The eastern or Turkish bath

by Sir Erasmus Wilson

Ten minutes slip away in an enjoyment that seems to last for a lifetime; and what is our condition now? The skin is warm, it is soft, it is moist, for sensible perspiration has commenced. Those parts perspire first which have been most exposed to the air—namely, the forehead, the head, the neck, the chest and shoulders, because these parts, from that very exposure, are in the most normal state. We are shortly, "like Niobe, all tears;" but our tears are tears of bliss. Tears of perspiration collect in beads at the apertures of the pores; tears glide down the surface, and fall from all the salient points of our frame, from our elbows, from our finger-ends; a sweet languor creeps over us, and we feel as though, like a heathen god of old, we were dissolving into a liquid stream.

"Here Fluvius wept; as now a stream declares."

We experience the truth of the saying of Sanctorius, "that melancholy is overcome by a free perspiration, and that cheerfulness, without any evident cause, proceeds from perspiration succeeding well."

It is a curious, but at the same time an obvious fact, with regard to perspiration, that it depends very materially on the habit and training of the skin. The beginner in the use of the bath perspires slowly, languidly, partially, incompletely, while the accustomed bather is known by the freedom of his perspiration. The apprentice-hand has no thirst in the bath, for a small portion only of the excess of watery fluid is abstracted from his tissues and from his blood. But the practised bather has no such excess, his blood yields its diluting water with great freedom, he thirsts in the bath, and he drinks freely. I know a gentleman who sometimes consumes a gallon of water in the bath, but none remains when he comes out: all has been dissipated by perspiration. In a chemical analysis of the perspiration of a group of bathers, recently made, that fluid was found loaded with saline and organic matter in the recruits, but was almost pure in the veteran bather: his blood was washed as clean as that of the working man who eats the bread of labour—that sweetest of all bread, the bread that has been earned with the sweat of his brow.

I hardly know a more curious or more beautiful sight than that of the healthy skin of a practised bather, spangled over with limpid drops of perspiration like dew-drops on the petals of a rose, or like beads of crystal, as I heard a Doctor of Divinity once call them, in the bath. The Reverend Doctor, although a distinguished member of the Protestant Church, was, as a witty friend remarked, "devoutly counting his beads."

Among the labourers in hot rooms, or in proximity with hot furnaces, as in the manufacture of glass, enamel, porcelain, and gas, the working of engines, and the smelting of metals, perspiration is very profuse, and the lost fluid is replaced by the drinking of water, or more commonly of thin gruel; restoring the balance of fluids not by mere water, but actually by a nutritive drink. Look at these men, working in the open air, or in the midst of thorough draughts, with rivers of perspiration streaming down their athletic frames, and ask their history; they are healthy, long-lived and happy. In the copper-smelting works at Swansea, the heat between the furnaces at which the men work is 200° of Fahrenheit; they drink a gallon of thin gruel every hour, working four hours at a stretch, and the ground on which they stand is a pool of perspiration.

I have said that the temperature of Mr. Witt's bath is 135°, and a very agreeable temperature it is; but the temperature of the bath is a point upon which a few observations must be made. The temperature of the Calidarium in Mr. Urquhart's and Mr. Rolland's bath is 170°, and is equally agreeable, equally fresh, equally enjoyable. What then, it may be asked, is the difference between these baths, that renders such a wide range of temperature equally pleasant? It is one of construction. Mr. Witt's Calidarium is small, well ventilated for its size, but a higher temperature than 135° or 140° would be oppressive if more than two or three bathers were present. Moreover, in Mr. Witt's bath, there is an invisible vapour of water in suspension in the atmosphere. Mr. Rolland's bath is larger than Mr. Witt's, and the atmosphere perfectly dry. Size of apartment and dryness of atmosphere are therefore the opposites of restricted space and moist atmosphere. Mr. Urquhart's bath, with a higher temperature than Mr. Rolland's, is fresher than either, because he has been enabled to combine greater size, greater altitude, a fresher material, namely, marble, moisture, and partial heating by means of the hypocaust. So the question of temperature must be regarded as relative, and not positive; a higher temperature will be fresher in a large and well-ventilated bath with few inmates, than a lower temperature in a small and less perfectly ventilated apartment. Whereas, the bath that may be fresh and agreeable in the morning when few bathers are present, may be insufferable in the after part of the day when a succession of bathers has rendered the atmosphere moist, or when many bathers are therein. The effect of many bathers being necessarily to curtail space, infuse moisture into the atmosphere, and deteriorate the ventilating medium. The temperature of a bath must therefore be specially adapted to the particular bath; it must rise or fall with its proportions or with its means of ventilation; it must rise or fall with its number of bathers; it must rise in the morning and fall in the evening. We may fix the temperature of a hot bath, but we cannot determine that of a Turkish bath.

