The eastern or Turkish bath

by Sir Erasmus Wilson

In my experience it has rarely happened that a novitiate has felt any inconvenience on his first entrance into the bath. The practised bather is never disturbed from the beginning to the end of the process. But the beginner may, after the first quarter of an hour, or when the perspiration is coming forth in abundance, feel a little oppression, sometimes a little faintness, and sometimes a little increased action of the heart. Whenever this is the case he should step out of the Calidarium; if there be a Tepidarium he will go into it, if not, he may step into the Frigidarium. The uneasy feeling soon passes away, and then he should return to the Calidarium. He may do this as often as he likes, and with the most perfect safety; and with this hint it will be his own fault if he suffer any inconvenience whatever. The remedy is not so simple when, as sometimes happens, the fount of perspiration is as yet unopened, when the bather has never perspired, or to a very imperfect and trifling extent. Here, of course, the relief which is afforded to the system by perspiration is absent, and the bather may be seriously incommoded. He must not persist; force is antagonistic to the animal economy; he must succumb, and essay to bring about perspiration by the steady use of the vapour bath,—by such a bath, in fact, as the middle room of the Turkish bath. I know many persons who have never perspired, to whom the luxury of the bath is consequently lost. I know others who cannot perspire in dry air, but can do so in vapour. How frequently we are brought to reflect on the wisdom of the Turks, who have added so much vapour to their bath since they received it as an inheritance from the Romans.

How long shall I continue in the bath, says Amicus?—As long, my friend, as may be agreeable to yourself. You do not ask me how long you shall eat, nor how long you should sit at table. The instinct that tells you to place your knife and fork across your plate, must also direct you in finishing your bath. Something will depend, it is true, on the temperature, and the rapidity of the process of perspiration. If the temperature have been very agreeable, and perspiration slow, continuous, and efficient, you may pass the best part of an hour in the Calidarium. If it have been too hot, and the process untimely hurried, you must bring your enjoyment more speedily to an end.

We shall suppose that our friends have enjoyed their bath, and have agreeably spent three-quarters of an hour in the Calidarium:—the skin is now warm and moist, and the whole frame, its muscles and its joints, are softened and relaxed. This is the proper state and period, for those operations on the muscles and joints which are called SHAMPOOING. But as the art of shampooing is unknown in this country, or, if attempted, is practised only in the public baths, we must be contented in our private bath to pass over that process, the SECOND of the bath, and betake ourselves to that which follows, the rolling or peeling of the scarf-skin.

We cannot, however, wholly pass by the process of shampooing without a cursory glance at the nature of the operation and the manner of its performance. In the inner room of the Turkish bath, we have, following the description of Mr. Urquhart, seen the bather laid upon his back, on the marble platform under the centre of the dome, his mantle converted into a sheet to protect him from the heat of the marble, and his turban placed beneath his head in the guise of a pillow. The shampooer, or tellak as he is termed—and to perform the operation properly there should be two,—"kneels at your side, and bending over, grips and presses your chest, arms, and legs, passing from part to part, like a bird shifting its place on a perch. He brings his whole weight on you with a jerk, follows the line of muscle with anatomical thumb, draws the open hand strongly over the surface, particularly round the shoulder, turning you half up in so doing; stands with his feet on the thighs and on the chest, and slips down the ribs; then up again three times; and, lastly, doubling your arms one after the other on the chest, pushes with both hands down, beginning at the elbow, and then, putting an arm under the back and applying his chest to your crossed elbows, rolls on you across till you crack. You are now turned on your face, and, in addition to the operation above described he works his elbow round the edges of your shoulder-blade, and with the heel plies hard the angle of the neck; he concludes by hauling the body half up by each arm successively, while he stands with one foot on the opposite thigh. You are then raised for a moment to a sitting posture, and a contortion given to the small of the back with the knee, and a jerk to the neck by the two hands holding the temples."

At Dar el Baida Mr. Urquhart enjoyed the opportunity of "examining a public bath of the Moors belonging to their good times. The disposition varies from that of the ancient Thermæ and the modern Hamâms. The grand and noble portion of the Turkish and the ancient bath was a dome, open to the heavens in the centre." Such a dome, without the opening in the centre, exists in the Moorish bath, but it is the inner and not the outer apartment. "The vault has deep ribs in the fashion of a clam shell, and is supported upon columns with horse-shoe arches spreading between. Instead of a system of flues through the walls, only one passed through the centre under the floor. To get at it, I had to break through the pavement of beaten mortar covering a slab of marble. It was nearly filled up with a deposit, partly of soot and partly of earthy matter, which I imagined to be the residuum of gazul." The examination of this bath awakened a desire to experience the process of the bath as practised among this ancient people. There was a bath in the house of the Governor of the province, but the Governor was away, and it was not until Mr. Urquhart had sustained a long religious argument with the Caid, that he was permitted to complete his experience. His bath attendant and shampooer was the sub-governor; and the occurrence was to be kept secret from the inhabitants of the town on religious grounds. This may explain, perhaps, the roughness of the receptions which Mr. Urquhart met with, and the absence of those refinements and comforts which commonly belong to the Eastern bath.

