'Diogenes', whose
Life in a
tub had been singled out for criticism by Madden, took this as
an opportunity to reply. He sought first
to set the record straight regarding the supposed contamination of
the air in the bathing rooms by fumes from the furnace, and
dismissed as fanciful the notion that, since there were no such
fumes, Madden's 'feelings of oppression, heaviness, and slight
headache' could not be caused by them.
I have never experienced, or imagined that I
experienced, such a sensation in the Bray bath, to which I presume
Dr Madden refers; but then I was fortified against any nervous
suggestion of the kind by the knowledge that the hot air flues
communicating with the furnace are hermetically secured, and that
the objectionable 'effluvia of coke, in a state of combustion', are
only permitted to contaminate the external atmosphere, at an
elevation of more than 60 feet above the heads of the bathers; and
that the slender tower-like shaft, which lends additional beauty to
that graceful building, also discharges important utilitarian
duties, and insures that the due exit of the combusted coke, after
the latter, in its passage through the network of flues, has
communicated its genial heat, but not its contamination, to the
bathing rooms.
'Diogenes' himself seems to have been guilty
of some careless writing here since he inadvertently, also gives the impression,
not borne out in fact, that the coke fumes travelled round the flues
under the bathing rooms instead of directly up the chimney. But
no-one seems to have picked this up and he seems to have got away
with it.
He then discusses Madden's contention that one
of the principal failings of the western, as opposed to the eastern,
bath was the absence of visible vapour. On the contrary, he
explains, this distinguishing feature is not a consequence of
ignorance or false economy but 'a result deliberately arrived at by
the inventor after long consideration and experience'. For this
reason, the western bath has been called 'the improved Turkish bath'
and the Sultan's physicians 'have not failed to recognise it as
such' when the bath is used as a therapeutic agent.
The peculiar moisture which pervades the
atmosphere of the Eastern bath, and which is strongly perceptible to
more senses than those of sight and feeling, is certainly absent in
our Irish bath, and we are weak enough to congratulate ourselves
upon this deficiency.
'Diogenes' then deals with Madden's
pulse-taking experiments. Admitting that the pulse of a bather is
increased in a bath, he points out that of all the heated baths
known, the hot air bath is 'the least exciting.' And, since his
point is easily proved by experiment, he issues a challenge. A given
number of bathers should stay in a dry air bath held at a given
temperature for a specific period of time and their pulses should be
recorded. Then the experiment should be repeated by letting them
'pass the same amount of time (if they can)' in the same atmosphere
at the same temperature, 'but Orientalized by the addition of
visible and palpable vapour'. Again their pulses should be recorded.
I feel so satisfied from actual experience
that the question will be decided most evidently in favour of the
Irish bath, that I am prepared to stake £500 on the issue of the
trial, if anyone will accept the wager.
This last point was confirmed by another
letter, published by the Cork Daily Herald on the following day:
Dr Madden has gone into much detail regarding
the effect of the Turkish bath on the pulse, but he has not
condescended to give us any statistics respecting the effects on the
pulse by the Eastern bath, the vapour bath, or the ordinary
warm-water bath; and I now tell him, as the result of many
experiments on the subject at Blarney, that the improved Turkish
bath produces incomparably the least disturbing effect on the pulse
of any hot bath yet invented, which fact I challenge him to
disprove; and I can further tell him that the improved Turkish bath
now derided by him is the direct result of experiments made by Dr
Barter on this very subject.
The writer of this letter, from an address in
Dublin, was Dr Richard Griffith, Jnr. It may be that he was a
director of the Turkish Bath Company of Dublin since all his points
have the feel of authority about them and, on occasion, he uses 'we'
as if speaking for the company.
Referring to the assertion that, in the
hot-room, 'there is a communication beneath the bench with a hot-air
channel, the mouth of which is in one of the furnaces,' Griffith—implicitly
correcting the careless remark of 'Diogenes'—writes:
I cannot but hold Dr Madden grossly culpable
in making so unfounded a statement, since by taking the smallest
pains he might have easily informed himself of the actual state of
the facts, and have avoided exposing himself as he has
done...First,...no portion whatever of the floor of the bath
communicates with the heated air of the furnaces; on the contrary,
the floor between them is hermetically sealed, is nine inches in
thickness, and all the products of combustion pass directly to the
main chimney of the building. Secondly, the slab in question is in
immediate communication with the external air, and on opening the
ventilator attached to it, becomes the coolest portion of the
bath—the 'slab where water boils' becoming cooled down to 98º or
100º.
Griffith had, earlier in his letter, likened
Madden to a lover who, 'deprived of the object of his affections,
bemoans in touching terms the loss of his old friend of 35 years
standing, the Hammam of Turkey and Egypt.' Now he goes on to deal
with Madden's criticism of the use of coke to heat the Bray
furnaces.
Instead of following senselessly or blindly
the institutions of the East, it has been our aim to copy them in
all that our reason approved, omitting those practices which seemed
neither necessary nor desirable. We have not, for instance, set
aside the use of coke, and had recourse to a less efficient and more
expensive fuel—namely, wood, for the childish reason that they do
so in the East, albeit, for this we have incurred the censure of Dr
Madden. Does Dr Madden really think the Easterns, if placed in our
position, would use wood instead of coke; if he does, he puts
forward an argument against their shrewdness and intelligence, and
gives us an additional reason for not blindly adopting all their
practices; if he does not believe it, what is the meaning of his
sneer about Brummagem ideas?
As 'Photophilus' claimed, the new Irish Bath
did indeed repel the attack made upon it 'with a display of inherent
vitality'.
