of us where the difference of condition can be traced--in speech,

manner, and washing. The bath is of as great value to the society

as to the individual. A political economist, glorifying his age,

exclaims--“Augustus in all his splendour had neither glass for his

window nor a shirt to his back.” The slave and the beggar in Rome were

daily in the enjoyment of luxuries which no European monarch knows.

There is an impression that the bath is weakening. We can test this

in three ways; its effects on those debilitated by disease, on those

exhausted by fatigue, and on those who are long exposed to it.

1. In affection of the lungs and intermittent fever, the bath

is invariably had recourse to against the debilitating nightly

perspirations. The temperature is kept low, not to increase the action

of the heart or the secretions; this danger avoided, its effect is to

subdue by a healthy perspiration in a waking state the unhealthy one

in sleep. No one ever heard of any injury from the bath. The moment a

person is ailing he is hurried off to it.

2. After long and severe fatigue--that fatigue such as we never

know--successive days and nights on horseback--the bath affords the

most astonishing relief. Having performed long journeys on horseback,

even to the extent of ninety-four hours, without taking rest, I know by

experience its effects in the extremest cases.

A Tartar, having an hour to rest, prefers a bath to sleep. He enters

as if drugged with opium, and leaves it, his senses cleared, and his

strength restored as much as if he had slept for several hours. This

is not to be attributed to the heat or moisture alone, but to the

shampooing, which in such cases is of an extraordinary nature. The

Tartar sits down and doubles himself up; the shampooer (and he selects

the most powerful man) then springs with his feet on his shoulders,

cracking his vertebræ; with all his force and weight he pummels the

whole back, and then turning him on his back and face, aided by a

second shampooer, tramples on his body and limbs: the Tartar then

lays himself down for half an hour; and, perhaps, though that is not

necessary, sleeps. Well can I recall the hamâm doors which I have

entered, scarcely able to drag one limb after the other, and from which

I have sprung into my saddle again, elastic as a sinew and light as a

feather.

You will see a _Hammal_ (porter), a man living only on rice, go out of

one of those baths where he has been pouring with that perspiration

which we think must prostrate and weaken, and take up his load of five

hundred-weight, placing it unaided on his back.

3. The shampooers spend eight hours daily in the steam; they undergo

great labour there, shampooing, perhaps, a dozen persons, and are

remarkably healthy. They enter the bath at eight years of age: the

duties of the younger portion are light, and chiefly outside in the

hall to which the bathers retire after the bath; still, there they are

from that tender age exposed to the steam and heat, so as to have their

strength broken, if the bath were debilitating. The best shampooer

under whose hands I have ever been, was a man whose age was given me as

ninety, and who, from eight years of age, had been daily eight hours in

the bath. This was at the natural baths of Sophia. I might adduce in

like manner the sugar-bakers in London, who in a temperature not less

than that of the bath, undergo great fatigue, and are also remarkably

healthy.

The Romans furnish another example. Unlike the Arabs, who restrict

its use to once a week, they went into it daily. The temperature was

gradually raised, until in the time of Nero it came to be excessive.

Their habits in other respects were not such as to be conducive to

health, and must have disqualified them for enduring the bath: if it

did debilitate, it served therefore as an antidote to their manner of

life, and relieved the excess of the Patrician, as it does to-day the

fatigue of the Tartar.

Life is chemical and galvanic, but both these agencies result in, and

depend upon, motion: the vessels are constructed for conveying fluids,

the muscles for generating power. Thus, shampooing exerts over the

human body a power analogous to that of drugs administered by the

mouth. A blow which kills, a posture which benumbs;--pressure, which in

long disease becomes a chief obstacle to recovery, exercise which gives

health and strength--are all evidences of the influence of motion over

our system.

Who has not experienced in headaches and other pains, relief from the

most unartful rubbing? You receive a blow, and involuntarily rub the

part. Cold will kill; the remedy is brandy and friction. The resources

of this process surely deserve to be developed with as much care as

that which has been bestowed upon the Materia Medica. Where practised,

human suffering is relieved, obstructions are removed, indigestion

is cured, paralysis and diseases of the spine, &c., arising from the

loss of muscular power, are within its reach, while they are not under

the control of our medicines. Here is a new method to add to the

old. Wherever it can be employed, how much is it to be preferred to

nauseating substances taken into the stomach; how much must the common

practice of it tend to preserve the vitality of the whole frame! Even

if disregarded as an enjoyment of health, it offers a solace which

ought to be invaluable in the eye of a medical man, as of course it

must be of the patient. We have all to play that part.

Where the practice is familiar, it is used not merely in the bath,

but upon all occasions. It is to be found without the bath, as among

the Hindoos, some Tartar tribes, the Chinese, and the Sandwich

islands:--the latter presents one of the most remarkable of phenomena.

The different ranks are those of different stature. The chiefs are

sunk in sloth and immorality; and yet it is not they, who, like the

grandees of Spain, are the diminutive and decrepit race;--they are

shampooed.[59] A practice which our epicures and our stoics, our

patients and our doctors, would turn up the nose at, counteracts the

consequences of gluttony, intoxication, debauchery, and sloth, and

supplies the place of exercise and temperance; and a people which can

boast no school of philosophy, whose nostrils have never been regaled

by the compounds of Beauvilliers, and whose pulse has never been

stretched out to a Halden, is able to combine the health of the Brahmin

with the indulgence of the Sybarite, and the frame of the gymnast with

the habits of the hog.

