Ancient world Bathing in ancient China may be traced back to the
Shang dynasty, 3000 years ago (1600–1046 BCE). Archaeological findings from the
Yinxu ruins show a cauldron to boil water, smaller cauldrons to draw out the water to be poured into a basin, skin scrapers to remove dirt and dead skin. Three 2000-year-old baths with exquisite tiles and a sewage system can be seen in Xi'an. Bathing grew in importance in the Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220) where officials were allowed to take a day's leave for bathing at home every five days, and bathing became the reason for a
bank holiday for the first time. An accountable daily ritual of bathing can be traced to the
ancient Indians. They used elaborate practices for personal hygiene with three daily baths and washing. These are recorded in the works called
grihya sutras which date back to 500 BCE and are in practice today in some communities. In Hinduism, “
Prataha Kaal” (the onset of day) or “
Brahma Muhoortham” begins with the 4 am “
snanam” or bath, and was considered extremely auspicious in ancient times.
Ancient Greece utilized small bathtubs, wash basins, and foot baths for personal cleanliness. The earliest findings of baths date from the mid-2nd millennium BC in the palace complex at
Knossos, Crete, and the luxurious alabaster bathtubs excavated in
Akrotiri,
Santorini. A word for bathtub, (), occurs eleven times in Homer. As a legitimate Mycenaean word (a-sa-mi-to) for a kind of vessel that could be found in any Mycenaean palace, this
Linear B term derives from an Aegean suffix
-inth- being appended to an Akkadian loan word with the root
namsû ('washbowl', 'washing tub'). This luxurious item of the Mycenaean palace culture, therefore, was clearly borrowed from the Near East. Later Greeks established public baths and showers within gymnasiums for relaxation and personal hygiene. The word
gymnasium (γυμνάσιον) comes from the Greek word
gymnos (γυμνός), meaning "naked".
Ancient Rome developed a network of
aqueducts to supply water to all large towns and population centers and had indoor plumbing, with pipes that terminated in homes and at public wells and fountains. The
Roman public baths were called
thermae. The thermae were not simply baths, but important public works that provided facilities for many kinds of physical exercise and ablutions, with cold, warm, and hot baths, rooms for instruction and debate, and usually one Greek and one Latin library. They also represented an important moment of socialization and exchange between the members of the community. They were provided for the public by a benefactor, usually the Emperor. Other empires of the time did not show such an affinity for public works, but this Roman practice spread their culture to places where there may have been more resistance to foreign mores. Unusually for the time, the thermae were not class-stratified, being available to all for no charge or a small fee. With the
fall of the Roman Empire, the aqueduct system fell into disrepair and disuse. But even before that, during the Christianization of the Empire, changing ideas about public morals led the baths into disfavor.
Medieval Japan Before the 7th century, the Japanese were likely to have bathed in the many springs in the open, as there is no evidence of closed rooms. In the 6th to 8th centuries (in the
Asuka and
Nara periods) the Japanese absorbed the religion of Buddhism from China, which had a strong impact on the culture of the entire country. Buddhist temples traditionally included a bathhouse (
yuya) for the monks. Due to the principle of purity espoused by Buddhism these baths were eventually opened to the public. Only the wealthy had private baths. The first public bathhouse was mentioned in 1266. In
Edo (modern Tokyo), the first
sentō was established in 1591. The early steam baths were called
iwaburo ( "rock pools") or
kamaburo ( "furnace baths"). These were built into natural caves or stone vaults. In
iwaburo along the coast, the rocks were heated by burning wood, then sea water was poured over the rocks, producing steam. The entrances to these "bath houses" were very small, possibly to slow the escape of the heat and steam. There were no windows, so it was very dark inside and the user constantly coughed or cleared their throats in order to signal to new entrants which seats were already occupied. The darkness could be also used to cover sexual contact. Because there was no gender distinction, these baths came into disrepute. They were finally abolished in 1870 on hygienic and moral grounds. According to author John Gallagher, bathing "was segregated in the 1870s as a concession to outraged Western tourists". At the beginning of the
Edo period (1603–1868) there were two different types of baths. In Edo, hot-water baths (' '
) were common, while in Osaka, steam baths ( ') were common. At that time shared bathrooms for men and women were the rule. These bathhouses were very popular, especially for men. "Bathing girls" ( '''') were employed to scrub the guests' backs and wash their hair, etc. In 1841, the employment of
yuna was generally prohibited, as well as
mixed bathing. The segregation of the sexes, however, was often ignored by operators of bathhouses, or areas for men and women were separated only by a symbolic line. Today,
sento baths have separate rooms for men and women.
