The eastern or Turkish bath

by Sir Erasmus Wilson

3. "The shampooers spend eight hours daily in the steam; they undergo great labour there, shampooing, perhaps, a dozen persons, and are remarkably healthy. They enter the bath at eight years of age: the duties of the younger portion are light, and chiefly outside in the hall to which the bathers retire after the bath; still, there they are from that tender age exposed to the steam and heat, so as to have their strength broken, if the bath were debilitating. The best shampooer under whose hands I have ever been, was a man whose age was given me as ninety, and who, from eight years of age, had been daily eight hours in the bath. This was at the natural baths of Sophia. I might adduce in like manner the sugar-bakers of London, who, in a temperature not less than that of the bath, undergo great fatigue, and are also remarkably healthy."

The medical properties of the bath are based upon its powers of altering the chemical and electrical conditions of the organic structures of the body and abstracting its fluids. The whole of these changes take place simultaneously, and no doubt harmoniously; but in certain instances we may rely upon a greater activity of one of these processes over the other two: for example, in neuralgia, the electrical power should preponderate; in the destruction of miasma and poisonous ferments, the chemical power; and in the slow removal of accumulated morbid deposits, as in chronic gout and rheumatism, the fluid abstracting power. The required greater activity of one or other of these powers would also be our guide to those physical conditions of the bath which are calculated to effect these objects—for example, temperature and moisture. The temperature and degree of moisture for the treatment of disease must be different from that which is suitable to health. It may be necessary to have recourse to very high temperatures; or it may be requisite to fall below the healthy standard. Moreover, the healthy standard itself may require variation for different individuals and different constitutions. The physician is perfectly conversant with this necessity of adapting his means to the special constitution or idiosyncrasy of his patient.

One of the most important properties of the bath is its power of preserving that balance of the nutritive functions of the body which in its essence is health; in other words, preserving the condition of the body. The healthy condition implies an exact equipoise of the fluids and the solids, of the muscular and the fatty tissues, of the waste and the supply. This state of the body is normally preserved by a proportioned amount of air, exercise or labour, and food; but even the air, the exercise, the labour, and the food must be apportioned, in its kind and in its order, to the peculiar constitution of the individual. Those who have ever had occasion to reflect on this subject, must have felt the difficulties which surround it, and have been aware how extremely difficult it is to say what may be faulty in our mode of using these necessaries of our existence. If I were asked to select an example, as a standard of the just equipoise of these conditions, I should take the ploughman; intellect at the standard of day to day existence, moderate food, vigorous but not over-strained labour, plenty of air, and plentiful exposure. But who would care to accept existence on such terms as these. Give us brain, give us mind, however ungovernable, however preponderant its overweight to the physical powers, however destructive to the powers of the body. In a word, we select a morbid condition: our meals, our air, our exercise, our indoor and outdoor habits are all unsound; we prefer that they should be unsound; the necessities of our life, of our position, require that they should be unsound. How grand, therefore, the boon that will correct these evils without the necessity for making any inconvenient alteration in our habits!

That Boon is the Bath. The bath promotes those changes in the blood for which fresh air is otherwise needful. The bath gives us appetite, and strengthens digestion. The bath serves us in lieu of exercise. "The people who use it," writes Mr. Urquhart, "do not require exercise for health, and can pass from the extreme of indolence to that of toil." How glorious a panacea for those home-loving matrons whom no inducement can draw forth from their Lares and Penates, to enjoy a daily wholesome exercise, and who, as a consequence, become large, and full, and fat, and bilious, and wheezy; and who, in their breach of Heaven's law, lay the foundation of heart disease. "A nation without the bath is deprived of a large portion of the health and inoffensive enjoyment within man's reach; it therefore increases the value of a people to itself, and its power as a nation over other people."[17]

Dr. Millingen, in the letter to Mr. George Witt, previously referred to, makes the following interesting remarks on the bath, and offers an opinion of its importance, for which we were hardly prepared in a man living in its midst, and having its operation constantly under his eye. The prophet is clearly no less a prophet at home than abroad:—"As to the application of the bath in the prevention and cure of diseases. The working classes among the Turks, for such classes do exist, and are as numerous and fully more hard-working than elsewhere, know of no other means of prevention, on feeling indisposed, but the bath. In the numerous cases arising from sudden changes in the temperature of the body, a copious perspiration, which a stay of more or less duration in the Calidarium is sure to occasion, does, in the great majority of cases, restore the body to the equilibrium of health. After over-exertion, again, the bath is had recourse to. In short, it is looked upon so much in the light of a panacea by the lower orders, that they hardly ever dream of consulting a physician when taken unwell. If the bath fail to cure them, nothing else will succeed. This prevailing conviction accounts, in a great measure, for the total absence of dispensaries and civil hospitals, not only in this large city, but throughout the empire. Yet I apprehend, from the tables of mortality monthly published, that the mortality is not greater than it is in countries blessed with those institutions. The higher classes, and women especially, do not, as with us, know much about regular exercise, so that I perfectly agree with you that, were it not for the ample compensation afforded by the bath, they would not enjoy the excellent health they generally possess.

