Showers: from a violent treatment to an agent of cleansing.

In the early nineteenth century, physicians designed the first manufactured showers for the purpose of curing the insane. Sustained falls of cold water were prescribed to cool hot, inflamed brains, and to instil fear to tame impetuous wills. By the middle of the century showers had appeared in both asylums and prisons, but shower-related deaths led to their decline. Rather than being abandoned, however, the shower was transformed by the use of warm water to economically wash the skins of prison and asylum populations. In stark contrast to an involuntary, deliberately unpleasant treatment, by the end of the century the shower was a desirable product for the improvement of personal hygiene and population health.

[From the Russian Balneological Society to innovative technologies of spa and health resort-based treatment. The 95th anniversary of the Pyatigorsk State Research Institute of Balneology].

This article is dedicated to the 95th anniversary of the Federal state budgetary institution "Pyatigorsk State Research Institute of Balneology", Russian Federal Medico-Biological Agency. The main stages of the development of the institution are described with special reference to its scientific achievements and the principal lines of current activities.

Taking the (southern) waters: science, slavery, and nationalism at the Virginia springs.

'Taking the (southern) waters' argues that, in the pre-Civil War period, the space of Virginia's mineral water resorts and the philosophy of southern hydropathic medicine enabled--indeed, fostered--white southerners' constructions of a 'nationalist,' pro-slavery ideology. In the first half of the paper, the author explains how white southern health-seekers came to view the springs region as a medicinal resource peculiarly designed for the healing of southern diseases and for the restoration of white southern constitutions; in the second half, she shows how physical and social aspects of the resorts, such as architectural choices and political events, supported and encouraged pro-slavery ideologies. Taken together, these medical-social analyses reveal how elite white southerners in the antebellum period came to associate the health of their peculiarly 'southern' bodies with the future health of an independent southern nation, one that elided black bodily presence at the same time that its social structures and scientific apparatuses relied upon enslaved black labor.

Microbial biofilm community structure and composition on the lithic substrates of Herculaneum Suburban Baths.

In this work, we want to investigate the impact of different substrates and different environmental condition on the biofilm communities growing on plaster, marble, and mortar substrates inside the Herculaneum Suburban Baths. To do so, we measured environmental conditions and sampled biofilm communities along the walls of the baths and used culture-dependent and -independent molecular techniques (DGGE) to identify the species at each sampling sites. We used the species pool to infer structure and richness of communities within each site in each substrate, and confocal light scanning microscopy to assess the three-dimensional structure of the sampled biofilms. To gather further insights, we built a meta-community network and used its local realizations to analyze co-occurrence patterns of species. We found that light is a limiting factor in the baths environment, that moving along sites equals moving along an irradiation gradient, and that such gradient shapes the community structure, de facto separating a dark community, rich in Bacteria, Fungi and cyanobacteria, from two dim communities, rich in Chlorophyta. Almost all sites are dominated by photoautotrophs, with Fungi and Bacteria relegated to the role of rare species., and structural properties of biofilms are not consistent within the same substrate. We conclude that the Herculaneum suburban baths are an environment-shaped community, where one dark community (plaster) and one dim community (mortar) provides species to a "midway" community (marble).

[The Hammam in manuscripts and ancient works of the Arabic medical literature]. / "Le Hammam" a travers des manuscrits et autres ouvrages anciens de la littérature médicale arabe.

The first hammams appeared under the dynasty of Omeyyades. Having described the premises, the authors clarify the functioning of a hammam, then the beneficial effects of the bath.

[Turpentined vapour baths with coniferous oil]. / Des bains de vapeurs térébenthinés aux pastilles de Pin mugho.

This article presents the history of turpentined vapour baths used to treat rheumatismes. In the same time appeared patent medicines made with coniferous oil, sold by chemist near those baths establishments.

[Collaboration between Physician Emerich Lindenmayer and Architect Jan Nevole in Restoring the Sokobanja Turkish Bath].

The Sokobanja Turkish bath is an exceptional example of two-section baths and quite particular in its style, structure type and technology used. It is one of the two of the same type that remained in Serbia and the only one that has retained its original function. About its construction we learn from the Vidin sanjak defter from the second half of the 16th century. In the lavish built heritage inventory, Turkish baths are quite unique secular public structures, playing a prominent role in the development of health culture. Based upon their specific function, these baths possess a special architectural expression, are often monumental, decorative and imaginative in their forms and ornamentation. Prince Milos initiated repair works of the Soko Banja baths and spa springs immediately after the settlement became a part of the Serbian Principality in 1834. When work on restoring the men's baths started, a separate room with a tub was built for Prince Milos, while the women's bath remained in ruins. In 1847, the Ministry of Interior sent Dr Emerich Lindenmayer and architect Jan Nevole, as an expert team, to assess the state of the hammam so that it could be included in the undertakings funded from the state budget. After the assessment and review of the existing issues and upon a detailed report submitted to the Ministry of Interior, complex repairs were conducted in 1850, according to Nevole's architectural design and his constant supervision. The approach implemented in the architectural renovation process was based on highly regarded principles of the time, thus preserving both the hammam's original function and its valuable architecture.

