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The bath in the house may consist of one of the following arrangements: A single room used as a sudatory chamber and for washing; a hot room and a washing room; a combined hot room and washing room, and a cooling room; a cooling room, washing room, and hot room; or a suite of chambers of such extent as to provide every possible luxury, such as even the old Roman gentlemen would have coveted.
A large proportion of carbonic acid is thrown into the air, and as the normal temperature of the human body remains, in a healthy person, at about 98° Fahr., and rises but a few points even when submitted to the action of heat, these exhalations, in addition to being heavier than air, are very much below the average temperature of a sudatory chamber.
For a large set of hot rooms, a compound apparatus could be constructed by placing an additional furnace in a sub-basement, the one on the level of the sudatory supplying radiant heat, and the lower one hot air.
What light, therefore, may be provided in the sudatory chambers, should be as diffused as possible, the additional lights for the few who practise reading in these apartments being so arranged as not to be objectionable to the majority of bathers. The lights should be shaded so as to throw their rays downwards in a very small compass.
For a simple sudatory chamber, where washing operations are also conducted, all that is required is a room with brick walls and fire- and heat-proof floor and ceiling, with an adjoining lobby, a flue to conduct smoke from a simple stove, and a sunk washing tank or lavatrina. Allowance must be made for a couch opposite the stove.
Given the means, it is easy to render a set of bath rooms elaborate, with faïence and modelled glazed ware, marbles and painted encaustic tiles, and many other suitable but expensive materials; but for my own part I prefer to see comparative simplicity in a sudatory chamber, though by this I do not mean monastic severity of style. The general air of the frigidarium requires some consideration.
The tone of the ceilings and walls and floors should be light, the darkest portions being a dado. A generally dark and heavy tone of colouring is very oppressive in a sudatory chamber.
As a consequence, we have had, and still have, placed before the public, and meeting with undeserved success, "Turkish baths" which are such only in name unhealthy, ill-ventilated cellars, where the air, deteriorated at the outset by the heating apparatus, stagnates in the sudatory chambers, and becomes loaded with the exhalations and emanations of the bathers, and not unfrequently charged with a nauseating and disgusting odour.
On leaving the sudatory chamber, the horse should first be well scraped with the scraper, carefully sponging, or dousing him, if necessary, with warm water.
Of the many questions that merit attention and study in connection with the Turkish bath, all sink into insignificance by the side of that of the heating and the nature of the heat supplied in the sudatory chambers. Other things being equal, it is, after all, the heating that distinguishes one bath from another on the score of excellence.
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