CHAPTER XX.
Sulphur Baths.—Bleaching Old Faces.—Experiments in Bathing.—Cautions.—Need of Public Baths.—Their Proper Prices.—Method of Giving Sulphur Vapor-baths.—Hot Baths for Hot Weather.—Russian Baths at Home.—Improvements Needed in Public Baths.—What they Should be.—What they Are.—The Russian Vapor-bath.—-After-Sensations.—Brightness and Lightness of Health.—Reverence for the Physical.—Influence of Bathing on the Nerves and Passions.—Necessity of Public Baths.
It is not a little amusing to receive requests for a way to give sulphur vapor-baths to the face alone. Somebody wants a fair complexion, and fancies it may be gained by bleaching the face like an old Leghorn bonnet in a barrel. Aside from the certainty of being choked to death by this method, there is no way of whitening and refining the face by applications to it alone, when the conditions of health are not regarded in other things. Carbolic acid may heal pimples, and glycerine masks soften the skin; but lovely red and white, with lips like currants, and skin like the flesh of young cranberries, can not be had unless the blood is pure. For this it is indispensable that food should be regulated, plenty of exercise and sunshine taken, and all the bodily functions kept in the best order.
The woman who thought she could take the sulphur vapor-bath at home in her own bath-room finds that her experience reads like a chapter from the Danbury News man. A bouquet of burning matches would furnish the perfume inhaled in the process, and the vapor reaching her face, left it pale and brown in spots, as if she had moth patches. That she escaped with hair only partially tinged, and any eyebrows to speak of, is due to Nature’s guardian care, which prompted the struggle for life half a minute sooner than pride was inclined to give up. The fumes lingering about the premises have induced the gravest suspicions on the part of her neighbors. She is inclined to think that, if her face would only turn brown again all over, she would forego her dreams of Parian brow and cheeks like peaches.
A sulphur vapor-bath is a matter of caution, when given by the best of hands. It is not well to take it in the damp, “breaking-up” weather of March, for the bath opens the pores, and catching cold with several grains of sulphur in one’s body is the next thing to salivation by mercury. The consequence is that one feels heavy and aching, the eyes grow weak, and teeth grumble, while latent rheumatic pains wake up to sharp reminder of one’s imprudence. When the weather is warm and settled, these baths are a luxury and medicine combined. They are most effectual purifiers of the system, searching out and removing all waste particles, to leave the skin as new and fair as a baby’s. I have seen old and darkened complexions restored by them in a way that was little short of miraculous. These baths are also of benefit in neuralgia, and deal powerfully with scrofulous affections.
The time is not far distant when every town that owns a public hall will also have its public baths. Before that time comes, physicians ought to moderate the charges for these remedial agents. Outside of our large cities, the cost of taking sulphur vapor-baths is $5 each, and they are given only in series, as prescribed by the judgment or humor of the physician. When will people learn the laws and habits of their own bodies, so that they need not be at the mercy of every specialist who chooses to make money out of their emergencies? For the benefit of outsiders it ought to be said that the charge in the best establishments of New York is not higher than $2 50 for the single bath, and a great reduction from this is common.
The essential difficulty of the sulphur vapor treatment is to keep from the face the powerful fumes, which are dangerous to breathe. For this object the bather enters a wooden box, with a cover that fits the neck. She takes a seat in the box undressed, and the cover is adjusted so that only the head is left out. Cloths or a rubber collar are closely drawn about the neck to prevent the least escape of gas, and a wet sponge is laid on the top of the head, or, what is better, a very wet towel folded turbanwise round the back of it, and over the top, thus cooling the base of the brain, the side arteries, and sensitive upper part. This compress must be frequently wet with cold water during the bath—a precaution which removes the danger of apoplectic seizures by the intense heating of the blood. Steam charged with sulphur is then let into the box by pipes, and in three minutes the perspiration flows as if the luckless victim were melting away. In the best establishments an attendant fans the bather all the time the steam is let on, to cool the head, into which the heated blood rushes in a way that makes the wet towel smoke directly. And this is an attention the patient must insist upon, for faintness or apoplexy may be the alternative.
In the sultry and oppressive weather of summer the hot bath is of all others most cooling. No matter how heated the system, water as hot as possible is the safest and most efficient relief. One wants to remain in it long enough to give every part of the body a thorough scrubbing with soap and a mohair wash-cloth, which cleanses the skin more thoroughly than a brush. The hot water dissolves every particle of matter that clogs the pores, the rough cloth and soap remove it searchingly, and the towel is hardly laid aside before a delicious coolness and freshness passes upon one, like that of a dewy summer morning. The dangers resulting from a sudden check of perspiration by plunging into cold water when overheated, or by sitting in a draught to cool, are avoided, and a greater sense of coolness follows. People who suffer much in warm weather should reckon this a daily solace. All enervating effects are warded off by an instant’s plunge into cool water of, say, seventy degrees. I say cool, for it certainly will feel as if iced after a bath of nearly a hundred and fifty degrees. In a common bath-room, by this means, one may experience much of the real benefit of a Russian vapor-bath.
The bath lasts fifteen minutes, when the vapor is turned off. When the steam in the box has had time to condense, the cover is unjointed, and the bather treated to a scrubbing with soap and warm water, which gradually cools and cleanses the body. Then cooler water is poured over the body, and, after wiping, one is wrapped in a fresh sheet and lies down to pleasant dreams.
It is hard that such a necessary requisite to the highest vigor should rank, as it does, among luxuries. One can hardly imagine an addition to a fine house more desirable than a bathing-hall, such as Roman patricians added to their palaces, where any form of vapor or hot bath was at command.
