We will now take a bath. We will endeavour to solve the question, What is the Bath? We enter the Apodyterium or Vestiarium; we divest our body of its clothing; we hang our garments orderly on the apportioned pegs; we place our boots on the ground under our clothing, pushing the socks into the boots; we fold the cummerbund, a scarf of the Turkish red twilled cotton eight feet long and eighteen inches broad, around our hips, or we may prefer a kilt of the same material, or a pair of short drawers, and we are ready to enter the Tepidarium, if such there be; or, in the absence of a Tepidarium, the Calidarium. This is the costume of the Bath, and a costume is indispensable. Without a costume in the presence of others, the bath is not the bath—it is an evil, and as an evil it should be suppressed with the utmost severity. But I am not describing the Bath for those who would abuse it, but for those only who have the intelligence to apply it to the high and noble purposes of which it is capable. An addition to the above simple costume is sometimes made by folding a cotton scarf around the head—a kind of turban; and the turban has its advantages, as a protection of the bare head against the extreme heat of the apartment. The turban, when used by the gentler sex, protects and supports the hair, and the cummerbund gives place to a loose cotton chemise, that of the Turkish red twill being the most becoming and appropriate.
We now enter the Calidarium; we are impressed with the sensation of a most agreeable warmth; we look at the thermometer, we find the temperature to be 135° of Fahrenheit; we take our position on one of the seats, or we ascend upon the platform above, and we discover that a hard wooden couch, the dureta, may be the pleasantest couch in the universe. We look around us; the atmosphere is clear, there is no haze upon the window, the floor, the seats, and the walls are dry, and yet there is no oppression to the breathing organs; we breathe as agreeably as in the open air—nay, those who are ordinarily oppressed in the air from chronic bronchitis or asthma breathe more lightly and pleasantly here. But I must explain: I am now describing the sensations experienced in Mr. Witt's bath, and the freshness of the atmosphere of Mr. Witt's bath has always been praised by the most experienced bathers, and by those who have been accustomed to the Bath in the East. Mr. Witt attributes this virtue of his bath, and with apparent reason, partly to sufficient ventilation, and partly to the presence of his warm-water tank in the upper portion of the apartment; the water of this tank, evaporated by the heat of the flue, descends into the apartment, and pervades the atmosphere as an invisible vapour—a vapour which is felt, but not seen; and he further remarks that a similar effect is not attainable by the introduction of water on the floor of the bath.
If, after our first entrance into the Calidarium, we place the hand on any part of our skin, it gives the sensation of coldness, as compared with the temperature of the apartment. Soon, however, the skin becomes warm and dry; shortly afterwards it is moist and clammy; and later still, the perspiration begins to flow with greater or less activity. The freedom of perspiration follows the known structure of the skin in reference to the sudatory organs; it is first perceptible and most abundant on the face and hands, where the sudatory glands are most numerous and most developed; it succeeds on the chest and shoulders, then on the rest of the body, and lastly, on the legs below the knees. The perspiration at first issues from the pores in minute drops, the drops swell to the size of peas, and the skin looks as if it were garnished, with crystal beads; the beads run into little rills, and the rills trickle down the hollow ways of the surface in small streams. It is at this period that the whole body admits of being washed by means of the water that issues from itself, and that the secret of the small quantity of water provided for the baths by the Romans is discovered.
It is when the perspiration commences to flow in abundance, that the beginner in the use of the bath, or the owner of a susceptible constitution, becomes aware of an increase of rapidity of the heart's pulsations; and this sensation is commonly associated with a feeling of oppression, something approaching to faintness. On the first hint of this sensation, the bather should retire to the Tepidarium or to the Frigidarium, and sit there for a few minutes, or until the sensation has ceased; he may then return to the Calidarium, and upon each recurrence of the sense of oppression always quit the Calidarium for the cooler temperature without. The sensation which I am now describing is the only disagreeable one attendant upon the use of the bath; it is unknown to the practised bather, and to the strong or callous constitution, and may be effectually obviated, even in the most sensitive, by the simple precaution which I have just suggested. Strange to say, these passages from the hot to the cold temperature are not attended with a check to the perspiration, they only moderate it, while the stimulus of the fresh air provides more ample chest-room for the oxygenization of the lungs.