Turner in his Embassy to Thibet, (p. 84), describes the gylong or

class of priests, as “more athletic” than their countrymen, although

they “lead a life in an extreme degree sedentary and recluse.” They

perform ablutions in which their compatriots do not join. The physical

superiority of the aristocracy of England may be owing to a similar

cause, cleanliness being with us a mark of station.

In Denmark, shampooing has recently been hit upon as a scientific

process, and a college has been instituted, as I understand, with

considerable success, for the practice of what they are pleased to call

_medicina mechanica_.

What am I to say of our medical science, what of our medical

practitioners, what of our philanthropy, what of our selfishness, in

not having the bath as a means of curing disease?[60] Never was a

people more heroically self-denying or extravagantly insensate. We

must love the racking of pain, the flavour of drugs, and the totals of

apothecaries’ bills; for with our classical acquirements and love of

travel, we cannot be ignorant, that all maladies, with the exception

of epidemical ones, were less common in Rome than in modern London,

notwithstanding our many advantages from the improved state of medical

knowledge; and that several painful diseases common amongst us were

exceedingly rare amongst the ancients, and are almost unknown in

Mahometan countries. There are those who are of opinion that contagious

disorders, “dreadful scourges of the human race, might never have taken

root, nor if they had, would now be spread so widely, had the hot bath

been in use amongst us.”[61]

The human body is formed for labour, and requires it, and this labour

is accompanied by perspiration. It is the safety-valve for the heart,

the sewer for the secretions; the scavenger for the skin. Those who are

thrown repeatedly into perspiration, possess, however seldom washed,

many advantages over those who have not to undergo severe bodily toil,

however often they may use soap and water to the surface.

The bath substitutes an artificial and easy perspiration, and this

explains the extraordinary fact, that the people who use it do not

require exercise for health, and can pass from the extreme of indolence

to that of toil.

The functions for carrying on life are of the nature of a steam-engine,

and a chemical apparatus: lethal gases are given forth as from a

furnace; poisons are produced by every organ; from every function there

is residuum, and the body, while soiled by labour, is rusted by repose.

This rust, this residuum deposits on the skin.

The extremities of the vessels become charged with unctuous matter;

the deadened cellules of the epidermis are covered with a varnish,

which is partly insoluble in water, and this internal accumulation and

external coating prevent the skin from performing its functions, which

are not confined to those of shielding the body, but are essential

to the chemical processes within. The skin has analogous duties to

those of the lungs, supplying oxygen to the blood at the extremity of

its course, and when most completely in need of it. It has to aid at

the same time the action of the heart. In its health is their health,

and its health is cleanliness. Unlike the two other organs, it is

placed within man’s reach, and confided to his care; and curiously

interspersed through it are glands secreting peculiar odours, that the

touch and sight shall not alone warn, but a third sense be enlisted in

this guardianship, crying aloud on every remissness, and charging and

reciprocating every neglect.[62]

The Russians come out of a bath of 120° to roll themselves in the snow.

This we explained by the fervour of the circulation, which enables

them to withstand the shock. If so, the strong and healthy might bear

it--not the weak and suffering, the octogenarian and the child. The

sudden passage from a Russian bath[63] to a glacial atmosphere, is

attended by neither shock nor danger; and far from the oppression that

would result from the absorption of vital action in the efforts of the

heart to overcome the violent contraction of the circulation, by the

cold, there is a sense of ineffable relief. You seem to take in and

throw forth your breath in mere playfulness, no longer dependent upon

it momentarily for life. In fact, the lungs and heart are discharged in

part from the toil of that unceasing labour, which, beginning with the

cradle, ends with the grave. Of what service must it not be to aid a

machine, the efforts of which, in the most delicate girl, are equal to

a steam-engine of fourteen horse-power?[64]

Who can reflect on this, and be content with mere wonder, nor bethink

himself of the means by which the purposes of Nature can be aided, and

the gifts of Providence enjoyed?[65]

The bath has the effect of several classes of medicines; that is to

say, it removes the symptoms for which they are administered; thus, it

is a cathartic, a diuretic, a tonic, a detersive, a narcotic; but the

effect is produced only when there is cause. It will bring sleep to the

patient suffering from insomnia, but will not, like opium, make the

healthy man drowsy; and relieve constipation without bringing on the

healthy--as aloes would--diarrhœa: it is thus a drug, which administers

itself according to the need, and brings no after-consequences.

The opium-like effect has often been remarked, and I have repeatedly

experienced after the bath sensations like those it produces. If it

has not the same power in relieving bodily pain, it has unquestionably

that of assuaging mental suffering. It is quite as natural an impulse

amongst Easterns, to seek the bath when they are labouring under

affliction as when disposed to give way to gladness. And this may be

considered as one part of its curative virtues, having the faculty of

calming the disturbed spirit without extinguishing, and indeed while

increasing, the dispositions to cheerfulness.

Reader! consider that this is not a drug in a shop, to be exhibited by

prescription after a visit to a patient. It would be something if I

suggested a new simple, or an improved plan of administering a known

remedy in any one disorder. It would be much by such a suggestion to

diminish in a few cases the pains of sciatica or of rheumatism, the

tortures of gout or stone; what I suggest, is a _habit_, one which

shall become, when adopted, that of the whole people.

A bath might be had for one quarter of the price of a glass of gin; for

we have water in more abundance, and at a cheaper rate than at Rome.

