BATHS. The word bath is used : (1) for the process of im mersing the body in some medium other than atmospheric air, for the purpose of cleanliness or as a cure ; and ( 2 ) for the build ing or room in which such immersion takes place.
Separate structures for baths existed at a very early date, and probably similar types are still to be found among primitive peoples. Although bathrooms occurred in early Egyptian palaces, remains are too fragmentary to permit complete analysis of Egyptian types. It is the palaces of the Aegean civilization that provide the earliest well preserved examples of bathrooms. They are remarkable both for careful structure and for an advanced system of water supply and drainage. Examples are in the palaces of Cnossus and Phaistos, c. 17o0-1400 B.C., and also on the mainland as in the palace of Tiryns, c. 120o B.C. Bathing occupied an important place in the life of the Greeks ; vase paintings show that there were showers; but even though in the later period there were public baths, they never received im portant and monumental architectural treatment. Eastern peoples seem to have had luxurious baths which Alexander the Great is reported to have admired.
To carry on this complicated process the Romans developed baths varying in size from those in the larger houses, in which each unit was merely a tiny room, to the enormous thermae of Imperial Rome. The essential features that run through all types are: (I) An adequate system of furnishing hot, tepid and cold water; (2) The heating of the hot portions of the bath and sometimes also the tepidarium by the circulation of the smoke and heated air from a fire under the floor and through the hollow walls. (3) In the hot bath adequate basins for warm and cold water.
A good example of the private bath exists in the so-called villa of Diomed in Pompeii (see Mau, Pompeii). Pompeii also fur nishes the two oldest Roman public baths extant, the Stabaean baths and those of the Forum, both of which have two corn plete sets of bathrooms, one for men and one for women. These are of a type characteristic of all the smaller baths, ruins of which have been found in many provincial towns such as Trier, Ger many, and Timgad and Leptis Magna, Africa. The general scheme consists of a range of barrel vaulted apartments flanking an open court. The rooms are of approximately the same size and are usually three in number: the apodyterium, usually sur rounded by niches to serve as lockers; the tepidarium; and the calidarium, which has an apse at one end containing the labrum and at the other end the hot bath or alveus. The cold bath in both the larger Pompeiian establishments takes the form of a small circular room with a large round pool in the centre.
The recently (1928) excavated baths of Leptis Magna have as their main feature a large swimming pool, lavishly cased in marble and bordered by a monumental colonnade.
It was only in Rome, however, in the great imperial thermae that the bath received its most complete architectural form. Here the problem was complicated by the development of the baths as great social centres in addition to their primary pur pose. Gardens, a stadium and exedrae, where lectures were given and poems read, all became necessary parts. The fully de veloped examples are those of Titus (A.D.
ioo), Caracalla (A.D. 217) and Diocletian (A.D. 302). Extensive remains of the baths of Titus, Caracalla and Diocletian exist.
The general scheme comprised a great open garden surrounded by subsidiary club rooms, and a block of bath chambers either in the centre of the garden, as in the baths of Caracalla, or at its rear, as in the baths of Titus. The main block contained, in addition to the frigidarium, calidarium and tepidarium, courts and smaller bath-rooms.
Of the three great bath-rooms in this block, the tepidarium was made much the most important and was used, apparently, as the great assembly-hall or lounge. The frigi darium appears frequently to have been an enormous unroofed swimming bath, and the calidarium, on the other side of the tepidarium, is, in the baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, treated as a domed, circular hall. Service was furnished by means of underground passage ways; slaves could move swiftly and simply without being seen. In order to light and roof the enormous rooms, the Romans were forced to develop an in genious system of buttressing, cross vaulting and clerestory win dows. Their scheme of groined vaults carried on interior columns and buttressed by cross buttresses, which form the walls of re cesses opening from the room, has since been an inspiration to designers of great halls (e.g., St. George's Hall, Liverpool ; Penn sylvania Station, New York) . The remains of the baths of Diocletian, whose tepidarium, slightly altered by Michelangelo, now forms the church of S. Maria Degli Angeli, gives an extra ordinarily vivid impression of what the thermae must have been. The important pieces of sculpture, found in Roman baths, such as the Laocoon group from the baths of Caracalla, indicate the richness of their furnishings. Floors were universally of marble or mosaic. Walls were apparently sheathed with marble to a con siderable height, and decorated above with stucco reliefs, colour and mosaic. Gilt bronze was used freely for doors, capitals and window screens.
It is significant that in the great imperial thermae there is only one set of public rooms. The usage varied. At times women and men were admitted to the baths at different hours and at times mixed and promiscuous bathing was permitted. Outside of Rome the separation of the sexes into two different sets of rooms in the same establishment was more common. There are many con temporary references to Roman baths and bathing scattered through the works of Pliny the Younger, Seneca, Juvenal, Sue tonius and, in the later empire, Ausonius and Statius.
Mediaeval Baths.—The excesses apparently common under the system of mixed bathing in the public baths were bound to produce a reaction and the church fathers generally agreed that bathing should be confined to the purposes of cleanliness and health. Moreover, the destruction of the great aqueducts (see AQUEDUCT) of Rome led to the closing of the baths. The habit, however, of the bath as a luxury, and of public buildings for it, must have continued alive in Europe, for by the r 2th century we find indications that public baths were common, and in the r4th and r5th centuries they again became notorious. Late Gothic tapestries and woodcuts indicate that the existence not only of much out door bathing in garden pools but also of bath houses with large pools or basins of warmed water. In both cases the bathing was quite promiscuous; the abuse of this custom is indicated by the colloquial use of the Italian word bagnio (bath) for a brothel. During the Renaissance there was little additional development of bathing, and the mechanical arrangements were of the crudest, as in the famous bath of Marie Antoinette at Versailles.
