The modern "Turkish bath" is rather a revival of the Roman bath, than that of the East. Among the Orientals, the air of the sudorific chambers is charged more or less heavily with vapour. In the ancient Roman bath, the atmosphere must have been more or less dry. And it has been decided by physiologists and physicians of the hydropathic school, that the air of the bath cannot be too free of all moisture. With a perfectly dry atmosphere a high degree of heat can be borne, and the dryness moreover is conducive to perspiration. This absolute need for a dry atmosphere in the bath will be found fully explained in an admirable work by Dr. W.B. Hunter, M.D., entitled 'The Turkish Bath: its Uses and Abuses.' But notwithstanding the fact that the type of bath employed at the present day resembles, in point of dryness of atmosphere, that of ancient Rome, the name of Turkish bath, originally given to it by Mr. Urquhart, has held good, and must now be accepted as the correct modern designation. Neither the term "Turkish," however, nor the designation "hot-air" bath, convey to the uninitiated any idea of the true principle of "the bath," as I shall hereinafter call it for brevity's sake. More properly it is a "_heat_ bath"--a _thermal cure_. In the ordinary hot-air bath, the heated air is simply a medium; and, as I have endeavoured to explain in the body of this little work, the heat is best supplied to the body of the bather by direct radiation. By the "Turkish bath," therefore, I would be understood to mean a method of supplying pure heat--not necessarily hot air--to the surface of the human body for hygienic, remedial, and curative purposes.[1] In the following pages, however, I have, in this respect, treated of the subject from the broadest point of view, and have explained the method of designing the _hot-air bath_ pure and simple, looking upon the convected and radiating heat principles as both good of their kind, and perfectly admissible modes of applying heat to the human frame. I have adhered to this plan throughout, because, even supposing that it were shown conclusively to-morrow, that the principle of heating by convection is absolutely wrong, baths of this type would, owing to the slow march of improvement in this country, still be built and require to be planned. Moreover, it has been in the past, and still is, the generally accepted idea that the Turkish bath is a hot-air bath pure and simple. Medical men of eminence who have studied the question have thought fit to retain the term "hot air" in descriptions of the Turkish bath. In deference to their opinion I may hereinafter, in places, speak of the _hot-air bath_. The arguments put forward in favour of radiant heat, with a comparatively cool atmosphere, in the sudorific chambers, are, for the most part, the result of my own experience and study.