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1:
Hot-air bathing before the Victorian Turkish bath
In
1856, after a break of over fourteen hundred years, the hot dry-air
bath was re-introduced into the British Isles. The history of
this Victorian institution, spuriously known as the Turkish bath, has
not previously been systematically explored; it has, indeed, been
almost totally ignored.
There
is no shortage of writing on the subject—for those willing to seek
it out—yet taken as a whole, it hardly comprises a literature in any
academic sense of the word. These notes, therefore, after briefly
outlining a long ‘prehistory’, are intended to draw attention to
some of the more useful sources of information which might lead the
historian towards a feeling that the history of the Victorian Turkish
bath is more interesting than might have been expected.
Definitions
and background
Finding an accurate definition of Turkish bath is not easy; those to
be found in most modern dictionaries tend to bewilder rather than
elucidate. They range from the inexact, through the confused, to the
totally incorrect.
As noted earlier, the phrase—as it will be used on this site—is
defined thus:
Turkish
bath n. 1. a type of bath in which the bather sweats freely in a
room heated by hot dry air (or in a series of two or three rooms
maintained at progressively higher temperatures), usually followed by
a cold plunge, a full body wash and massage, and a final period of
relaxation in a cooling-room.
As
generally understood, bathing is the process of immersing the
body, or part of the body, in a medium which enables it to be cleansed
or medically treated. Water is the most usual medium and, for public
bathing even today, the use of extremely hot water is still the
preferred medium among the Japanese.
But alternatives to water—such as asses’ milk, mud, steam, or hot
dry air—can be used to beautify, medicate, or produce cleansing
sweat.
Public
steam baths are known to have been in use in the ancient city-state of
Sparta, although public bathing, even in Europe, almost certainly
predates this. Spartan bathers would remain in the steam until they
were sweating profusely and then immediately plunge into an adjacent
cold water pool to cool down again.
The
use of steam baths spread, first throughout Greece, then later,
westwards to Rome. The practice seems to have travelled also in a
northerly direction, originating from early Greek settlements in the
south of what is now the Ukraine and, thereafter, becoming widespread
in much of the area which was, until recently, known as the Soviet
Union. As a result, steam and vapour baths are often still referred to
as Russian baths.
The
Finnish sauna is often thought to have developed from the Russian
bath, but most authorities believe that this unique building, ie,
the sauna (wherein the bather is able to change hot dry air into hot
wet air and back again at will) developed independently in Finland.
But
it was the Romans who, by adopting the concept of the public bath and
developing it to an extremely sophisticated level, were pre-eminent in
the provision of bathing facilities to an extent which has not been
surpassed to this day. In Rome itself, the first public baths (Balnea)
appear to have been built during the second century bce,
and in the following years public bathing found increasing favour.
The
Roman baths
It is
difficult to determine when the Romans first began bathing in rooms
heated by air which was not only hot, but also dry. However, it seems
unlikely that this would have been possible until after the
development of the hypocaust as an effective hot-air central heating
system.
Roman
engineers were unable to measure specific temperatures, but
they would have been only too conscious of the constraining fact that
a steam bath could have but one temperature—that of steam. The use
of a hypocaust made it relatively easy to maintain a sequence of rooms
at increasingly high temperatures, depending on the size of each room
and its proximity to the source of the circulating hot air. The
hottest room was known as the laconicum, a word derived from
Laconian (the Romanised form of Spartan).
After
the adoption of the hypocaust, Roman baths typically included (in
addition to the rooms heated by dry air) a steam room, cold plunge
pool, and rest rooms. Roman bathers repeatedly moved between different
types of bath, alternating between hot dry air and the steam rooms,
and between the cold water and the hot water baths.
During
the centuries which followed, the range of facilities grew to such an
extent that the great imperial thermae (hot baths) of Caracalla
and Diocletian were like palatial leisure centres set in beautiful
public gardens. They included swimming pools, and areas for ball
games, wrestling and exercising with weights, not to mention a variety
of relaxation areas, galleries and libraries.
Fikret Yegül, in his scholarly but eminently readable Baths and
bathing in classical antiquity, devotes several well-illustrated
chapters to the various types of bath to be found in Greece, Rome, Asia
Minor and the Middle East, placing special emphasis on the architecture
of the baths and the manner in which each was used. There is also an
important detailed account of the heating and water supply systems used
by the Romans.