Mesoamerica from the Loubat collection, 1904
Spanish chronicles describe the bathing habits of the peoples of
Mesoamerica during and after the
conquest.
Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes
Moctezuma (the Mexica, or Aztec, king at the arrival of
Cortés) in his
Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España as being "...Very neat and cleanly, bathing every day each afternoon...". Bathing was not restricted to the elite, but was practised by all people; the chronicler Tomás López Medel wrote after a journey to
Central America that "Bathing and the custom of washing oneself is so quotidian (common) amongst the Indians, both of cold and hot lands, as is eating, and this is done in fountains and rivers and other water to which they have access, without anything other than pure water..." The Mesoamerican bath, known as
temazcal in
Spanish, from the Nahuatl word
temazcalli, a compound of
temaz ("steam") and
calli ("house"), consists of a room, often in the form of a small dome, with an exterior firebox known as
texictle (teʃict͜ɬe) that heats a small portion of the room's wall made of volcanic rocks; after this wall has been heated, water is poured on it to produce steam, an action known as
tlasas. As the steam accumulates in the upper part of the room a person in charge uses a bough to direct the steam to the bathers who are lying on the ground, with which he later gives them a massage, then the bathers scrub themselves with a small flat river stone and finally the person in charge introduces buckets with water with soap and grass used to rinse. This bath had also ritual importance, and was vinculated to the goddess
Toci; it is also therapeutic when medicinal herbs are used in the water for the
tlasas. It is still used in
Mexico. Despite the denunciation of the
mixed bathing style of Roman pools by
early Christian clergy, as well as the pagan custom of women bathing naked in front of men, this did not stop the Church from urging its followers to go to public baths for bathing, which contributed to hygiene and good health according to the
Church Fathers,
Clement of Alexandria and
Tertullian. The Church also built
public bathing facilities that were separate for both sexes near monasteries and pilgrimage sites; also, the popes situated baths within church basilicas and monasteries since the early Middle Ages. Pope
Gregory the Great urged his followers on the value of bathing as a bodily need. Great
bathhouses were built in
Byzantine centers such as
Constantinople and
Antioch, and the
popes allocated to the Romans bathing through
diaconia, or private
Lateran baths, or even a myriad of monastic
bath houses functioning in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Public bathing was common in larger towns and cities such as
Paris,
Regensburg and
Naples. The Catholic religious orders of the
Augustinians and
Benedictines had rules for
ritual purification, and inspired by
Benedict of Nursia encouraged the practice of therapeutic bathing;
Benedictine monks played a role in the development and promotion of
spas.
Protestantism also played a prominent role in the development of the British
spas. In the sixteenth century, the popularity of public bathhouses in Europe sharply declined, perhaps due to the new plague of
syphilis which made sexual promiscuity more risky, or stronger religious prohibitions on nudity surrounding the
Protestant Reformation. Some Europeans came to believe the false idea that bathing or steaming would open
pores to disease.
