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Updated: May 4, 2025
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.
A place is built like a Laconicum, and nicely finished in marble, smoothly polished. In front of it, a small furnace is constructed with vents into the Laconicum, and with a stokehole that can be very carefully closed to prevent the flames from escaping and being wasted. Resin is placed in the furnace.
The first is the tepidarium, and must be by far the largest of the three, since in it the greater number of bathers will assemble at one time. The last must be the hottest room the laconicum and need only be a very small one, as but few bathers use it, and that, generally, for a very short time. The second hot room should be about midway, in size and temperature, between the first and the third.
In the first method the fresh air is introduced into a chamber containing a coil of steam-pipes, and passes thence into the laconicum by a shaft or conduit, as in the case of air heated by a stove. In the second method, steam radiators compact batteries of pipes must be placed in recesses in the hot rooms, fresh air being introduced over them.
The main thing to be studied in this provision of a large volume of air is that the cold inlet be ample, and the passage from this intake to the point where the air is debouched into the laconicum equally roomy and unobstructed. The rapidity of flow will depend upon the means provided for the extraction of the foul air.
Questions of temperature I will omit for the present. The air, on passing through the laconicum, will be practically pure, as it is in such great bulk compared with the number of occupants of this highly-heated chamber, and it will not be absolutely necessary to provide ventilators.
The Laconicum and other sweating baths must adjoin the tepid room, and their height to the bottom of the curved dome should be equal to their width. Let an aperture be left in the middle of the dome with a bronze disc hanging from it by chains. By raising and lowering it, the temperature of the sweating bath can be regulated.
A shelf or shelves for linen checks is useful in this position. Sometimes the floor of the calidarium is carpeted all over, but strips of matting or carpet are better. The hot laconicum is best carpeted throughout. The tepidarium should have strips of carpet where the bathers must necessarily tread.
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