TURKISH BATHS---MASSAGE---MANICURES.
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The heading of this chapter may at the first glance seem peculiar. If
so, you don’t have to read it, do you? Nevertheless, a little space may
be devoted, in a haphazard sort of way, to a feature of Chicago life
that is not without its charms for those who are initiated.
Chicago is nothing if not metropolitan. The Turkish bath is a feature
of metropolitan life which should not be deprived of its proper share
of attention.
Ever taken a Turkish bath? No? Then remedy the deficiency in your
education at once and at the same time taste one of the sublimest
sensations that falls to the lot of man in this prosaic world of ours!
To particularize all the Turkish baths of the city would consume too
much space. They can be found in connection with most of the leading
hotels. The Palmer House baths, located beneath the barber shop,
the floor of which is studded with silver dollars, is perhaps the
most celebrated. They are open day and night--as all Turkish baths
naturally are--and enjoy a large patronage. There are other places,
quite independent of the hotels, notably Franks’, on Wabash avenue. The
visitor is well cared for and given a taste of Oriental cleanliness and
luxury at any hour of the day or night.
The Turkish bath owes a good deal of its popularity, I fear, to its
revivifying effect on the toper. A man may enter a Turkish bath with
the most aggravated case of “jag” on record and emerge in a few hours
fresh, cleansed and glorified--“clothed and in his right mind,” as Holy
Writ has it. Not to say that only tipplers patronize the baths! Far
from it. People of unimpeachable sobriety indulge regularly in them for
their health-giving qualities alone. In hot weather, when the clothing
sticks with disagreeable closeness to the body, there is no easier
method of “cooling off” than a passage through this fiery, or rather
steaming, ordeal. Listen a moment and learn how it is done.
You descend a flight of stairs into a basement and enter the mystic
portals. A colored servitor, almost nude, escorts you politely to a
dressing-room. The torrid atmosphere has already produced a feeling of
enervation, and you doff your clothes with alacrity. You then wind
about you the sheet with which you have been provided and emerge,
giving all your valuables to a clerk, who deposits them in the safe.
You are then led to the “hot-room,” as it called, in which you remain
as long as you like.
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Hot? Well, rather. The senses become numbed and dulled under the
great heat, but the sensation is delicious beyond description. Lying
full length on the couch, fairy visions float before the mind. Try to
think connectedly and the effort will be a failure. The mind becomes
a strange jumble, in which people and events, real and imaginary,
mix themselves without volition of yours in a kaleidoscopic mass of
pleasant pictures. A copious and wholesome perspiration breaks out at
every pore. After awhile even the strongest of us has had enough of it,
and another stage of the process is reached.
The bather is now laid full length on a marble slab, with a blown-out
rubber pillow under his head. A stalwart negro takes him in hand. He is
rubbed, pinched and pounded and kneaded with a vigor that at any other
time might be unpleasant. In the drowsy languor of the moment, however,
it is all right, and when the servitor presently smears him all over
with sweet smelling suds only to rinse him copiously a minute afterward
with a bucket of tepid water the subject of the operation would not
change places with the king of Siam or any other potentate of whom he
has heard great things. This done, he is led to the shower bath, where
the gentle stream falls over him for a few minutes, at first warm, then
colder, until he rushes out from under a veritable stream of ice-water.
Acting under instructions he plunges without hesitation head-foremost
into the big swimming bath that stands ready to receive him. In this
he may sport and gambol at will until he is tired, and in the cool
embrace of the spacious tank the fever of the hot-room is forgotten
and his body brought back to a normal temperature. Emerging from the
swimming-bath he is rubbed perfectly dry by an attendant and escorted
to a couch in a large, cool room, where, wrapped in a sheet, he may lie
as long as he lists in the sweet, dreamless sleep of the happy and the
just. If it is his first experience he will vow on leaving the place
that, as well as being refreshed and revivified he feels cleaner than
he ever felt in all his life, and, as cleanliness is said to be next
to godliness, this is something by no means to be despised. A Turkish
bath in a first-class place costs $1, though there are plenty of places
where the charge is lower. Most Turkish bath establishments have an
apartment especially provided for ladies.
Massage--a good deal is contained in the word. There are massage
parlors in Chicago and again there are--massage parlors, or at
least those called such by their proprietors. There are legitimate
massage parlors conducted by competent physicians, employing skilled
male operators who treat the applicant with every consideration.
Massage--which consists of rubbing weak or otherwise affected parts
of the body with the hands--is recommended by many physicians as a
cure for rheumatism and kindred ailments. The applicant seeking such
treatment, however, should assure himself that he is going to a place
where he will receive such treatment as he needs and nothing else.
For there are so-called massage parlors--extensively advertised in some
of the daily papers as employing lady operators--that are nothing more
or less than improper resorts in disguise. There have been times when
the “massage” question has received critical and analytical attention
from one or more sensational papers, and the disclosures that have
been made from time to time have been anything but edifying. The
visitor will receive a sort of a Turkish bath at the hands of a “lady”
operator, but other entertainment will not be difficult to procure if
he should express a word or two to that effect. From a standpoint of
morality as well as prudence it is a good plan to let such “massage”
(?) establishments as brazenly advertise their employment of “lady
operators” severely alone.
“Manicuring,” by which term is signified the treatment of the hands,
is an industry that is only mentioned in this chapter by reason of
its bearing on the care of the person or the toilet. The manicuring
establishments are in every way respectable. For the sum of one dollar
a pleasant-faced young woman washes one’s hands in a preparation of her
own manufacture and so trims, polishes and fixes up one’s fingernails
that the average customer does not recognize them as his own after she
has finished the delicate task. Aside from the neatness imparted by the
operation few men object to the sensation produced by having a pretty
woman manipulate scientifically and dally with his clumsy hands for
half an hour or more.