Helping the poor emerge from "urban barbarism to civic civilization": public bathhouses in America, 1890-1915.

In an era when the luxury of private bathrooms had not yet been made widely available to the masses, local charities and municipal governments worked feverishly to construct public bathhouses. Reformers, including city officials, engineers, physicians, and members of the clergy, increased the number of public bath facilities across America from a mere six in 1894 to 49 by 1904. The urban poor took tens of millions of showers at the turn of the century as a result. What the poor may not have realized, however, is that the reformers of the Progressive Era had in mind a form of social engineering. Bathing, they argued, not only assisted in the containment of disease; it also served to instill upper-middle class values of self-respect, morality, and citizenship into the life and practice of the poor.

The history of gay bathhouses. 1984.

Public policy regarding bathhouses has been criticized as being based on political expediency rather than on medical or social science. To affect that shortcoming, we include here a brief history of gay bathhouses. The history of the baths is rarely told, but whenever it is told it necessarily reflects the times in which it was written. For that reason, we include a history written in 1984, at the time that much of what was known about AIDS, routes of transmission and the role of the bathhouses was very much in flux. This history not only gives a context for the current discussion, but also allows the reader to see the history from that distant point in time. This paper was first published in December 1984 as an article in Coming Up!, a lesbian and gay community newspaper published monthly in San Francisco (California). It was later edited and reprinted in a book titled Policing Public Sex (1996). The version of the paper presented here is from the original 1984 article (pp. 15-19); several images appeared with the article that are not reproduced here. As with all the reprinted papers in this volume, no editorial changes were made to the paper and only minor typographical errors were corrected.

Norway: water and class in nineteenth-century psychiatry.

Water has long been considered an effective means of therapy for mental disorders. Its use, however, was divided along class lines during the nineteenth century. After presenting a brief background of the general conditions of the insane in Norway around the mid-nineteenth century when modern psychiatry entered the scene, I will present some examples of developments in hydrotherapy--fashionable bath resorts for the rich, and the use of prolonged baths as coercive treatment for asylum paupers.

[Typhoid fever]. / Typhus abdominalis.

The second part of this review accounts on a patient with classic symptoms of typhoid fever. The case history is commented in the light of todays knowledge. The case was taken from the clinical notes of Schönlein one of the most famous clinicians of the first part of the 19th century. It reveals the difficulties of the physician to cope with such a disease without our present diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities. It is surprising to realize that 150 years ago therapy of typhoid fever was not substantially different from that in use up to the recent introduction of specific antibacterial therapy. Since the typical course of typhoid fever is only rarely encountered nowadays the case seems suitable to recall this clinical picture to our generation of physicians.

[Spas in Gallo-roman Aquitaine]. / Le thermalisme en Aquitaine gallo-romaine.

We have various witnesses about spas during the gallo-roman period; it is in Luchon, Dax, Bagnères-de-Bigorre and Amélie les Bains, that we have the most important number of documents, coins, various chinas, and votive stones. It is interesting to note that after two thousand years the therapeutic qualities of mineral hot waters springs are still recognized; and in addition to the four mentioned spas, we can add: Barbotan, Prechacq, Saint-Christau, Capvern, Encausse, Salies-du-Salat, Ax-les-Thermes, Aulus, Alet, Rennes-les-Bains. It is interesting also to note that goddesses exhibited near the springs, were later replaced by Saints, which were the only explanation about the activity of the springs during several centuries.

[Crisis and decline of bath houses]. / Krise und Untergang der Badstube.

For centuries bath-houses and barber-surgeons formed such an integral part of public life that one is mystified by their vanishing from modern view with hardly any trace left. Previous authors have offered a variety of reasons for this disappearance: the bath-houses' notorious reputation, developing fuel-shortage, the "new" fashion of taking the waters and the outbreak of previously unknown contagious diseases are among those mentioned most frequently. While these factors may be valid reasons for a crisis afflicting the "hot-houses" they would hardly explain why fate overtook the barber-surgeons' entire trade. Judging from the sources available one cannot help but feel that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were largely responsible for such a dramatic change of society. Sceptical philosophy discarded the wisdom of the ancient medical authorities replacing traditional steam-bathing with "modern" cold-bathing. Society itself was subject to equally revolutionary changes: the local masters of the trade had to make room for surgeons educated at medical schools setting the stage for a new reality which has become "normal" to us.