To substantiate this estimate, I prepared some calculations, but

having visited the baths and washhouses recently established, I find

the case illustrated to my hand by practice, and affording an entire

confirmation of all, and more than all, that I have said. It is not

long since that there was not a hot bath to be got in London under

two shillings; what would then have been said if any one had had the

hardihood to advance, that hot baths might be got for two-pence? and

that bathing establishments, charging from one penny for cold baths up

to sixpence, should become profitable concerns? Such nevertheless is

the fact. There is here no new idea, no new process, no new demands: it

has simply been suggested to build larger establishments, and to throw

them open at a smaller sum; so that we have hitherto been deprived of

these advantages through the partial blindness of those who have, in as

far as they do see, deplored the blindness of others, not thinking that

probably other films intercepted their own sight.

I will therefore take the result obtained in these baths and

wash-houses, as the basis of the calculation which I wish to establish.

For a thousand baths, the charge for water varies from twenty to

twenty-eight shillings; the coals for fuel from fifteen to thirty

shillings; the other charges from fifteen to twenty shillings. In all

these cases, the lower sum is of course above what the charge will be

when experience has pointed out improvements and economy. Taking the

most economical of these establishments, we have baths at the rate of

fifty shillings a thousand, that is, at a little more than a halfpenny

a piece. The allowance of water for each bath is forty-five gallons;

fuel enters for one-third into the charge: reducing these charges to

what would be incurred in the Turkish bath, there would be a saving of

eight-ninths for the water, and probably five-sixths for the fuel, and

an entire saving for the charge of attendance for the poorer classes,

(the σεαυτοὺς βαλνεύσουντες [seautous balneusountes]); thus we should

have on the thousand baths, the charge for water and fuel reduced

from thirty-five to five shillings; and the charge of attendance being

withdrawn from the poorer classes, the expense incurred would amount to

one penny for sixteen baths, or four baths for a farthing.

Here I am going upon the data supplied by these bathing establishments,

where the water is furnished to them at a very low price, namely,

fifteen shillings for the one thousand barrels, of thirty gallons,

and where the coals consumed are of an inferior quality, at nine

shillings a ton; and these are the points in which England and its

capital possess such great advantages. In these establishments they

can furnish between one and two thousand baths a-day, at an outlay

of 15_l._ or 16_l._ a-week; and as the experiment has so far so well

succeeded, two hundred of them would supply London, at the rate of a

bath to each person, weekly, for which the weekly expenditure would

be 3000_l._ or 150,000_l._ per annum, which would occasion a daily

use of 126,000,000 of gallons of water. In the Turkish manner, the

expenditure of water would be 15,000,000; and taking the proportionate

saving in fuel, there would be a saving of one half the outlay, or

75,000_l._ a-year; but, as the facility thus afforded, and the habits

so engendered, would lead in our climate, and in our circumstances,

to a much more frequent use of the bath than once a-week, and as it

would constantly be had recourse to by the lower orders, without their

going through the whole process, the establishments would have to be

proportionately larger, and the expenditure greater. At all events, it

is now no longer a theoretical matter: these baths are in use, and are

extending; and the question is, whether we shall introduce a perfect

instead of a defective method--an economical instead of an expensive

one. But, if this new charge be incurred, we have, on the other side,

to look forward to the possibility of retrenchments in consequence of

the altered habits of the people. The one that first presents itself

is the diminution of maladies, doctors’ and apothecaries’ fees and

drugs, loss of time from sickness, and attendance;--and here, to say

nothing of the different value of life, the saving for London alone

will have to be reckoned by millions. Next are temperance and sobriety.

At first sight the connection will not appear so immediate; it will,

however, be unquestionable to those familiar with countries where the

bath is in use. I know of no country, in ancient or modern times, where

habits of drunkenness have co-existed with the bath. Misery and cold

drive men to the gin-shop: if they had the bath--not the washing-tub,

but the sociable hamâm, to repair to--this, the great cause of

drunkenness, would be removed; and if this habit of cleanliness were

general, restraints would be imposed on such habits by the feelings of

self-respect engendered.

Gibbon has indulged in speculations on the consequences for Europe that

would have followed, had Charles Martel been defeated on the plains

of Tours. One of these effects would have been, that to-day in London

there would be no gin-palaces, and a thousand baths.

In London and its suburbs there are nearly two millions of inhabitants;

of these, one million and a half at least cannot afford those baths

which we use.[66] Deducting a fifth for infants under forty days

old, and persons confined to bed, there would remain twelve hundred

thousand, so that two hundred thousand bodies, which now carry their

filth from the cradle to the grave, would be daily washed. Judging

by the scale of prices at Constantinople[67] or Rome, the cost of a

bath might begin from one penny or twopence, and range upwards to five

shillings; striking the average at sixpence, we should have 5000_l._

daily, or 1,500,000_l._ per annum. An ordinary bath will accommodate

two hundred persons daily. At Constantinople, for a population of five

hundred thousand (Turks) three hundred are requisite. In Cordova, there

were nine hundred; in Alexandria, when taken by the Arabs, there were

four hundred. One thousand baths would be required for London, and each

would have for its support 1500_l._ a-year. The cost of erection would

be provided, as for hospitals, churches, &c., by foundation, donations,

bequests, subscriptions, or municipal charges.

The poor of England have never had an opportunity of knowing the

comfort which is derived on a cold day from the warmth imparted by such

an atmosphere. How many of the wretched inhabitants of London go to

their chilly homes in the winter months benumbed with cold, and with no

means of recovering their animal warmth but by resorting to spirits and

a public-house fire. The same sixpence which will only procure them a

quartern of the stimulant, which imparts but a momentary heat, would,

if so expended, obtain for them at once warmth and refreshment.

