The eastern or Turkish bath

by Sir Erasmus Wilson

"The slamming doors are pushed open, and you enter the region of steam;" this is the second chamber, it is low, dark, and small; it feels warm without being hot or oppressive, and the air is moistened with a thin vapour. It is paved with white marble, and a marble platform eighteen inches high occupies its two sides, while the space between serves as the passage from the mustaby to the inner hall. A mattress and cushion are laid on the marble platform, and here the bather reclines; he smokes his chibouque, sips his coffee, and converses in subdued and measured tones with his neighbour. This is the Tepidarium of the Roman bath; here the bather courts a "natural and gentle flow of perspiration," and to this end are adapted the warm temperature, the bath coverings, the hot coffee, and the tranquil rest.

"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. While 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 that causes the perspiration to start."

After a while the bath attendant arrives; he passes his hand under the linen coverings of the bather; if he find the skin sufficiently moist and softened, the bather is again taken by the arms, his feet are replaced in the wooden pattens, another slamming door is opened, and he is ushered into the inner apartment, "a space such as the centre dome of a cathedral," lighted by means of "stars of stained glass in the vault." The temperature of this apartment, the Calidarium or Sudatorium of the Romans, is considerably higher than that of the middle room; the atmosphere is filled with "curling mists of gauzy and mottled vapour," the steam being raised by throwing water on the floor. In the middle of the apartment is "an extensive platform of marble slabs," and on this the bather is laid on his back, his scarf being placed beneath him to protect his skin from the heated marble, and the napkin that served as his turban being rolled up as a pillow to his head.

The bather is now subjected to the process of shampooing—that is, his muscles are pressed and squeezed, his joints are stretched until they snap, and they are forcibly bent in various directions. In the hands of the professional shampooer the process is elevated to an art, and words fail to convey other than a very imperfect idea of its nature.

After the shampooing, the bather is brought to the side of the hall—around which are placed marble basins two feet in diameter, supplied by means of taps with hot and cold water—and made to sit on a board near to one of these basins. The attendant draws on a camel's-hair glove. "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." In the course of his frictions he pours water from the basin over the skin by means of a copper cup, to rinse off the impurities.

In the next place, a large wooden bowl is placed by the side of the bather; this bowl contains soap and a wisp of lyf, the woody fibre of the Mecca palm, and the body is thoroughly soaped and washed twice over from the head to the feet, and, as a coup de grâce, a bowl of warm water is dashed over the entire body.

An attendant now approaches with warm napkins; the hip-cloth, or cummerbund, is dropped, and a warm dry napkin is selected to supply its place; another is thrown over the shoulders, and the bather is placed on a seat. The shoulder napkin is then raised, a fresh dry one put in its place, and the first over it; a fourth is wrapped around 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."

In the outer hall, the bather is led to his box; he drops the pattens as he steps on a napkin spread on the matting of the platform; and he stretches his limbs on the couch of repose. "The attendants then reappear, and gliding like noiseless shadows, stand in a row before him. The coffee is poured out and presented; the pipe follows; or if so disposed he may have sherbet or fruit; the sweet or water-melons are preferred, and they come in piles of lumps large enough for a mouthful; 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 him." The linen is twice changed; and when the cooling is complete, "the body has come forth shining like alabaster, fragrant as the cistus, sleek as satin, and soft as velvet. The touch of the skin is electric." "The time occupied is from two to four hours, and the operation is repeated once a week." At the conclusion of the process, "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.'"

In reviewing the Turkish Bath and the process of bathing as pursued by the Turks, we are struck by several features which appertain especially to it: for example, its construction of three apartments only, instead of the numerous apartments of the Romans; the three apartments being, the grand hall, corresponding with the Frigidarium of the Romans, and being at the same time the Apodyterium and Vestiarium. Secondly, the presence of vapour in the middle room, corresponding with the Tepidarium of the Romans. Thirdly, the existence of vapour in the third and inner room, the Calidarium and Sudatorium of the Romans. The presence of vapour betokens a low temperature, because watery vapour, as is well known, is scalding at one hundred and twenty degrees of heat; and we have fair grounds for concluding that there was no vapour in the Tepidarium and Caldarium of the Romans, and that the temperature of both was considerably higher. For Seneca, in his celebrated letter, speaks of the importance of maintaining the baths at a "proper and wholesome degree of temperature; not of heat like that of a furnace, such as has been lately found out, proper only for the punishment of slaves convicted of the highest misdemeanors. We now seem to make no distinction between being warm and burning."—This criticism would have been unnecessary had the bath contained watery vapour, as the evil would then have corrected itself, and the vapour, being scalding, could not have been supported. Pliny also, speaks of the "burning pavement of the floor" in his narrative of an act of cruelty practised by the slaves of Largius Macedo on their master. After beating him and trampling upon him, they threw him on the floor of the hot bath, and pretended that "he had fainted away by the heat of the bath."