Turkish and Other Baths: A Guide to Good Health and LongevityStables, Gordon
Science
Turkish and Other Baths: A Guide to Good Health and Longevity
Stables, Gordon
Baths, Turkish
He parts with his ticket or half-crown with pleasure, feeling in his
inmost heart that he has the best of the bargain. And so he enters his
little sanctum and begins to undress. He would fain hurry off his
garments: he longs to be free but he remembers that everything ought to
be done leisurely for his good. But now the last article of apparel is
laid carefully aside and he smiles to himself--a happy smile--as he dons
the cummerbund, or cotton pyjamas, and issues forth to enter the
calidarium.
He will not have long remained here until beads of perspiration appear
on chest and brow, and arms, gradually extending downwards until limbs
and even feet are covered with a warm moisture. A mouthful or two of
cold water will cause the drops of perspiration to accumulate and
increase in size, until uniting, they trickle "in burns"--as the Scotch
call it, from the body. He has very likely assumed a reclining position
on a wooden cane-bottomed settee. Here he may read if so minded, he
will hardly care to talk, if he does he ought not to. A strange dreamy
kind of happiness steals over him, not wild exciting thoughts like those
of the opium-eater. No, his is now indeed the _dolce far niente_; he
has eaten the lotus leaf, all worldly cares, if he has any, are for the
time being forgotten, he even wonders that he permitted anything
sublunary to worry him.
And so the time passes all too quickly away. Perhaps the attendant now
warns him it is time to retire, or to enter even a hotter room in which
he will stay a shorter time, then thence to the lavatory. How pleasant
the trickling of the warm shower bath, how delightful the soap shampoo,
that removes every bit from top to toe of the unhealthy, or at least
superfluous scarf skin.
Every particle of impurity may be said to have exuded from the blood,
which is now pure as the constitution of the bather can permit it to be,
and every particle of impurity has been washed by shampooing from the
outer surface. The warm shower completes the cleansing. But now the
gaping pores must be made to contract, their fibres are relaxed they
must be closed. But however cold the water douche may be, by which this
operation is performed, to the bather it seems most pleasant and
delicious.
Wrapped in a sheet from head to heel he once more passes through the
calidarium, on his way to the cooling room. He may linger here for a
few moments if so minded but not for long, only just to restore a gentle
warmth to the surface of the body. In the cool room he will remain
reclining and enwrapped in his sheet for about a quarter of an hour and
probably the attendant will come and knead every muscle of the body
getting back the lagging blood, if indeed it does lag, heart-wards and
rendering the whole body as supple and pliant and elastic as life.
Then to dress most slowly. And while dressing, to leisurely imbibe a
cup of warm, not hot, tea or coffee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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