the act of using or applying a bath; that is, of immerging the body, or part of it, in water or other fluid.

Bathing is a practice of great antiquity. The Greeks, as early as the heroic age, are said to have bathed themselves in the sea, in rivers, &c. We even find mention in Homer of hot baths in the Trojan times; but these seem to have been very rare, and only used on extraordinary occasions. Athenaeus speaks of hot baths as unusual even in his age. In reality, public baths appear to have been discouraged, and even prohibited, by the ancient Greeks, who were contented to wash themselves at home in a sort of bathing tubs. The method of bathing among the ancient Greeks was, by heating water in a large vessel with three feet, and thence pouring it on the head and shoulders of the person seated in a tub for that purpose, who at coming out was anointed with oil.

The Romans were also long before they came into the use of baths; the very name of which, thermae, shows they borrowed it from the Greeks. As the ancient Romans were chiefly employed in agriculture, their custom was, every evening after work, to wash their arms and legs, that they might sit down to supper with more decency: for it is to be observed, the use of linen was then unknown: and the people of that age went with their arms and legs bare, and consequently exposed to dust and filth. But this was not all; for every ninth day, when they repaired to the city, either to the nundinae or to attend at the assemblies of the people, they bathed all over in the Tiber, or some other river which happened to be nearest them. This seems to have been all the bathing known till the time of Pompey, when the custom began of bathing every day. See BATH.

The Celtic nations were not without the use of bathing: the ancient Germans bathed every day, in warm water in winter, and in summer in cold. In England, the famous bath in Somersetshire is said by some to have been in use 800 years before Christ. Of this, however, it must be owned, we have but very slender evidence; but Dr Mufgrave makes it probable that it was a place of considerable resort in Geta's time; there being still the remains of a statue erected to that general, in gratitude for some benefactions he had conferred upon it.

Although bathing, among the ancients, made, as it were, a part of diet, and was used as familiarly as eating or sleep; yet it was in high esteem among their physicians for the cure of diseases, as appears from Strabo, Pliny, Hippocrates, and Oribasius; whence frequent exhortations to washing in the sea, and plunging into cold water. The first instance of cold bathing, as a medicine, is Melampus's bathing the daughters of the king of Argos; and the first instance of warm bathing is Medea's use of it, who was said to boil people alive, because Pelias king of Thessaly died bathing, in a warm bath under her hands. The cold bath was used with success by Antonius Mufa, physician to the emperor Augustus, for the recovery of that prince; but fell into neglect after the death of Marcellus, who was thought to have been destroyed by the improper use of it. It was again brought into request towards the close of the reign of Nero, by means of a physician of Marseilles named Charmis; but during the ignorance of the succeeding ages, the practice was again banished for a long time.—Both hot and cold bathing are now preferred in many cases by the physicians, though they are not agreed as to the manner in which they operate on the human body. See MEDICINE Index.

Bathing among the Turks, as among the ancients, makes a part of diet and luxury; and in every town, and even village, there is a public bath. Indeed, the necessity of cleanliness, in a climate where one perspires so copiously, has rendered bathing indispensable; the comfort it produces preserves the use of it; and Mahomet, who knew its utility, has reduced it to a precept. Of these baths, and the manner of bathing, particularly at Cairo, the following account is given by M. Savary in his Letters on Egypt.

"The first apartment one finds in going to the bath, is a large hall, which rises in the form of a rotunda. It is open at the top, to give a free circulation to the air. A spacious estrade, or raised floor, covered with a carpet, and divided into compartments, goes round it, on which one lays one's clothes. In the middle of the building, a jet-d'eau spouts up from a basin, and agreeably entertains the eye. When you are undressed, you tie a napkin round your loins, take a pair of sandals, and enter into a narrow passage, where you begin to be sensible of the heat. The door shuts to; and at 20 paces off, you open a second, and go along a passage, which forms a right angle with the former. Here the heat increases. They who are afraid of suddenly exposing themselves to a stronger degree of it, stop in a marble ball, in the way to the bath properly so called. The bath is a spacious and vaulted apartment, paved and lined with marble, around which there are four closets. The vapour incessantly arising from a fountain and cistern of hot water, mixes itself with the burning perfumes. These, however, are never burnt except the persons who are in the bath desire it. They are mixed with the steam of the water, and produce a most agreeable effect.