One of the most curious, and at the same time impressive, of the phenomena of the bath, is the relative freedom of perspiration of the educated and the uneducated skin; in other words, of the practised and the unpractised bather. There are certain persons who have never perspired, and these persons require a long training in lower temperatures before they can be admitted with safety to the higher temperatures; they are also much assisted by the addition of watery vapour to the hot air, converting it, in fact, into a vapour-bath. But of the rest of mankind, who present every facility for active perspiration, but who have never had, or but seldom have, the skin aroused to its normal activity, the variety in the energy of perspiration is very remarkable. The practised bather is enveloped in a sheet of perspiration, while the skin of the beginner is hardly moist; if the practised bather but raise his arm, the water drips from his elbows and finger-ends in continuous drops; his cummerbund is saturated, and the water may be wrung from it as from a soddened cloth, while the cummerbund of the neophyte is still dry. If the beginner rest his back for an instant against the wall of the Calidarium, he shrinks away from it, because of the intensity of its heat; but the practised bather presses against it with all his force, and receives only the sensation of an agreeable warmth, because the abundant moisture of his skin is sufficient to keep the wall cool. The beginner loses the moisture only of the surface of the body, and feels no resulting internal sensation; but, in the practised bather, the skin sucks up the watery fluids from the deeper streams of the sanguine flood, and the bather thirsts in the operation. He drinks water from time to time to replenish the waste; pint upon pint is taken into his stomach, and finds its way firstly into the blood, and then into the sudatory system of the skin; surely an apparatus of organs and a current of blood so rinsed by the transit of pure water must undergo an important purification. To the practised bather the drinking of water during the perspiration of the body is reviving and necessary, because his blood has need of water to supply the place of that which has been withdrawn by the skin, and the amount of need is expressed by his thirst. But the beginner has no thirst, and he will do well to avoid drinking, as calculated to increase the labour of perspiration, and likely therefore to be followed by oppression and faintness.
The time passed in the Calidarium, with the occasional retirements already mentioned, may vary between twenty minutes and an hour; a continuous moderate perspiration of a certain duration being the object which should be kept in view. Besides causing an active perspiration, the warmth and moisture of the Bath soften the epiderm or scarf-skin, and by gentle friction with the hand the softened epiderm is rubbed off in small elliptical cylinders. At the conclusion of the bath the skin should be gently rubbed over with soap, applied either with the kheesah or goat-hair glove, or with a wisp of lyf—the white woody fibre of the Mecca palm, commonly used for the purpose in the East. After the friction with soap, the body should be thoroughly rinsed by means of the warm shower-bath; and after the warm shower-bath follows a shower of cold water, or a cold douche. The idea of a douse of cold water upon a fully perspiring skin suggests a feeling of alarm in the minds of those who have not experienced it, or have not thought upon the matter; but in practice it is inexpressibly grateful to the sensations, and wholly free from the shadow of danger.
The purpose of the cold douche is to cause a sudden shrinking or contraction of the skin, and this contraction closes all the pores, and tightens and braces the cutaneous vessels. The process is necessarily accompanied with a trifling amount of cooling of the surface, and the bather remains in the Calidarium for a few minutes longer, until this coolness has passed away, and the skin is everywhere warm to the touch. He then leaves the Calidarium, and enters the Frigidarium. When the bather possesses a separate Lavatorium, the process of soaping, with the subsequent ablutions, is performed in that apartment; and, being accomplished, he returns to the Calidarium to recover his warmth, and is then ready for the Frigidarium. The warming of the body after the cold douche is thus shown to be an important part of the bath—as, in fact, is every process, howsoever trivial each may seem when considered separately and by itself.
On entering the Frigidarium the bather is enveloped in a large cotton sheet or mantle, which covers him from the head to below the feet; he lies or sits down, enclosing each limb in a separate fold of the sheet, and he wipes his face and head with a dry napkin, or with a corner of the sheet. He then remains perfectly tranquil and quiescent, the sheet absorbs any excess of moisture, and the accumulated heat of the body disperses the rest. After fifteen or twenty minutes he exposes an arm to the air; then both arms and the upper part of the trunk of the body; then the lower limbs; bringing every part of the skin in succession into relation with the cool air or cool breeze of the apartment. Of course, where an attendant is attached to the bath, the investiture with the mantle, the wiping of the head and face, the wrapping of the separate limbs, and the packing of the body, are performed by such attendant, or one bather performs the office for another; but where the bather is alone, he finds no difficulty in doing it all for himself.
The cooling and drying process, which is the special use of the Frigidarium, is regarded by experts as not the least important part of the curriculum of the bath. It is here that the moisture is dissipated from the skin by the heat of the body, that the bather recovers from any little physical exhaustion that the processes of the Lavatorium may have occasioned, that the skin is brought into contact with the open air, and imbibes its oxygen; that the man becomes sensible of a delicious repose of the nervous system, and an equally agreeable restoration of his powers. If the quiet impassibility of the Roman, or the listlessness of the Turk, is to be imitated in the preceding stages of the bath, it is doubly deserving of imitation here; calm, repose, dignity, thankfulness, should fill the soul of the bather while in the Frigidarium. When his skin is perfectly dry, but still warm, smooth, and satiny to the touch, then, and then only, slowly and leisurely, he should begin to resume his usual clothing. If he dress too soon he will be apt to break out into a perspiration while putting on his clothes, or after quitting the bath; in which case he will be in danger of taking cold, and frustrating the benefits of the bath.