One of the things which strikes the popular mind the most vividly in the British Turkish bath is the high temperature. When we call to mind that a hot bath is scalding at 110°, and a vapour bath at 120°, we are astonished to hear of a bath that is enjoyable at 20°, 30°, and even 50° above the temperature of scalding water. Nay, more, that can be borne without inconvenience at double the temperature of scalding water. Mr. Witt, one evening at a dinner-party, explained the curious difference of action of heat on living and dead organic matter. A few days after, a baronet, who was one of the party, visited Mr. Witt in his bath, and wrote to an incredulous friend as follows:—"I have been at Mr. Witt's bath; all that he told us is true. I cooked a mutton-chop on my knee! and in eating it afterwards the only inconvenience that I experienced was in the matter of the bread—it became toast before I could get it to my mouth." Since I first published this anecdote, a very matter-of-fact gentleman has written to me to say: "Well! I can believe the mutton-chop, but is not the bread changing to toast in its way to the mouth a little too much for credit?" I can best answer my matter-of-fact friend by saying, that in Mr. Urquhart's bath at Riverside, I sat for at least ten minutes, and without the slightest inconvenience, in his Laconicum, at a temperature of 240°—namely, 28° degrees above the boiling-point of water. If I had had bread, or meat, or eggs with me, they must necessarily have been cooked at that heat. But in reality there is nothing wonderful in all this. I am informed that during the Indian mutiny, the heat in the tents was sometimes as high as 140°. Sir Charles Blagden remained for ten minutes in a room heated to 260°. Sir Francis Chantrey's oven, in which his moulds were dried, and which was constantly entered by his men, was heated to 350°. The ovens in the slate-enamelling works of Mr. Magnus, at Pimlico, also habitually entered by the workmen, have a temperature of 350°. And the oven in which Chabert, the so-called Fire King, exhibited in London some years back, was heated to 400° and 500°.

We may therefore pass over the bravery of the exceeding high temperatures as an established fact, and not worthy of a single further remark. Man, who would be scalded by water at a temperature of 110°, and vapour or steam at 120°, can bear for a short time dry air at a temperature of 500° of Fahrenheit, and upwards. But this does not so much concern us as the question—What is the best temperature of bath, for the purposes of health? My answer must be, a moderate temperature—a temperature ranging in medium limits between 120° and 140°. The Romans, who lost the bath, used very high temperatures; the Turks, who have preserved it, who use it to this day, have recourse, as I have already shown, to very moderate temperatures. For further corroboration of the argument, let us glance at the purpose of the bath—its intention is to warm, to relax, to induce a gentle, continuous, and prolonged perspiration. It is obvious that a gentle temperature will effect this object more thoroughly and completely than a burning, parching temperature of 150° and upwards. Our purpose is not to dry up the tissues, to rob the blood of its diluent fluid, but to soften the callous scarf-skin that it may be peeled off, and to take away the excess of fluids pervading the economy, and with this excess any irritant and morbid matters which they may hold in solution.

But all this while I have been infringing one of the rules of the bath; I have been talking in the bath, and talking is of doubtful propriety; the demeanour of the bather while in the bath must be tranquil, composed, calm; he must give himself up to the dissolving process without exertion of muscle or mind; he may rub his skin gently; he may talk gently, sententiously, like a Turk, but he must not allow himself to become animated, and above all, he must not be vociferous. The bath is a practice intended for the body's health, and therefore deserves all our consideration and respect. The rule of Mr. Witt's bath cannot be too closely adhered to—only one talker at a time—and it has the further advantage that the talker knowing himself listened to, takes time to think before he speaks.