Many improvements are needed in our public baths. There should be small dressing-closets, as there are at swimming-baths, where one’s clothes may be kept from contact with beds on which a thousand people rest in the course of a year. The reposing-hall should be well lighted, and paved with tiles, instead of being spread with bits of carpet to be tossed about; and there should be ample space between the couches. Every thing should convey the impression of space and repose—of sunshine, for the sake of its reviving power, and of refinement, for the soothing it always brings the nerves.
Usually the bath-house is built in a court-yard, where high walls on every side shut out the sunlight. The basement dressing-room is filled with narrow couches covered with light rubber sheets, suggestive of nothing more pleasant than cast-off clothing, and rest measured by the bath clock, when one’s pillow must be given up to a new-comer.
From this huddled room the bather steps into one beyond summer heat, dark and dripping with moisture, with a plunge bath in the centre. Passing through it, one finds next what seems like a wide marble staircase running the length of each side almost to the low roof, with gratings let in the face of the steps. The bather ascends one of these stony couches, and lies down with head on the stony pillow carved every six feet or so for the purpose. Wrapped in a sheet, already wet with moisture since leaving the dressing-room, a large sponge dipped in cold water at the back of one’s head, and another at the mouth and nose, one feels as if there were perspiration enough already for sanitary purposes; but when, with a hiss and a roar, the steam is let on through the gratings, one finds the difference. Rolling vapor fills the room, so dense that every outline is shut out as completely as in the darkest night. The heat rises to suffocation, the new bather thinks, and rushes again and again to the douche against the wall to wet her throbbing head, or into the next room, which seems cool as a waterfall, for a gasp of air that she can breathe. Old and experienced bathers lie still, declaring that, with head down and the wet sponge pressed to the nose, they breathe without difficulty. What was perspiration is literally a flowing away in rills and sheets of water that drip from the bather’s reeking sides. One seems to have turned to jelly, and submits helplessly to the scrubbing-brush and final shower-bath of water at eighty degrees, which causes a shiver by contrast.
The outer room is refreshing in its coolness, and one wraps a dry sheet and blanket round one and lies down on the India-rubber cloth in dreamy indifference to all the rest of the world.
What follows is Elysium. Every ache and pain, every care, is dispelled in a trance of rest.
All the descriptions by Eastern travelers of the luxury of the bath are found true in this last stage of enjoyment. One is rejuvenated, entranced, and sinks into a light sleep, whose approach seems a prelude to paradise. The eyes close to keep out the sordid surroundings of the bathing-room; and every idea, or rather sensation—for the brain is too passive to think—is bliss. This is the dolce far niente Italians aspire to—the sum of all delight possible to sensation. Passion and rapture have no charms that equal it. It is the death and extinction of all pain. Quite as beautiful is the return to consciousness, sense after sense regaining double brightness as softly and steadily as the unfolding of a flower.
After a reluctant waking and going out into the sunlight again one seems to have found a new self. The feather-like lightness and elasticity of every limb amount almost to delirium, they are so different from one’s usual dullness. It is freedom that feels like flying. If this is simply health, in our common state we must be farther toward extinction than we imagine.
In this state of purity and light one learns to reverence one’s physical self. A body that at its best is so glorious and happy ought not to be exposed to the disturbance of appetite and the contact of gross things. We need to be very much more refined in our living, eating, and breathing. We ought to be nicer about our clothes and our food, choosing the best of meats, and fruit far better than we are now content with, and should place our dwellings out of the reach of the least impure air. In this altered and steadied frame evil dispositions lose their sway. Irritable temper is soothed, despondency flees as by magic, and fiercer passions lie asleep as at the stroking of their manes. If any one should read this page who battles with unnatural desires, which make life less blessed and lofty than it was meant to be, let her have recourse to this efficient ally. It will restore one from the horrible depression which craves alcohol or opium, it will rescue from the perilous excitement of overwrought nerves or too much brain-work, and banish those morbid feelings which consciously or unconsciously incline to impurity of imagination if not of life. The purity of the body and the soul are too closely interwoven for any one to dare neglect them.
In the old time, saints used to subdue the body by prayer and fasting. The modern way is by prayer and bathing.
It is hard enough to keep a peaceable, firm, and sweet habit of soul without letting loose on it the humors and insanities of the body. These are in no way so surely quelled as by warm baths, and this is why they ought to be among the public buildings of every village, and made as cheap as possible. There the drunkard might find a stimulus which has no reaction, the emotionally insane a sedative that would clear his brain and steady his nerves. There the exhausted watcher by the sick might recruit, and the overwrought student, lawyer, or physician find support without recourse to perilous stimulants. The doors of such a place in a large city should stand open night and day, like those of churches.
Women need the bath for all these purposes even more than men. The feeble mother will find no soothing for her jarred nerves or lightener of her burdens like the well-applied bath. Strange as it sounds, the vapor-bath does not weaken. It washes away the worse particles of the body that weigh it down, and leaves it as if winged. I have known an invalid of years take it twice and thrice a week, gaining strength every time. If harm came, it is because the head was not kept cool by fanning, or because the final sponging was not gradual enough. There is harm in every remedy used unskillfully. It is the doctor’s province to direct in such matters, always premising that the best and wisest physicians prefer to teach their clients the rules of health and treatment for themselves, and seldom refuse to give the reason and theory of their orders. It is safe to be shy of the perceptions and methods of a doctor who doesn’t like to tell what medicines he gives, and why he gives them. The keenest and best medical men are impatient to have others see and understand the truth as well as themselves.