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Plenty of space is left for a bench or chair in this chamber. Adjoining is the laconicum with a firebrick furnace, after the nature of that of which I have before given full detailed drawings. The vitiated air is drawn through flues in the floor, to a shaft on the opposite side to the chimney. The stokery and coke-store adjoin the laconicum.
The perspiration is attained in the various hot rooms the Tepidarium, Calidarium, and Laconicum. The nature of these apartments which I shall hereinafter consider in detail must be determined by the pretensions of the establishment. Perspiration having been induced, the bather submits to the kneading of the muscles of the trunk and limbs by the shampooer.
The little laconicum is best covered with a flat vault, the soffit being of glazed bricks, and the springing being brought down below the main ceiling level. Fire-proof floors over hot rooms may be of any design that is also heat-proof. The main point is to have a sufficient thickness of concrete, and the iron joists and cross girders well buried therein.
The more luxurious departed by another door to the tepidarium, a place which was heated to a voluptuous warmth, partly by a movable fireplace, principally by a suspended pavement, beneath which was conducted the caloric of the laconicum. Here this portion of the intended bathers, after unrobing themselves, remained for some time enjoying the artificial warmth of the luxurious air.
The force of the fire in burning it compels it to give out soot into the Laconicum through the vents, and the soot sticks to the walls and the curved vaulting. It is gathered from them, and some of it is mixed and worked with gum for use as writing ink, while the rest is mixed with size, and used on walls by fresco painters.
As a rule, it is more economical, in heating on the principle now under consideration, to place the furnace below the level of the hot rooms; but if desirable to place both on one level, the back wall of the furnace chamber becomes the party wall of the laconicum, and it must be stopped short of the ceiling, and the air debouched over it.
Two enormous balneatores laid him on a cypress table covered with snow-white Egyptian byssus, and with hands dipped in perfumed olive oil began to rub his shapely body; and he waited with closed eyes till the heat of the laconicum and the heat of their hands passed through him and expelled weariness.
Two such apparatus might be placed one behind the other, end to end, or might form the sides of the laconicum; the last plan, however, being the least to be recommended, as in such positions they would not directly radiate their heat into the adjoining hot rooms.
Although the exact nature of the ancient Roman laconicum is still a question in debate, I have chosen to employ the term to designate herein the hottest of the hot. The washing room I call the Lavatorium; the cooling room, the Frigidarium; and the separate dressing room, the Apodyterium. The modern "Turkish bath" is rather a revival of the Roman bath, than that of the East.
For effect, the scale of lighting in the bath rooms may be a rather dark laconicum, and a gradually-increased amount of light from thence to the shampooing room. The plunge-bath chamber should be well lighted, but not above the tone of the frigidarium, or the bather will feel to be going from cheerfulness to comparative gloom, which would be unpleasant.
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