"The bathers are not imprisoned here, as in Europe, in a sort of tub, where one is never at one's ease. Extended on a cloth spread out, the head supported by a small cushion, they stretch themselves freely in every posture, whilst they are wrapped up in a cloud of odorous vapours, which penetrate into all their pores. After reposing there some time, until there is a gentle moisture over the whole body, a servant comes, presses you gently, turns you over, and when the limbs are become supple and flexible he makes all the joints crack * "Ma's" without any difficulty. He masses* and seems to knead comes from the flesh without making you feel the smallest pain. the Arabic This operation finished, he puts on a stuff glove, and which fig- rubs you a long time. During this operation, he de-nifes taches from the body of the patient, which is running touching in with sweat, a sort of small scales, and removes even a delicate the manner. the imperceptible dirt that flops the pores. The skin becomes soft and smooth like satin. He then conducts you into a closet, pours the lather of perfumed soap upon your head, and withdraws. The ancients did more honour to their guests, and treated them in a more voluptuous manner. Whilst Telemachus was at the court of Nestor, 'the beautiful Polycasta, the handomest of the daughters of the king of Pylos, led the son of Ulysses to the bath; washed him with her own hands; and, after anointing his body with precious oils, covered him with rich habits and a splendid cloak.' Pisistratus and Telemachus were not worse treated in the palace of Menelaus. "When they had admired its beauties, they were conducted to basins of marble, where a bath was prepared: Beautiful female slaves washed them; and, after anointing them with oil, covered them with rich tunics and superb pellices.

"The closet to which one is conducted is furnished with a cistern and two cocks: one for cold and the other for hot water. There you wash yourself. Soon after the servant returns with a depilatory pomatum, which in an instant makes the hair fall off the places it is applied to. Both men and women make general use of it in Egypt. It is composed of a mineral called rufma; which is of a deep brown. The Egyptians burn it lightly, knead it with water, mixing it with half the quantity of flaked lime. This grayish paste applied to the hair, makes it fall off in two or three minutes, without giving the slightest pain.

"After being well washed and purified, you are wrapped up in hot linen, and follow the guide through the windings that lead to the outer apartment. This insensible transition from heat to cold prevents one from suffering any inconvenience from it. On arriving at the edrafe, you find a bed prepared for you; and scarcely are you laid down before a child comes to press every part of your body with his delicate fingers, in order to dry you thoroughly. You change linen a second time, and the child gently grates the callousity of your feet with pumice stone. He then brings you a pipe and Moka coffee.

"Coming out of a stove where one was surrounded by a hot and moist fog, where the sweat gushed from every limb, and transported into a spacious apartment open to the external air, the breath dilates, and one breathes with voluptuousness. Perfectly masted, and as it were regenerated, one experiences an universal comfort. The blood circulates with freedom; and one feels as if disengaged from an enormous weight, together with a suppleness and lightness to which one has been hitherto a stranger. A lively sensation of existence diffuses itself to the very extremities of the body. Whilst it is lost in delicate sensations, the soul, sympathizing with the delight, enjoys the most agreeable ideas. The imagination, wandering over the universe, which it embellishes, fees on every side the most enchanting pictures, everywhere the image of happiness. If life be nothing but the succession of our ideas, the rapidity with which they then recur to the memory, the vigour with which the mind runs over the extended chain of them, would induce a belief that in the two hours of that delicious calm that succeeds the bath, one has lived a number of years."

Such are the baths, the use of which were so strong-

ly recommended by the ancients, and which are still the delight of the Egyptians. It is by means of them that they prevent or dispel rheumatism, catarrhs, and such cutaneous disorders as are produced by want of perspiration. Hence likewise they find a radical cure for that fatal evil which attacks the sources of generation, the remedy for which is so dangerous in Europe. By the same resource they get rid of that uncomfortable feeling so common to all nations who do not pay so much attention to the cleanliness of their bodies.—M. Tournefort, indeed, who had used steam baths at Constantinople, where there is less refinement in them than at Cairo, is of opinion that they injure the breast. But, according to M. Savary, this is an error which further experience would have corrected. There are no people who make more frequent use of them than the Egyptians, and there is no country where there are fewer asthmatic people. The asthma is scarcely known there.

The women are passionately fond of these baths. They frequent them at least once a-week, and take with them slaves properly qualified for the purpose. More luxurious than the men, after undergoing the usual preparations, they wash their bodies, and above all their heads, with rose-water. It is there that female head-dressers form their long black hair into tresses, which they mix with precious essences instead of powder and pomatum. It is there that they blacken the edge of their eye-lids, and lengthen their eyebrows with cohel, a preparation of tin burnt with gallnuts; it is there they stain the finger and toenails with the leaves of henrê, a shrub common in Egypt, and which gives them a golden colour. The linen and clothing they make use of are passed through the sweet steam of the wood of aloes; and when the work of the toilet is at an end, they remain in the outer apartment, and pass the day in entertainments. Females entertain them with voluptuous songs and dances, or tell them tales of love.