“Well can I recall the hâmam-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 hummal (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.
“Third, the shampooers spend eight hours daily in the steam. They
undergo great labour there, shampooing perhaps, a dozen persons,
and are remarkably healthy. [31] 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 return after their 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. 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.”
We have seen at Blarney the Turkish bath administered with equal
benefit to the child of only a few months old, and the man of eighty
summers.
Having now observed on the physical effects of the Turkish bath, we
shall quote Mr. Urquhart’s opinions regarding its moral aspect:—
“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 hâmam, 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. 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 six-pence 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 indulgences, 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.’”
This opinion of Mr. Urquhart’s is further supported by the following
extract from Lord Stanley’s address to the National Association for the
Promotion of Social Science, as quoted by Dr. Haughton [32]:—
“All men know and deplore the destruction of life and property by
intemperate habits in England; but not all men know (though it has
been repeatedly proved) that one of the strongest predisposing
causes to intemperance is that sense of depression, and general
weakness, demanding and seeming to justify the use of stimulants,
which, itself a disease, attacks those who live in undrained and
unventilated localities.”
The Turkish bath supplies this stimulant, the desire for which prompts
intoxication, and so becomes, as Mr. Urquhart argues, a powerful engine
in the promotion of temperance; by improving the general health, it
also removes the desire for the stimulus.
Having now dwelt on the numerous advantages of the Turkish bath, its
beneficial effects in preserving health and curing disease, we cannot
refrain from expressing our astonishment that the year 1857 should find
our noble city destitute of so valuable an institution. [33] Shall we
any longer allow this state of things to continue, and permit
barbarians to enjoy a source of comfort and of health which we deny to
ourselves? Shall we any longer practise this self-denial, and any
longer be content to lag behind the civilization of the East? Is it not
astonishing that our medical practitioners should have hitherto
overlooked the wonderful curative agency of this Turkish bath? and
through its want have permitted cholera, and other diseases [34]
equally fatal, to roam unchecked through our city, carrying off
thousands of our countrymen. Shall the sufferer from sciatica longer
submit to the cupping, blistering, and mercurial dosing of the
Allopathic physician, undermining his constitution and ruining his
health, when he might obtain certain relief from the delightful and
health-restoring bath?
We will not fatigue our readers by following Mr. Urquhart into his
calculation regarding the probable cost of erecting a Turkish bath in
this country, but we believe that an expenditure of about £800 would
prove sufficient for the purpose; and dull indeed must we be in
perceiving our own interests if we hesitate, for this trifling outlay,
to secure to ourselves so great a blessing—at once a luxurious
indulgence, a purifier of the blood, a preservative of health, [35] and
a remedy against disease.
It must not be supposed that we seek here to advocate the Turkish bath
as a better means of maintaining health than that of exercise to
perspiration, [36] the means ordained by nature for promoting a healthy
activity of all the functions of life: no—we can never improve on the
laws of nature, which have been pre-eminently adapted by a beneficent
Providence, for the accomplishment of their specific ends: it is only
when those laws have been outraged and neglected by the
“over-working-brain and under-working-body” habits of a 19th century,
that art steps in, in the shape of the Turkish bath, and proposes to
produce those beneficial effects on the system, without injury to it,
which nature had meant to be produced by active exercise. The Turkish
bath is, in short, an antidote for the unwholesome lives we live,
[37]—a peace-offering to outraged nature for our non-compliance with
her laws. To ladies, to invalids, and men of business, whose sedentary
occupations preclude the possibility of healthful exercise, the Turkish
bath presents an inestimable boon.
We strongly recommend the perusal of Dr. Barter’s lecture at Bradford
to our readers, as a masterly exposition of a subject by the only
physician in the kingdom who has practically studied it.