Further information is to be found in Inge Nielsen’s two-volume
study Thermae et balnea which limits its coverage to the architecture
and cultural history of Roman baths open to the public. Descriptions of
the baths are arranged geographically, but
there is
also valuable information relating to such matters as the water
system, fuel consumption, admission fees, and staffing. An appendix on
the areas and components of the baths explains their origins,
functions, and the etymology of the words which describe them—words
such as apodyterium (undressing-room), frigidarium
(cooling-room), tepidarium (warm room), and caldarium
(hot room) which the Victorians, perhaps somewhat pretentiously, often
used in describing their own baths.
A more recent work is Garrett G Fagan's Bathing in public in the
Roman world in which the emphasis, unusual and most welcome, is on
bathing and the bathers, rather than the on the baths as architectural
constructions. In particular, Garrett looks at questions which in due
course will be discussed on this site in relation to the Victorian
Turkish bath: the bath as cleanser and curative agent; how the baths
spread and why they were they so popular.
As the area under Roman control expanded, so the number of Roman
baths increased. Eventually they were to be found in almost every corner
of their empire. In Britain, the baths whose extensive remains can still
be seen in the City of Bath (the Roman Aquae Sulis) were, perhaps, the
most impressive. Of the many books about them, Roman Bath discovered by
Barry Cunliffe, Director of the most recent excavations there, is both
scholarly and accessible.
On
the British mainland there are currently more than thirty sites where
partial remains of Roman baths are open to public view. For the
general reader, Tony Rook's Roman baths in Britain
is a first class mini-guide which deals with their history,
construction, and use. Illustrated with photographs, drawings and
plans, it also includes a gazetteer listing all the sites.
In Rome, the building of baths as luxurious as those of Caracalla did
not last. Increasingly frequent attacks on the western provinces led in
476 CE to the end of the western empire. As in Britain, many public
baths were among the buildings which were destroyed, or which later fell
into disrepair and eventual ruin.
By contrast with the western empire, the Roman empire of the east was
rich, well populated, and less subject to foreign attack. The Emperor
Constantine’s capital, the New Rome, later renamed Constantinople (and
more recently, Istanbul), contributed to the economic wellbeing and
survival, for almost a further thousand years, of what later became
known as the Byzantine Empire.
The
Islamic bath
After
the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Roman bath was adopted, and
adapted, by the Muslim Ottoman conquerors. Ritual bathing and
cleanliness are intrinsic to Islam, and the Islamic bath is a
felicitous combination of the religious bathing tradition of the
Muslim, and the elaborate bathing procedures of the Romans.
A
typical hammáám includes a warm room, hot room, and steam
room, with dressing rooms and areas for massage, relaxation, and
refreshment—but omits the Roman cold plunge or swimming pool.
As
the Roman bath followed the Roman legions, so the Islamic bath
followed the Ottomans. Lavishly enriched with mosaic designs and
furnished with fountains and decorative pools, such opulence could be
found as far afield as Aleppo in Syria, and Granada in Moorish Spain.
More
prosaic baths can be found all over western Asia, Arabia, and the
Maghreb, while the remains of disused baths can be seen, for example,
among the Moorish buildings of Gerona in Spain, and the Turkish
buildings of Hania in Crete.
The
public bath in Britain
In
Britain, however, the Roman baths appear to have fallen into disuse
quite soon after the departure of their Roman builders; English
crusaders returning from foreign excursions reported their discovery
of Islamic bathing practices in the belief that they had previously
been totally unknown in their homeland.
But although the use of hot-air baths ceased after the Romans left
Britain, other forms of public bathing appeared from time to time. The
Russian, steam, or vapour bath, either plain or medicated, was just
one of several types available during the first years of Queen
Victoria’s reign to those who could afford their use. Roth
provides a good description of Russian vapour and steam baths in the
1850s, with an illustration of his own establishment in London’s Old
Cavendish Street.
For
those unable to afford such luxuries, publicly funded provision of hot
and cold water baths first became possible after the passing of the
Public Baths and Wash-houses Acts of 1846 and 1847. The acts
themselves were not mandatory but, if adopted, two
classes of bath had to be provided, with maximum charges of 1d and 2d
for cold and hot baths respectively.
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