Modern era Therapeutic bathing , Germany, 1682 Public opinion about bathing began to shift in the middle and late 18th century, when writers argued that frequent bathing might lead to better health. Two English works on the medical uses of water were published in the 18th century that inaugurated the new fashion for
therapeutic bathing. One of these was by Sir
John Floyer, a physician of
Lichfield, who, struck by the remedial use of certain springs by the neighbouring peasantry, investigated the history of cold bathing and published a book on the subject in 1702. The book ran through six editions within a few years and the translation of this book into German was largely drawn upon by Dr J. S. Hahn of
Silesia as the basis for his book called
On the Healing Virtues of Cold Water, Inwardly and Outwardly Applied, as Proved by Experience, published in 1738. The other work was a 1797 publication by Dr
James Currie of
Liverpool on the use of hot and cold water in the treatment of fever and other illness, with a fourth edition published not long before his death in 1805. It was also translated into German by Michaelis (1801) and
Hegewisch (1807). It was highly popular and first placed the subject on a scientific basis. Hahn's writings had meanwhile created much enthusiasm among his countrymen, societies having been everywhere formed to promote the medicinal and dietetic use of water; in 1804 Professor E.F.C. Oertel of
Anspach republished them and quickened the popular movement by the unqualified commendation of water drinking as a remedy for all diseases. A popular revival followed the application of hydrotherapy around 1829, by
Vincenz Priessnitz, a peasant farmer in
Gräfenberg, then part of the
Austrian Empire. This revival was continued by a Bavarian priest,
Sebastian Kneipp (1821–1897), "an able and enthusiastic follower" of Priessnitz, "whose work he took up where Priessnitz left it", after he read a treatise on the cold water cure. In
Wörishofen (south Germany), Kneipp developed the systematic and controlled application of hydrotherapy for the support of medical treatment that was delivered only by doctors at that time. Kneipp's own book
My Water Cure was published in 1886 with many subsequent editions, and translated into many languages.
Captain R. T. Claridge was responsible for introducing and promoting hydropathy in Britain, first in London in 1842, then with lecture tours in Ireland and Scotland in 1843. His 10-week tour in Ireland included Limerick, Cork, Wexford, Dublin and Belfast, over June, July and August 1843, with two subsequent lectures in Glasgow. of
Bathsheba bathing while being watched by
King David The acceptance of
germ theory in the late 1800s provided scientific reasons for frequent bathing.
Public baths and wash-houses wash house, the first public wash house in England Large public baths such as those found in the ancient world and the
Ottoman Empire were revived during the 19th century. The first modern public baths were opened in
Liverpool in 1829. The first known warm fresh-water
public wash house was opened in May 1842. The popularity of wash-houses was spurred by the newspaper interest in
Kitty Wilkinson, an Irish immigrant "wife of a labourer" who became known as the
Saint of the Slums. In 1832, during a
cholera epidemic, Wilkinson took the initiative to offer the use of her house and yard to neighbours to wash their clothes, at a charge of a penny per week, In Birmingham, around ten private baths were available in the 1830s. Whilst the dimensions of the baths were small, they provided a range of services. A major proprietor of bath houses in Birmingham was a Mr. Monro who had had premises in Lady Well and Snow Hill. Private baths were advertised as having healing qualities and being able to cure people of
diabetes,
gout and all skin diseases, amongst others. The first London public baths was opened at Goulston Square,
Whitechapel, in 1847 with the
Prince consort laying the foundation stone.
Soap promoted for personal cleanliness advertisement in 1889, a reference to the
Order of the Bath. Soap reached a mass market as the middle class adopted a greater interest in cleanliness. By the mid-19th century, the English urbanised middle classes had formed an ideology of cleanliness that ranked alongside typical
Victorian concepts, such as
Christianity, respectability and
social progress. The cleanliness of the individual became associated with his or her moral and social standing within the community and domestic life became increasingly regulated by concerns regarding the presentation of domestic sobriety and cleanliness. The industry of soapmaking began on a small scale in the 1780s, with the establishment of a soap manufactory at
Tipton by
James Keir and the marketing of high-quality, transparent soap in 1789 by
Andrew Pears of
London. In 1807, Pears found a way of removing the impurities and refining the base soap before adding the delicate perfume of garden flowers, founding
Pears soap. It was in the mid-19th century, though, that the large-scale consumption of soap by the middle classes, anxious to prove their social standing, drove forward the mass production and marketing of soap.