"You speak of the temperance of the people as being pointed out as the principal cause of gout being hardly known in this country. If this is partly true, on the other hand I must remark that intemperance of late years is much on the increase; and, moreover, that it is carried on to an extent which, if stated, might be looked upon as fabulous. Yet the gout is not more prevalent, nor delirium tremens either. This immunity I can attribute to nothing else but to the expulsion of the alcohol circulating in the system, by the lungs and skin, during the stay in the bath. You wish to know how long, on an average, does a person remain in the bath. 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.

"I consider that you are engaged in an attempt, which, if successful, will confer in an hygienic point of view, a service on our countrymen as eminent as the discovery that has immortalized the name of Jenner.

"We have not here the statistical returns indispensable to ascertain whether the medium range of human life is above or below the average in other countries. Instances of extraordinary longevity are far from being uncommon. I have known, and know yet, several individuals among the natives more than a hundred years old."

My friend B—— is a man of leisure, so far as the common necessities of life are concerned; his worldly career has been successful; and, in gratitude to the Giver of mercies, he has devoted the remainder of his days to the service of God, to the doing of all the good he can to his fellow man; he is largely concerned in the management of public charities of all kinds; he is regular in his habits, active, and moderate in his diet; but, in spite of moderation, he is fat, and as a man who despises personal indulgence, his fat is an annoyance to him, and an incumbrance. "What can I do to become less bulky?" said he to me one day. "Go to the bath," said I; "and after the bath walk to your home in Kensington." "Impossible," said he; "Kensington is three miles away, and I cannot walk the length of a street without panting." "Have faith," said I, "and do as I tell you." A week after I received a note from B——: "I took the bath, as you desired me; after the bath I felt that I could walk to Kensington, or to Richmond, if I had chosen; but I had an appointment that obliged me to hurry home in a cab. Yesterday I took a second bath; I did walk home to Kensington, no less to my own amazement than that of my family; I ate my dinner with a relish that I had not known for years; and after dinner, the power and the desire to walk were so great that I could hardly repress them." B—— has continued the bath regularly ever since; he looks fresh and well, and more shapely; he knows no fatigue in walking; during the late severe winter he has required no great coat; in the midst of the bitterest frost he walked to the Serpentine in his shirt sleeves, with his coat upon his arm, and his clothing is now his only incumbrance. "I want to fit up a bath for the poor in my neighbourhood," was his remark to me at a late interview. "What convenience have you for the purpose?" said I. "A capital roomy cellar," was his answer. "Sell your wine, then," said I, "and make a bath." "Oh! I can give away my wine," was his rejoinder; "those who take the bath need no wine." Heaven's blessing on thy head, B——; thou art an honour to the name of Man.

While on the subject of examples of benefit to the health resulting from the use of the bath, I may mention the case of a neighbour, by name Buckland, who has put up a bath in Westmoreland-street, Marylebone. Buckland was an upholsterer, but being seized with rheumatic gout, lost his business and fell into poverty. For fifteen, years he was a cripple, and tried in vain, medical remedies, waters, and baths, one while taking the baths of Buxton, and another, drinking the healing waters of Wales. He then, by good luck, fell under the influence of Mr. Urquhart: by his advice he visited Manchester, and took several Turkish Baths there; he then returned to London and followed a course of baths at Evans's in Bell Street, Edgeware Road; and in 1859 he fitted his own bath, and has managed it ever since. He is no longer a cripple, but able to earn own livelihood, and is an object of astonishment to those who knew him in the days of his suffering. The medical eye discovers that he is not thoroughly sound yet; but the degree of recovery which has already taken place is marvellous, and one instance among many of the triumph of the Turkish Bath. He has also had the good sense to discover the evil of very high temperatures; so that he is one among the very few to whom I can conscientiously consign the invalid.