Do not run away with the idea that it is Islamism that prevents the

use of spirituous liquors; it is the bath. It satisfies the cravings

which lead to those indulgencies, it fills the period of necessary

relaxation, and it produces, with cleanliness, habits of self-respect,

which are incompatible with intoxication: it keeps the families united,

which prevents the squandering of money for such excesses. In Greece

and Rome, in their worst times, there was neither “blue ruin” nor

“double stout.”

The quantity of malt consumed in former days is referred to as a

test of relative well-being. This I do not deny; but there can be no

question that pure water is the most wholesome drink,[68] as it is

unquestionable, that if London were Mussulman, the operative, as the

rest of the population, would bathe regularly, have a better-dressed

dinner for his money, and prefer water to wine or brandy, gin or beer.

The bath, therefore, would secure at once cleanliness and temperance.

Where Christianity first appeared, cleanliness, like charity or

hospitality, was a condition of life. Christ and the apostles went

through the legal ablutions. When the relaxation took place at the

first council of Jerusalem, in favour of the Gentiles, these points

could never have been raised or called in question, for in this respect

the habits of the nations were in conformity with the Jewish law.

Reference is made to it in the fathers,[69] not as a practice only,

but as a duty.[70] In the primitive Church of England the bath was

a religious observance: the penitent was in some cases forbidden its

use; but then cold bathing was enjoined. Knighthood was originally a

religious institution, and the conferring of it is a church ceremony.

The aspirant knight _prepared himself by the bath_. The second

distinction which it is in the power of the Sovereign of England to

bestow, is entitled “The Order of the Bath.” Now, the Sovereign who

confers, and the knights who receive the title, never saw a real bath

in their lives.[71]

When tesselated pavements of Caldaria, or fragments of Laconicum and

Hypocaust come to light in our streets or fields, the modern Goth gazes

with the same stupid wonder, without the same respect[72] with which

the barbarians of this land look upon their fathers’ works;--you can

tell them the date of their ruins; they could explain to you the use of

yours. The Romans could recall the time when their fathers only washed

their hands and their feet;[73] the Turks, the time when their fathers

washed neither. We have to recall the times when our fathers knew what

it was thoroughly to be washed, and to be wholly clean; and, reversing

the experience of these people, and combining in our progress their

points of departure, we have arrived at washing hands and feet only, or

washing neither.

Britain received the bath from the Romans, Ireland from the

Phœnicians,[74] Hungary from the Turks, Spain from the Saracens[75]--

everywhere it has disappeared. In Greece it was as common as in

Turkey. Greece became independent, and the bath took wing.[76]

Everywhere throughout Europe the point of departure is cleanliness,

the result of progress is filth. How is it that a habit so cleanly,

associated with edifices so magnificent, leading to intercourse of the

classes of society so useful to the state, and conferring on the

poorer orders so large a measure of comforts and enjoyments, should

have disappeared, wherever light, learning, taste, liberality have

spread? When abstractions have got possession of the brain of a

people, you can no more reckon upon its tastes, than upon its acts.

“What ruler in modern times can make a comparison otherwise than

degrading to himself between the government over which he presides and

those of ancient Greece or Rome? Can he reflect, without taking shame

to himself, that the heads of the republics of Athens and Sparta, the

tribunes, ædiles, consuls, censors, and emperors of Rome, thought they

had not rendered the condition of the poor tolerable, unless they

had afforded them the gratuitous enjoyment of baths, theatres, and

games, to make them forget for some hours of the day the hardships and

privations which poverty brings with it? The boasted happiness of the

English common people (if, indeed, any one can be hardy enough to

vaunt it now-a-days) is infinitely lower than was that of the plebeians

of Greece or Rome.”[77]

The evils of our system do not spring from the violence of passion, but

from fallacies. We, of course, cannot grapple with our own fallacies;

therefore all that philanthropy and science can do, is to try to heal,

one by one, the sores which legislation engenders wholesale. The bath

is an idea which the simplest mind may grasp; it is a work which

industry, not genius, is required to accomplish. We found hospitals for

the sick, we open houses of refuge for the destitute; we have recently

been engaged in finding nightly shelter for the homeless; wash-houses

have even been established. How many are anxious to find some sort of

holiday, or innocent recreation, for the classes, whose commons we have

enclosed, and whose festivities we have put down;--how many seek to

raise the lower orders in the moral and social scale? A war is waged

against drunkenness, immorality, and filthiness in every shape. Here

is the effectual weapon!--here is an easy and a certain cure! It is no

speculation or theory; if it were so, it would easily find apostles and

believers.

The good-will and means that run to waste through our not knowing how

to be clean, are enormous. A small town in the New Forest, with Roman

daring, planned a bath as a work of public utility, but built it with

English coin, of which it took 8000_l._ There are steam-apparatus,

reservoirs for sea-water,[78] &c. It was a model bathing establishment.

It is now selling as bricks and old iron! Close by there are large

boilers for evaporating salt, over which, at the cost of a few planks,

a Russian vapour-bath might have been had. The use of the vapour was

not unknown. There were persons who repaired thither for cutaneous and

other disorders, and were cured.

Consider the heat and steam throughout the manufactories of England,

which the instinct of a Russian boor, or Laplander, or Red Indian would

apply for the benefit of the miserable population engaged in those

works, and now allowed to run to sheer waste. The filthiest population

exists, with the most extensive means of cleanliness. A nation that

boasts of its steam, that is puffed up with its steam, that goes by

steam, does not know how to use steam to wash its body, even when it

may be had gratis.

