ve the "Turkish bath" will be
in the way of providing sudatories that shall give off pure, radiant
heat in such a manner that the whole surface of the body may be sensible
of a degree of heat, while the lungs may breathe comparatively cool
air--air that has not passed over the sides of a fiery furnace and been
suddenly raised to an enormous temperature, but which has received its
heat by a gentle and gradual process of warming. Under this system the
heat of which we are sensible is as the gentle Zephyr to rude Boreas or
the biting eastern winds. If we go into a kiln of brickwork, such as is
employed in firing clay goods, after the charge has been removed and
all fumes and odours have disappeared, we shall note the soft and balmy
nature of the heat that radiates directly from the walls and vaulting.
We are, to all practical intents and purposes, _in a Roman laconicum_.
The thick walls have been highly charged with caloric during the firing
of the bricks or other articles. They have absorbed vast quantities of
heat, and are now giving off the same to the enclosed air and to
ourselves standing within. In the old Roman bath the walls were charged
with caloric by means of innumerable earthen tubes lining the sides of
the laconicum, and covered with a peculiar plaster. But in both cases
the nature of the resultant heat is identical. It radiates to one from
all sides. There is no acrid biting of the face such as one feels in the
worst type of _hot-air_ baths; no unpleasant fulness or aching of the
head; and no panting or palpitating. Such is the "bath" of pure radiant
heat, a thing totally distinct from, and altogether of a different genus
to, the bath of heated air. And one might be pardoned for the enthusiasm
which would lead one to suggest that it is only in the supplying of this
kind of radiant heat in the modern bath that true and rapid progress can
be expected, and possibly that not until this great or
partial--according as the system of radiation and convection pertains in
existing baths--revolution has been effected, will the bath, at present
used by the few, become the custom of the many. Some day, peradventure,
this hypothetical method of employing pure radiant heat may be rendered
possible and practicable, and we may be placed in a bath where we shall
receive great heat whilst breathing a comparatively cool atmosphere,
and thus receive a measure of that electrical invigoration we experience
when, in some sheltered bat