History of SanitationCosgrove, J. J. (John Joseph)
History
History of Sanitation
Cosgrove, J. J. (John Joseph)
Sanitation -- History
There is a platform or ambulatory around the bath, also of marble, and
four inches of the same material disposed at regular intervals around
the walls, with pedestals for statues probably placed in them. The
ceiling is vaulted and the chamber lighted by a window in the center.
The annexed woodcut represents a frigidarium with its cold bath at
one extremity, supposed to have formed a part of the Formian Villa of
Cicero, to whose age the style of construction, the use of the simple
Doric order, undoubtedly belongs. The bath itself, into which water
still continues to flow from a neighboring spring, is placed under the
alcove, and the two doors on each side opened into small chambers.
In the cold bath of Pompeii the water ran into the basin through a
spout of bronze and was carried off again through a conduit on the
opposite side. It was also furnished with a waste pipe under the coping
to prevent the water from running over.
[Illustration: Atlantes. From an old woodcut]
No. 11 is a small chamber on the side opposite to the frigidarium,
which might have served for shaving or for keeping unguents or
strigils; and from the centers of the side of the frigidarium, the
bather who intended to go through the process of warm bathing and
sudation entered into 12, the tepidarium.
The tepidarium did not contain water, either at Pompeii or at the
baths of Hippias, but was merely heated with warm air of an agreeable
temperature, in order to prepare the body for the great heat of the
vapor and warm baths; and, upon returning, to obviate the danger of too
sudden transition to the open air.
In the baths of Pompeii, this chamber served likewise as a disrobing
room for those who took the warm bath, for which purpose the fittings
up are evidently adapted, the walls being divided into a number of
separate compartments or recesses for receiving the garments when taken
off. One of these compartments, known as an Atlantes, is shown in the
annexed woodcut.
In addition to this service there can be little doubt that this
apartment was used as a depository for unguents and a room for
anointing, which service was performed by slaves. For the purpose of
anointing, the common people used oil simply or sometimes scented, but
the more wealthy classes indulged in the greatest extravagances with
regard to their perfumes and unguents. These they evidently procured
from the elæothesium of the baths, or brought with them in small
glass bottles, hundreds of which have been discovered in different
excavations made in various parts of Italy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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