The people that has not devised the bath, cannot deserve the character

of refinement, and (having the opportunity) that does not adopt it,

that of sense. Servility, however, we do possess, and any person

of distinction has it in his power to introduce it. That which all

despise, when only a thing of use, will be by all rushed after when it

becomes a matter of fashion. The sight of a bath of a new fashion,

and enjoyed by another people, has impelled me to make this endeavour

to regain it for my own. Is Europe ever to remain on the map the

black spot of filth? Can she owe the bath only to the Roman sword or

Moorish spear? Must she now await the Cossack lance? After ridicule for

warning, the day may come that I shall suffer reproach for deprecating

the event, and it will be said to me, “_These_ barbarians, who,

Providence-like, have come to compose our troubles; Roman-like, to

teach us to be clean.”

[17] A bronze statue of a bather by Lysippus was

removed by Tiberius from the baths of Agrippa to his

own palace, and placed in his bedroom. The Roman people

“infested the emperor with reproaches and hootings

whenever he appeared in public, till their Apozymenos

was restored to them.”--PLINY’S _Nat. His._ b.

xxxiv. c. 35.

[18] “Nisi ad illam vitam quæ cum virtute degatur

ampulla aut strigiles acceperit.”--CICERO, _De Fin._ l.

iv. sec. 12.

[19] Balnea, vina, Venus consumunt corpora nostra,

Sed faciunt vitam balnea, vina, Venus.--MARTIAL.

[20] Returning on one occasion to Europe by

Belgrade, I brought some Turks by the steamer up to

Vienna to show them a little of Europe. After a night

on board, my _levée_ proved an awkward business. In a

Turkish household all the servants attend their master

while he dresses. That is the time to prefer petitions

and make complaints. Every one is there, and may say

what he likes. On the morning in question, they were

mute as statues; knowing the cause, I dared not look at

them. They had seen the Europeans _wash_. Silence being

at length broken, they began to narrate what they had

seen. Among other jottings for a book of travels they

would have mentioned, that a _priest_ had taken water

in his mouth, and then slobbered it over his face. I

told them that these were not my countrymen, and asked

them if they had not seen the two English officers wash

(I had observed from the single cabin on deck, which

the captain had given up to me, canteen dishes, soap,

towels, &c., going down for them); after a pause one of

my Turks said, “_Zavale belmester_. The unfortunates!

they don’t know how!”

[21] Under the Jewish dispensation the body of

man was held unclean, but not that of beasts. The

observances of the ceremonial law were directed to

awaken our sensibilities to expel the impurities

attendant on every function.

[22] In the _Jassi_ of Tchengis Khan, washing of

the clothes was forbidden, and of the hands or person

in running water: he denied that any thing was unclean.

[23] Pliny, urging on Trajan the repairing of the

bath of Brusa, says, “The dignity of the city and the

splendour of your reign require it.”--l. x. c. 25.

[24] The Turkish is the poorest language in

vocables; the most powerful in construction. The verb

not rules only, but sustains the sentence: it is

dramatic philology.

[25] One of the luxuries of the Roman baths

consisted in their brightness, the command of the

prospect around, and in various strange contrivances.

By one of these, the bather, while swimming in warm

water, could see the sea; by another, the figures of

the bathers within, were seen magnified without. “They

were not content unless they were coloured as well as

washed,” says Seneca (_Epist._ 87).

Multus ubique dies radiis ubi culmina totis,

Perforat, atque alio sol improbus uritur æstu.

STAT. lib. i.

This excess of light in a bath, savours of

indecency (See Suedon. Apoll. lib. ii. epist. 2). It

was not the early practice of Rome, nor certainly

of those from whom the Romans took the bath. “Our

ancestors,” says Seneca, “did not believe a bath to be

warm unless it was obscure.”

“Redde Lupi nobis tenebrosaque balnea Grilli.”--MART.

i. 60.

[26] The Roman expression, “quasi locus in

balneis,” was equivalent to “first come, first served.”

[27] The bathing-men give signals for what they

want, by striking with the hand on the hollow of the

side.

[28] “Let the air of all the rooms he neither

particularly hot nor cold, but of a proper

temperature, and middling moist; which will be

effected by plentifully pouring temperate water

from the cistern, so that it may flow through every

room.”--GALEN. _Therap. Meth._ lib. x.

[29] “Percurrit agili corpus arte tractatrix

manumque doctum spargit omnibus membris.”--_Mart._ iii.

82.

The _tractatrix_ was the female shampooer.

[30] “Et summum dominæ femur exclamare coegit.”--JUVENAL,

SAT. vi. v. 422.

[31] These basins are the _pelves_ of the Romans.

[32] “The _strigil_ was used after bathing, to

_remove the perspiration_. The hollow part was to hold

oil to soften the skin, or to allow the scraped grease

to run off.”--DENNIS, vol. ii. p. 426.

[33] Whenever our writers touch on these matters,

they fall into inevitable confusion.

“In the baths of the East, the bodies are cleansed

by small bags of camels’ hair woven rough, or with

a handful of the fine fibres of the Mekha palm-tree

combed soft, and filled with fragrant saponaceous

earths, which are rubbed on the skin, till the whole

body is covered with froth. Similar means were

employed in the baths of Greece, and the whole was

afterwards cleansed off the skin by gold or silver

_strigils_.”--_Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece_,

J. A. ST. JOHN, vol. ii. p. 89.

[34] Nut of the palm, and consequently hard and not

fit to use on the person. The Moors, though they do

not use soap in the bath, always use their soft _liff_

with their soft soap, which practice the Turks have

imperfectly followed.

