The eastern or Turkish bath

by Sir Erasmus Wilson

Again, high temperatures clearly frustrate the purpose of the bath; by producing excessive perspiration, they shorten the period passed in the bath; they bring it to a too sudden and too rapid conclusion. Profuse perspiration is an excess of function, and excess of function cannot exist without fatigue and consequent injury to the organ so excited; together with more or less disturbance of the whole economy. I have had many complaints of the bath made to me, which have been clearly referrible to the use of high temperatures at the beginning of treatment; and the abuse is so plain, that I wonder, having once occurred, it could again be repeated.

These remarks point to the importance of a Tepidarium when a Tepidarium can be obtained; the time passed in the Tepidarium may be considerable, the body undergoing a gradual process of warming, of softening, of perspiration; and at the end of this process, being transferred for a few minutes only to the Calidarium.

TIME OF TAKING THE BATH.

The best time for taking the Turkish Bath, and, indeed, every form of bath, is that which is least likely to interfere with the process of digestion; for example, before a meal. But at this point it is necessary to draw a line of distinction between the Turkish Bath and all other kinds of bath: the Turkish Bath abstracts from the system a proportion of its solid constituents, more or less considerable, while it makes only a gasiform return in the form of oxygen. All other baths abstract little or nothing; and therefore, in this particular, there is a wide and important difference between them. It is as needful to take the sea bath before a meal as it is the Turkish Bath; but the sea bath may be taken before breakfast, which I should in nowise advocate in the case of the Turkish Bath. I do not mean that, to those who can bear it and who approve of it, the Turkish Bath might not be suitable on first rising in the morning; but the generality of mankind will find the most advantageous time for taking it from three or four, to five or six hours after meal. At that time there will be that in the economy which nature can spare, and often with benefit to the health, the waste of the digestive process, the detrita of nutrition; whereas, before breakfast, there is or ought to be scant matter for giving off from the blood by way of perspiration. Invalids may take the Turkish Bath three hours after breakfast; or three hours after the midday meal or lunch; while the man of occupation may advantageously devote to its rites the hour and a half or two hours which immediately precede dinner; and the more engaged may probably, with equal advantage, take it in the evening, after the dust and toil of the day are at an end, and shortly before bedtime.

"Would it be no comfort, no pleasure, no benefit to an English lady, on returning from a ball, and before going to bed, to be able, divested of whalebone and crinoline, and robed as an Atalanta, to enter marble chambers with mosaic floors, and be refreshed and purified from the toil she has undergone, and prepared for the soft enjoyment of the rest she seeks?"[16]

DURATION AND FREQUENCY OF THE BATH.

The length of time spent in the bath must be regulated: partly by the object to be obtained; partly by the habits of the individual as regards the use of the bath; partly by his strength and powers of constitution; and partly by the temperature of the bath. The object of the bather may be a moderate perspiration, or a thorough sweat; he may desire simply to evaporate from his skin the waste particles that occasion fatigue; or he may wish to distil from his blood the morbid atomies of rheumatism, neuralgia, or gout; he may seek for the after enjoyment which follows upon a day's hunting or shooting; or he may strive to gain the health-giving results of active exercise, for a body that has been immured in committee or in office all the day long. I have shown, in an illustration at p. 78, how the bath may be used for the removal of fatigue, of hunger, the cobwebs of the brain; and how it may be made to fortify the powers of the muscular system and of digestion.

The practised bather will know when to cease the bath, without reference to other authority than his own sensations and experience. The weak and the strong must be equally guided by their powers of endurance, and all must be influenced to a greater or less extent by the thermometer. A bath at 180° cannot be borne for the same length of time as a bath at 130°; and it is clear that if a protracted bath be the object sought to be attained, the temperature must be moderate and agreeable to the sensations. In the baths of very high temperature the bather is forced to retreat before a full perspiration is accomplished, and he is therefore rendered liable to a secondary perspiration, which chills the skin and endangers catarrh and other local congestions, while he is deprived of the refreshing and exhilarating sensation which follows a properly-accomplished bath. For him, there is no jumping over a lamp-post, much less "the moon."

I have often passed an hour in the bath. Mr. Urquhart, Mr. Holland, and Mr. Witt have spent several consecutive hours in the bath. Mr. Rolland lived in the bath for three days, quitting it only for a short period at a time. To some, a quarter of an hour in the Calidarium would be enough; while others would prefer half or three-quarters of an hour. The Romans indulged in the bath to so great an excess, that it became necessary to pass a law to restrict its use to two hours. Dr. Millingen, Physician to the Sultan, in a letter from Constantinople, addressed to Mr. George Witt, observes:—"If a Moslem enters the bath for the object of a legal ablution, half an hour is amply sufficient; if, however, a person wishes to go through all the stages of a complete bath, an hour, at least, or one hour and a half, is the usual time."

The frequency of taking the bath must, like other points of balneal economy, be regulated by the purpose sought to be attained. Where maintenance of existing health is the object, once or twice a week may be sufficient. I can conceive the bath to be made a part of the process known as "dressing for dinner," and then it may be taken as often as we dine. Medically, its frequency of repetition must be left to the medical man; and in every case the amount of effect produced must regulate its repetition. "Little and often," I would suggest as a maxim applicable to the bath as to some others of the enjoyments of life; and much to be preferred to the opposite position, "seldom and much." The Romans took the bath daily; the Mussulmans take it once a week.