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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2018
In the Journal of Mental Science for July, 1861, there is a review (which I wrote) of Mr. Erasmus Wilson's work on the Eastern, Turkish, or, more properly, Roman bath. Besides entering into the general history of the revival of the bath in England, and of the method of its administration (as now used in London), a ground plan and description is given there of a Roman bath erected by the Visitors of the Sussex Lunatic Asylum, on my representations of its possible efficacy in the curative treatment of mental disease. For facility of reference I reprint at the end of this paper this description of the Hayward's Heath Bath, with the illustration.
∗ Distinction between the Roman and Turkish Bath.—Mr. Wilson generally uses the term Turkish bath in speaking of the hot-air bath. As used, however, in England, the hot-air bath resembles more the Roman than the Turkish, and for all sanitary and remedial purposes, the more we approach the Roman usage of the bath, the better shall we fulfil its indications.Google Scholar
A very few words will show how materially the two processes differ. The Roman bath was a tonic and bracing agent, fitted for the use of the great people who invented it; the Turkish bath is an enervating process, just suited for the effeminate Turk. The bracing of the body by cold water was the end of the Roman process; the luxurious cooling of the body by the slow action of the air, the bather the while indulging in the use of narcotic stimulants, is the summary of the Turkish bath. It is important that the distintion between these two forms of the hot-air hath, the Roman and the Turkish, should be insisted on. Much of the popular prejudice against the use of the bath, and the contrasts drawn between its health-giving use and that of a good day's hunting or shooting, result from the popular and just notions of the effeminacy of the modern Eastern bath, with its abominable process of shampooing and its luxurious ease and enervating cooling process. Only let the English public know that the revival of the bath in England is accompanied with the tonic and bracing practices of the early Roman bath, and these prejudices will soon yield, and the bath become a national institution in our towns, a necessary in our country houses, and a therapeutic agent in every hospital and asylum in the land.Google Scholar
∗ I have one of these old opium cases, which I removed from a London licensed house, and in which I was obliged to give twenty grains of solid opium a day, so confirmed had the poisonous hahit become. When the drug was withdrawn or lessened, acute maniacal symptoms, with strong suicidal tendency, supervened. For the last three months I have discontinued the opium and given the bath twice a week with rather an improvement in health and mind.Google Scholar
∗ I took the opportunity of a visit he paid me, of consulting my friend, Dr. Sherlock, on this case. He advised porter and extra meat diet, which she got, but without any mitigation of the symptoms.Google Scholar
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