[35] “Toutes les femmes Mahometanes sont dans

l’habitude de s’épiler, et cela encore par principe

religieux. Elles y emploient une argile très fine

(oth) d’une qualité mordante, les hommes en font

de même. Le plus grand nombre cependant se sert du

rasoir.”--D’OHSSON, vol. ii. p. 62.

[36] The Romans had the same practice, “Pilos

extirpare per psilothri medicamentum.”--PLINY. The

_terra Media_ was used, Dioscorides tells us, for

depilation.

[37] The _duretum_ introduced by Augustus at

Rome: “On trouve alors des lits delicieux: on s’y

repose avec volupté, on y éprouve un calme et un

bien-être difficiles à exprimer. C’est une sorte de

régénération, dont le charme est encore augmenté par

des boissons restaurantes, et surtout par un café

exquis.”--D’OHSSON, t. vii. p. 63.

[38] “Strange as it may appear, the Orientals,

both men and women, are passionately fond of indulging

in this formidable luxury; and almost every European

who has tried it, speaks with much satisfaction of the

result. When all is done, a soft and luxurious feeling

spreads itself over your body; every limb is light and

free as air; the marble-like smoothness of the skin is

delightful; and after all this pommelling, scrubbing,

racking, par-boiling, and perspiring, you feel more

enjoyment than ever you felt before.”--CHAPMAN AND

HALL’S _Library of Travel_.

[39] Galen (Method. Therap. l. x. c. 10,) says,

“Let then one of the servants throw over him a towel,

and being placed upon a couch let him be wiped with

sponges, and then with soft napkins.” How completely

this is the Turkish plan, one familiar with the bath

only will understand: explanation would be tedious.

[40] If you desire to be awakened at a certain

hour, you are not lugged by the shoulder or shouted at

in the ear; the soles of your feet are chafed, and you

wake up gently, and with an agreeable sensation. This

luxury is not confined to those who have attendants,

few or many; the street-porter is so awakened by his

wife, or child, or brother, and he in turn renders the

same service. The soles of the feet are exposed to a

severity of service which no other muscles have to

perform, and they require indulgent treatment; but with

us they receive none.

[41] Motto of the Vizir of Haroun el Raschid, when

required by his master to find one which should apply

at once to happiness or adversity.

[42] Volney once entered a Turkish bath, and in

horror and dismay, rushed out, and could never be

induced to enter one again. Lord Londonderry was more

submissive, and endured its tortures to the end; but

rejected the coffee, and pipes, and civilities then

proffered. He has given us a detail of his sufferings,

which appear to have been notional. Sir G. Wilkinson,

in his work on Thebes, cites them at length, and this

is all that he deems it requisite to tell the strangers

who arrive in Egypt, on the subject of the Hamâm.

[43] The charge at Rome was a quadrat, or one

farthing; children paid nothing.

“Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur.”

JUVENAL, _Sat._ ii. v. 152.

In some baths it would appear that even grown

persons were admitted gratis.

“Balneum, quo usus fuisset, sine mercede exhibuit.”--JUL.

CAPIT.

[44] A poor man will go to the shambles and cut

off a bit of the meat that is hanging there, and the

butcher will take no notice of it. If he goes to have a

cup of coffee, and has not five parahs (one farthing),

he will lay his two or three on the counter, instead of

dropping them into the slit; the next customer will lay

down ten and sweep them in together.

[45] “On entering, they remain in the hot air,

after which they immerse themselves in hot water,

then they go into cold water, and then wipe off

the sweat. Those who do not go from the _sudatory_

at once into cold water, burst out on returning to

the dressing-room, into a second sweat, which at

first is immoderate, and then ceases and leaves them

chilly.”--GALEN, _Method. Med._ l. x. c. 2.

[46] While it is essential to cleanliness to clear

away the oily matter that exudes from the skin, the

oil afterwards applied to the cleansed body, seems to

be beneficial, and to keep open instead of closing the

pores.

[47] The two instruments were slung together. The

_guttus_ was round, and from its round flat orifice,

the oil distilled. _Guttatim tenticulari forma, terite

ambitu, pressula rotunditate._--APULEIUS. On coins,

vases, and bas-reliefs, it has been mistaken for the

pomegranate, for a bulbous root, or a lustral vase. A

curious Greek papyrus, in which a reward is offered for

a runaway slave, or Lechythophoros, has cleared this

matter from all ambiguity. Mr. Letronne has restored and

translated the papyrus. It is also to be seen in the

Lycian tomb, of which a cast is in the British Museum,

and one of the groups given in colours in Fellows’s “Lycia.”

[48] Αὐτολήκυθος [Autolêkythos], signifies a poor

man.

Οὐδ’ ἐστὶν αὐτῇ στλεγγὶς οὐδὲ λήκυθος

[Oud’ estin autê stlengis oude lêkythos].--ARISTOPHANES.

Ἐμαυτῷ Βαλανεύσω [Emautô Balaneusô], was equivalent

to “I am my own butler.” “Have you dreamt of Lechyth,

or Xystra? that is the sign of a woman that attends to

her household (οὐκουρὸν [oukouron]) or of a faithful

handmaid.”--ARTEMID. _Oneiroc._ i. 64.

[49] I find the most convenient substitute, a vase

holding about two gallons of water, with a spout like

that of a tea-urn, only three times the length, placed

on a stand about four feet high, with a tub below:

hot or cold water can be used; the water may be very

hot, as the stream that flows is small. It runs for a

quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes. The Castilian

soap should be used in preference to the made-up

soaps of England. Of English soaps, the common yellow

washing soap is the best. N.B. A clean sheet on the

dressing-room floor and no slippers.