Mohammedan Baths.—Bath architecture, however, pro gressed in the countries under Mohammedan rule. There, either through the development of a primitive eastern bath tradition, or through the adoption of the Roman system, or, as is perhaps more likely, through a merging of the two, the complicated technique of bathing continued and with it the growth of adequate architec tural forms. The Alhambra, at Granada, has a beautiful set of bath-rooms, all rectangular, which show the Moorish form at the beginning of the 14th century. Further east Roman or Byzantine forms were the basis of the baths. Constantinople baths, which are typical, and whose form seems to have varied little in five cen turies, consist universally of a series of square rooms, carrying domes on pendentives. Each series of rooms is composed of a warm, hot and steam room, corresponding roughly to the tepid arium, calidarium and laconicum. The place of the frigidarium is generally taken by a basin of cold water at one end of the warm room. In addition to these vaulted chambers there are dressing rooms and frequently a luxurious rest room.
Russian Baths.—In Russia, a great love of hot and steam baths has produced a multitude of bath houses. These are usually sim ple and consist only of a steam room and a cold bath; frequently even the cold bath is lacking and the bather plunges directly from the steam room into a river, or outdoor pool, or even snow.
Modern Baths.—Contemporaneous with the Industrial Revolu tion a new feeling for personal cleanliness led quickly to the erec tion of public bath houses to compensate for the universal lack of home plumbing. Three main types have arisen. The mid- r 9th century baths consisted of a range of small individual bath rooms and a control office; with the development of athleticism shower baths and swimming pools were added, the original form, without a pool, is less common (1928) than formerly because of the growing custom of having at least one bath-room in each residence. The second type, ap proximating the Roman, is a large and complex structure containing a swimming bath with adjacent ranges of showers, through which bathers are compelled to pass be fore entering the pool, steam, massage and rest rooms, and oc casionally restaurants. The third type was developed in connection with medicinal springs and is designed to include all units that might add attractiveness ; such establishments contain all neces sary bath and treatment rooms and also restaurants, card rooms, concert and dance halls and extensive gardens. Modern western architecture has developed no distinctive forms for either Turkish or Russian baths both of which have been very popular since the beginning of the r 9th century.
The European municipal swimming baths are, in many cases, works of great architectural interest. On the continent there are usually first and second class establishments under the same roof. The swimming pools are frequently large and often vaulted, and their resemblance to Roman prototypes is strong. Noteworthy among these are the Guentz bath at Dresden, the municipal bath at Hanover and the enormous and monumental Karl Mueller pub lic baths at Munich. The imperial baths and the Bacz baths at Budapest are especially lavish in their appointments, and show, in their use of domed rooms, strong Turkish influence. Medicinal baths exist in all countries ; among the best known are those of Baden Baden and Karlsbad in Germany; Vichy and Aix-les-Bains in France; Bath and Harrogate in England; White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., and Hot Springs, Ark., in the United States.
The modern bath-room contains a tile tub and a shower that is often enclosed in glass; its walls and floors are embellished with tiles and mirrors; it is planned for cleanliness and convenience, and in large houses is often lavishly decorated as well. The design of swimming pools has become a science. By means of disinfec tants, the same water can safely be used again and again, making a swimming pool possible even when the water supply is limited. Hotels, clubs and steamships maintain pools. The tank is usually of reinforced concrete lined with glazed or ceramic tile and fur nished at the water level with a gutter that automatically removes floating scum. Outdoor swimming pools are also built. Another form of the modern bathing establishment is that found at seaside resorts, where the necessary cubicles, showers, suit and towel laundries, and storage space may be combined with terraces, restaurants and club house facilities; the beach clubs of the Florida, U.S.A., winter resorts represent the highest development of this type.
Far Eastern Baths.—Although bathing has always been popu lar in both China and Japan, it has reached its highest develop ment in the latter. There every house has a bath which usually consists of a circular wooden tub of considerable size. This tub is placed outdoors in the court or garden and all the members of one family are usually served by one filling of exceedingly hot water. In the more luxurious houses and native hotels the system is largely the same, although the tub may be indoors, and the bather is, in these, given a thorough massage at the same time. The Jap anese have also built numerous bath establishments of great size near medicinal springs; a famous example is that near Matsuyama, on the island of Shikoku. In these, the bath proper consists of a large, shallow pool with steps on which the bather sits. Surround ing the pool are cubicles for dressing. The main bath-room is fre quently of two storeys with tea-rooms, restaurants, etc., above. In all Japanese baths, public and private, there is no attempt to achieve privacy. Public baths, for instance, will frequently have large, unprotected openings through which people in the streets can watch the bathers.
The medium of the baths hitherto described has been water, vapour or hot dry air. Other substances used are sand, peat, radio-active mud, aromatic herbs in great variety, especially pine oil, scented and coloured soluble salts, ammonia. Electrical baths (see ELECTROTHERAPY), sun baths (see HELIOTHERAPY and LIGHT , and baths of compressed air (see AEROTHERA PEUTICS) do not call for special mention here.