The bather, he says, "enters the Calidarium naked, he has no bath linen; the bath-room is single, and placed over an oven; while a caldron of water, heated on the fire below, throws its steam into the apartment. The floor is burning hot; he has no pattens; and boards are laid for him to tread upon; the glove operation commences at once. There was a dish of gazul for the shampooer to rub his hands in. I was seated on the board with my legs straight out before me; the shampooer seated himself on the same board behind me, stretching out his legs. He then made me close my fingers upon the toes of his feet, by which he got a purchase against me, and rubbing his hands in the gazul, commenced upon the middle of my back, with a sharp motion up and down, between beating and rubbing, his hands working in opposite directions. After rubbing in this way the back, he pulled my arms through his own and through each other, twisting me about in the most extraordinary manner, and drawing his fingers across the region of the diaphragm, so as to make me, a practised bather, shriek. After rubbing in this way the skin, and stretching at the same time the joints of my upper body, he came and placed himself at my feet, dealing with my legs in like manner. Then thrice taking each leg and lifting it up, he placed his head under the calf, and raising himself, scraped the leg as with a rough brush, for his shaved head had the grain downwards. The operation concluded by his biting my heel."

The Moorish bath "certainly does clear off the epidermis, work the flesh, excite the skin, set at work the absorbent and exuding vessels, raise the temperature, apply moisture;—but the refinements and luxuries are wanting."

Captain Clark Kennedy and his friends met with no such difficulties as those experienced by Mr. Urquhart. After a fatiguing day's journey, they visited a public Moorish bath at Medeah, and Captain Kennedy records their experiences, which show a family resemblance to the Turkish Hamâm. Passing, he says, "through a narrow passage, we, entered a room with two sides, occupied by a sloping divan seven feet wide, and raised a couple of feet from the floor." "We took off our clothes, replaced them with a voluminous wrapper of white cotton, and thrusting our toes into leather loops tacked to a pair of wooden soles, shuffled along, led, by an attendant, to a small apartment, full of steam and tolerably warm, adjoining the bath-room. Here we changed our drapery for dark cotton handkerchiefs, fastened round the waist like kilts, and, passed on into a vaulted stone chamber, lit by a solitary lamp hanging from the roof, whose sickly, light, struggling with the clouds of steam and the darkness, just rendered visible the strange forms of the bath attendants, naked, like ourselves, to the waist, with a single lock of dark hair, dripping with, moisture, dangling from each uncovered shaven head.

"The pavement was flooded with hot water, and at first the heat was so oppressive I could hardly breathe; but the feeling went off after having been seated for a few minutes on a stone bench in the centre of the bath. We were now all laid out in a row on the pavement, each stretched on a blue cloth, with a rolled-up towel under the head, and an operator for each person. My attendant was a musical character, for when he commenced shampooing he accompanied his labours with a song, marking the chorus at the end of each verse by a punch of extra force. Being well soaked and softened, I was now scrubbed with a camel's-hair glove until I felt as if I had no skin at all. I then had my legs and arms pulled, my head screwed round with a jerk, was then doubled up like a boot-jack by his kneeling on my shoulders, my arms were brought behind me, and while his knee was forced into the hollow of my back, two or three dexterous twists put in motion each rib and vertebra; he then finished by endeavouring to crack, separately, every toe and finger. A large bowl of soap-suds was now brought, and, with a handful of the soft fibres of the aloe, he lathered me from head to foot. A plentiful supply of hot water was now poured over me, and, reconducted into the interior, I was enveloped in clean, white, warm linen, a long soft towel was wrapped round my head as a turban; and, lastly, taken into the outer room, I was laid upon the divan with three or four sheets over all." "The feeling of lightness and elasticity given to a fatigued and stiffened body by a Moorish bath cannot be imagined without being felt." "It was too much trouble at the time to analyse my own feelings, but I remember the predominant idea was that I felt exceedingly comfortable." The process lasted two hours.

And now a word as to the operation of shampooing. Any inhabitant of a Northern climate like our own must read these descriptions of the process with wonder not unmixed with dread. Who but a professed acrobat would venture to submit to an operation in which a man "stands with his feet on the thighs and on the chest, and slips (his feet) down the ribs, then up again three times?" or "putting an arm under the back, and applying his chest to your crossed elbows, rolls on you across till you crack?" I have already explained that the operation of shampooing requires that the skin and the whole body, especially the muscular system, should be thoroughly softened before this process is commenced; and it would appear that when the proper degree of softening is attained, the Eastern people, who are remarkable for the pliability and elasticity of their joints, can support the operation without inconvenience. But the Northern races are built for strength and endurance; their quality is solidity, not pliability; their joints are too firmly knit, and the bones too strongly braced together, to permit of the application of such force as would make the skeleton crack, without serious inconvenience and, indeed, danger. We have but to see the Asiatic throw his foot over his shoulder, bend his finger upon the back of his hand, crack every joint of the fingers with the most moderate traction, or drop gracefully upon the ground, sitting on the side of the foot, with the sole upturned towards the skies, to be assured that there is something in the structure of the bones and joints of the Asiatic that does not exist amongst us. And if one of these people were to tie himself up in a knot, we should not be much surprised. We know, also, that this curious pliability of the frame is enjoyed by Europeans born and reared in the East; and, moreover, that where it exists in a most perfect degree while such persons are residing in the East, it is considerably diminished, and even lost, on their migration to a cold climate. There are, doubtless, many persons amongst us who could bear the Turkish process of shampooing, and particularly after a sojourn of some time in the East, where the climate alone would tend to soften their organism; and we can comprehend how a sailor, whose special education is pliability and ductility of body and limb, could go through the process creditably; but we cannot realize the same of the soldier or the ploughman; and as little should we tolerate a similar penance ourselves. Turkish shampooing may continue to be practised in the Turkish Hamâm, but the process must be considerably modified before it can become popular in Britain.