[50] “Neat,” and “proper,” are two words which we

have changed from their original sense to cleanliness.

[51] “Granting that the English are tolerably clean

in the matter of their faces and hands, their houses

and clothes, it must be confessed that they do not seem

sufficiently impressed with the importance of keeping

their whole bodies clean. Suppose the English were the

cleanest people in the world, it would be fearful to

think, when we know what they are, how dirty the rest

of the world must be.”--_Family Economist_, p. 40.

[52] The _abdest_ of the Mussulman consists in

washing hands to the elbow, feet, face, and neck, five

times a day in cold water without soap. The _wadhan_ of

the Jews is only three times, and does not extend to

the feet. The priests washed feet and hands.

[53] Spitting, blowing the nose, weeping, or

perspiring, do not entail _as acts_, the necessity of

ablution, which follows every other secretion. While a

sore runs, they are defiled and cannot pray. If they

have not _spoiled their abdest_, the washing before

prayers need not be repeated, but the abdest is spoiled

by a tear, or by perspiration.

[54] Deut. xxiii. 12.

[55] See D’Ohsson, vol. ii. p. 8, 57, 58.

[56] The defilement attached to the secretions is

conveyed in the natural sense of the antithesis used by

Christ (Matt, xv., Mark vii.), between “what proceedeth

from a man,” and “what entereth into a man.”

[57] I was desirous to bring to Europe a young

Turk, and he was nothing loath: his mother, however,

made objections, which I could not get from him. At

last, he said, “You must talk to her yourself.” I

went consequently; and when I introduced the subject,

raising up her two arms before her face as they do when

depressed or abject, with the hands turned down and

wringing them, she exclaimed: “Vai! Vai! are not your

ships made fast under my windows, and do I not see how

the Franks wash?”

[58] A plan has recently been successfully adopted

for drying horses after hunting. Two men, one on each

side, throw over him buckets of water as hot as he can

bear it: he is then scraped and rubbed with chamois

leather, the head and ears carefully dried with a

rubber, and his clothing put on. In twenty minutes he

is perfectly dry, and there is no fear of his breaking

out again: the old plan of rubbing him dry took from

one to two hours of very hard work, and he generally

broke out once or twice, and would often be found in a

profuse sweat at twelve or one o’clock at night. The

bath might be adopted for horses. The Muscovites used

to mount from the dinner table on horseback; at present

we shampoo our horses, and clear off the epidermis,

while we bestow no such care on our own bodies.

[59] “The chiefs of either sex are, with very

few exceptions, remarkably tall and corpulent. For

this striking peculiarity various reasons may be

suggested.... But in addition to any or all of these

possibilities one thing is certain, that the easy and

luxurious life of a chief has had very considerable

influence in the matter: he or she, as the case may

be, fares sumptuously every day, or rather every hour,

and takes little or no exercise, while the constant

habit of being shampooed after every regular meal,

and oftener, if desirable or expedient, promotes

circulation and digestion, without superinducing either

exhaustion or fatigue.

“Whatever may be the cause or causes of the

magnitude of the Patricians, the effect itself so

seldom fails to be produced, that beyond all doubt,

bulk and rank are almost indissolubly connected

together in the popular mind, the great in person

being, without the help of a play upon words, great

also in power.”--SIR GEORGE SIMPSON’S _Voyage

round the World_, vol. ii. p. 51.

[60] “Balneis calidis constitutis, ut remedium

ægrotantibus et lenimen labore defessis afferantur, quæ

sanè curatio longè melior est quam medici parum periti

medela.”

[61] MS. of Dr. Meryon, the only practical and

really useful essay which I have seen on the bath, and

which, I trust, will not be left on the shelf.

[62] “Rectè olet ubi nihil olet.”--PLAUTUS.

[63] In the Russian bath the heat is obtained,

like that of the Mexicans, by stones heated in a

furnace, and on which water is thrown. They have seats

at different heights, and by ascending increase the

temperature (the _concamerata sudatio_, as painted in

the baths of Titus). They have a cold douche, which

descends from the top of the chamber, and is repeated

twice during the bathing. They do not shampoo, but with

a bunch of birch, with the leaves on, thrash the body

all over, laying it along, first on the back and then

on the face.

[64] The vessels running through the skin, would

extend in a straight line twenty-five miles: the

respiratories coming to the surface of the body, and

opening through the epidermis, amount to seven millions.

[65] “The heart at every contraction expels about

two ounces of blood, and at sixty in a minute one

hundred and sixty ounces are sent forth; in three

minutes the whole blood (about thirty pounds), must

pass through the heart, and in one hour this takes

place twenty times. Who,--reflecting on the tissues

to be permeated, the functions to be discharged, the

secretions to be formed from, and the nutritious

substances to be taken into the circulating fluid;

and reflecting upon how soon each particle, each

atom of blood, after having been deteriorated in its

constitution, and rendered unfit for the discharge

of its important duties, is again driven through

the lungs, and again aerated,--can retire from the

investigation without feelings ennobled, and the whole

man rendered better!”--DR. ROBERTSON.

[66] The trough full of hot water called a bath,

used to cost in London at least one shilling and

sixpence, so that persons with less than 200_l._ a

year could not afford to use them. In Paris, with fuel

and water so much dearer, baths can be had as low as

one-third. The recent washing-houses are something,

but only as a commencement, and an earnest. Such

contrivances will not change a people’s taste.

