The Russian bath : published with a view to recommend its introduction into England for hygienic as well as curative purposes / by Mathias Roth.

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Russian bath : published with a view to recommend its introduction into England for hygienic as well as curative purposes / by Mathias Roth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    THE BATH IN RUSSIA. Mr. Tooke (View of the Russian Empire, vol. ii. p. 27) informs us that the lower classes of Russians, in general, use but few medicines, supplying their place in all cases by the sweating bath, a practice universal among them, and which has a decided influence on the whole physical state of the people. The use of the bath, that relic of the manners of the ancient world, as this inge- nious writer denominates it, is now almost entirely confined to the oriental nations, where it ministers both to health and to luxury, and is perpetuated by religion ; in Europe it has been gradually declining for several centuries, though it was here also in some sort interwoven with re- ligion, the holy water of the Roman Catholic Church being a slight remnant of it. In Russia particularly, the bath forms so essential a part of the system of living, that it is used by people of every age and in all circumstances; for infants and lying-in- women ; in almost all sicknesses; before and after a journey; after hard work, etc. The bath is a necessary of life so indispensable to the common people, that they frequent it as often as possible, well or ill, and without any parti- cular occasion, once a week at least. Persons of middle station in good circumstances, and the great, usually con- struct vapour-baths, after the Russian fashion, in their own houses. Baths have been common in Russia from time immemorial; they were described by Nestor, so long ago as the eleventh century, precisely in their present form. In Russia, the public baths, called public because they are under the care of the police, and let out to com- mon people on account of the Imperial Treasury, usually consist of mean wooden houses, situated, when it is possible, by the side of a running stream ; in the bath-room is a large vaulted oven, which, when heated, makes the paving-stones lying upon it red hot, and adjoining to the oven is a boiler fixed in masonry, for the purpose of holding heated water.