William Gossage produced low-priced, good-quality soap from the 1850s.
William Hesketh Lever and his brother, James, bought a small soap works in
Warrington in 1886 and founded what is still one of the largest soap businesses, formerly called Lever Brothers and now called
Unilever. These soap businesses were among the first to employ large-scale
advertising campaigns. In 1882, English actress and socialite
Lillie Langtry became the poster-girl for Pears soap, and thus the first celebrity to endorse a commercial product. Before the late 19th century, water to individual places of residence was rare. Many countries in Europe developed a water collection and distribution network.
London water supply infrastructure developed through major 19th-century treatment works built in response to
cholera threats, to modern large-scale reservoirs. By the end of the century, private baths with running hot water were increasingly common in affluent homes in America and Britain. At the beginning of the 20th century, a weekly Saturday night bath had become common custom for most of the population. A half day's work on Saturday for factory workers allowed them some leisure to prepare for the
Sunday day of rest. The half day off allowed time for the considerable labor of drawing, carrying, and heating water, filling the bath and then afterward emptying it. To economize, bath water was shared by all family members. Indoor plumbing became more common in the 20th century and commercial advertising campaigns pushing new bath products began to influence public ideas about cleanliness, promoting the idea of a daily shower or bath. In the 21st century, challenges to the need for soap to effect such everyday cleanliness and whether soap is needed to avoid body odor appeared in media.
Hot-air baths Hammam ,
Isfahan, IranA
hammam is a type of
steam bath or a place of
public bathing associated with the
Islamic world. It is a prominent feature in the
culture of the Muslim world and was inherited from the model of the
Roman thermae. Muslim bathhouses or hammams were historically found across the
Middle East,
North Africa,
al-Andalus (Islamic Spain and Portugal),
Central Asia, the
Indian subcontinent, and in
Southeastern Europe under
Ottoman rule. In Islamic cultures the significance of the hammam was both religious and civic: it provided for the needs of
ritual ablutions but also provided for general
hygiene in an era before private plumbing and served other social functions such as offering a gendered meeting place for men and for women.
Archeological remains attest to the existence of bathhouses in the Islamic world as early as the
Umayyad period (7th–8th centuries) and their importance has persisted up to modern times. While hammams everywhere generally operate in fairly similar ways, there are some regional differences both in usage and architecture. a book about his travels in 1848 through Spain and Morocco. He described the vaporous hot-air baths (little-changed since Roman times) which he visited, both there and in the Ottoman Empire. In 1856
Dr Richard Barter read Urquhart's book and worked with him to construct such a bath, intending to use it at his
hydropathic establishment at St Ann(e)'s Hill, near Blarney, County Cork, Ireland. Barter realised that the human body could tolerate the more therapeutically effective higher temperatures in hot air which was dry rather than steamy. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, he opened the first modern bath of this type in 1856. He called it the "Improved" Turkish or Irish bath, now better known as the Victorian Turkish bath. The following year, the first public bath of its type to be built in mainland Britain since Roman times was opened in Manchester, and the idea spread rapidly. It reached London in July 1860, when Roger Evans, a member of one of Urquhart's Foreign Affairs Committees, opened a Turkish bath at 5 Bell Street, near Marble Arch. During the following 150 years, over 700 Turkish baths opened in the British Isles, including those built by municipal authorities as part of swimming pool complexes. It was claimed by Durham Dunlop (and many others) that hot-air bathing was a more effective body-cleanser than water, while Richard Metcalfe meticulously calculated that it would be more cost-effective for local authorities to provide hot-air baths in place of slipper baths. Turkish baths opened in other parts of the British Empire. Dr. John Le Gay Brereton opened one in Sydney, Australia in 1859, Canada had one by 1869, and the first in New Zealand was opened in 1874. Urquhart's influence was also felt outside the Empire when in 1861, Dr Charles H. Shepard opened the first Turkish baths in the United States at 63 Columbia Street, Brooklyn Heights, New York, most probably on 3 October 1863. ==Purpose==