Even the pleasures considered legitimate during the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era, were decidedly equivocal or immoral. Public bathing which was so general that even in the country every well-arranged house had its own bathroom, might be considered rather a redeeming feature of the unclean life recorded. But excesses soon make it doubtful whether public baths should not be regarded as baudy houses of the worst kind. The city of Basle in the thirteenth century had not fewer than fifteen bathhouses. As in ancient Rome, the bathhouses were public places of amusement somewhat like the clubs of to-day. There men were shaved and had their toilette perfected and the ladies had their hair dressed. Massage was in fashion. Amusements of all kinds, gambling, drinking, flirting, and love intrigues made public bathing a rather costly pastime. At most places there was common bathing of men and women. The most famous water resorts were the Wildbad in the Black Forest, Baden in the Breisgau, and Baden in Aargau. There is gathered all the wealth of the surrounding country. Princes and knights, highborn ladies, rich merchants, prelates, and abbesses bathed, jested, and led a gay life. We have an intensely interesting account from the pen of the scholarly Francis Poggio of Florence (1380-1459) of the bathing customs of Baden. He had accompanied Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, and had then gone to Baden to cure the "chiragra" from which he suffered. From a Latin letter written to his friend Niccolo Niccoli, in the summer of 1417, and translated by Gustav Freytag, in his famous Pictures from German Life, we glean the following facts: "Baden itself affords for the mind little or no diversion; but has in all other respects such extraordinary charm that Venus seems to have come from Cyprus, for whatever the world contains of beauty has assembled here, and so much do they uphold the customs of this goddess, so fully do you find again her manners and dissoluteness, that, though they may not have read the speech of Heliogabalus, they appear to be perfectly instructed by Nature herself.... "Two special baths, open on all sides, are prepared for the lowest classes of the people; and the common crowd, men, women, boys, and unmarried maidens, and the dregs of all that collect together here, make use of them. In these baths there is a partition wall, dividing the two sexes, but this is only put up for the sake of peace; and it is amusing to see how, at the same time, decrepit old beldames and young maidens descend into it naked, before all eyes, and expose their charms to the gaze of the men. More than once I have laughed at this splendid spectacle; it has brought to my mind the games of Flora at Rome, and I have much admired their simplicity who do not in the least see or think anything wrong in it....