[67] Everything is dearer in England than in

Turkey, except those things which are wanting for

the bath: fuel is at a third of the cost, water

is infinitely more abundant, and we have the same

advantages over every other capital of Europe. When the

charge for the bath was at Rome a quadrant, the price

of wheat differed little from what it is at present in

England.

[68] “Two patients in adjoining beds, one

seventy-five, the other fifty, father and son, were

suffering from diseased liver, and other effects

of intemperance. The attention of the party (the

governors, inspecting the Bedford Infirmary) being

drawn to these cases, I observed that the elder would

recover, and the younger would not. On being asked the

grounds for my opinion, I said, the one is the son of

a beer-drinking, the other of a buttermilk-drinking

father. The event confirmed my anticipation. During

the youth of the elder, he had never tasted beer or

tea,--milk and buttermilk were then the people’s drink.”

[69] No one entered a church without washing the

face and hands.--TERTULL. _de Orat._ cap. ii.

Clemens Alexandrinus, prescribing rules to

Christians for bathing, gives four reasons;

cleanliness, health, warmth, pleasure.--_Pædag._ l.

iii. c. 9.

[70] The Mussulmans say, “the physician is before

the Imaum, for if your bowels are disordered you cannot

play.” Like the Romans, they have superseded the

physician by the bath. The Brahmins hold disease to be

sinful.

“What worship is there not in mere washing!

perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common

cases, has it in his power to do. This consciousness

of perfect outer pureness--that to thy skin there

now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection--how it

radiates on thee, with cunning symbolic influences,

to thy very soul! Thou hast an increase of tendency

towards all good things whatsoever. The oldest eastern

sages with joy and holy gratitude had felt it to be

so, and that it was the Maker’s gift and will. It

remains a religious duty in the East. Nor could Herr

Professor Strauss, when I put the question, deny that

for us, at present, it is still such here in the

West. To that dingy operative emerging from his soot

mill, what is the first duty I will prescribe, and

offer help towards? That he clean the skin of him.

Can he, pray, by any ascertaining method? One knows

not to a certainty; but, with a sufficiency of soap

and water, he can wash. Even the dull English feel

something of this: they have a saying, 'Cleanliness is

near of kin to godliness:’ yet never in any country

saw I men worse washed, and, in a climate drenched

with the softest cloud water, such a scarcity of

baths.”--SAUERTEIG.

[71] Being present with a Mussulman at one of the

most splendid ceremonies of the Catholic church, I was

anxious to note the impression he received. As he was

silent, I put questions to him; called his attention

to the incense, the chants, the dresses, the white

lace over the coloured vestments--but all in vain. I

afterwards asked him what had been passing in his mind.

He replied, it was very magnificent, adding, “I could

only think of their feet.”

[72] The Duke of Wellington, notwithstanding the

remonstrances of the clergyman of the parish, had the

pavement of a bath, discovered at Silchester, filled

in, because his tenant was annoyed by people crossing a

field to look at it.

“D O M. The walls, which stranger, you behold,

are the remains of the baths which the city of Pisa

anciently used. Of these, consuming time has destroyed

the rest, and left only the Sudatorium, which,

overturned neither by an innumerable series of ages,

nor by the injuries of barbarians, allures the eye

studious of antiquity. Approach and contemplate, and

you will see the beautiful form of the edifice, you

will observe the plan of the lights, and how the heat

is sent through tubes. You will have to complain of no

concealment, nor will you affirm that anything of this

kind can be found more perfect elsewhere. And you will

return thanks to the great Duke Cosmos III.; who, lest,

this illustrious monument should altogether perish,

made it his peculiar care and custody.”--_Inscription

on the Roman bath at Pisa._

[73] “Nam prisco more tradiderunt brachia et

crura quotidie abluere quæ scilicet sordes opere

collegerant.”--SENECA, _Ep._ 87.

[74] By the merest accident I made this discovery.

A lady mentioned to me, “a practice of sweating,” which

she had heard of in her childhood among the peasantry.

I subjoin an extract of a letter written in reply to

inquiries.

“With respect to the sweating-houses, as they are

called, I remember about forty years ago, seeing one

in the island of Rathlin, and shall try to give you a

description of it:--It was built of basalt stones, very

much in the shape of a bee-hive, with a row of stones

inside, for the person to sit on when undergoing the

operation. There was a hole at the top and one near

the ground where the person crept in, and seated him

or herself; the stones having been heated in the same

way as an oven for baking bread is; the hole on the top

being covered with a sod, while being heated; but, I

suppose, removed to admit the person to breathe. Before

entering, the patient was stripped quite naked, and on

coming out, dressed again in the open air. The process

was reckoned a sovereign cure for rheumatism and all

sorts of pains and aches. They are fearful-looking

things, as well as I remember.”

[75] In the fifteenth century, baths were still in

common use in Spain; for a law of Castile forbids the

Moors and the Jews to bathe with the Christians.

[76] A Greek sailor once sat down to eat with me

with dirty hands; observing my look of astonishment, he

said, flourishing them, “No one will accuse me of being

Τουρκόλατρος [Tourkolatros] (worshipper of the Turks).”

What kind of people must that be whose enemies make

their patriotism consist in filth!

[77] Dr. Meryon.

[78] That horrid sea-water in which a savage will

not bathe unless he has fresh water to rinse himself,

is one of the infatuations that utterly bewilder one.

Bathers of course in the sea get air and exercise, but

do not imagine that there is virtue in impure water, or

sense in exposure of delicate forms to cold and chill.