The Anatomy of Melancholy

Felix Plater, Observations, book 1, prescribing for a melancholy lawyer, would always combine these baths with washing the head in lye in which herbs for the head have been boiled. Laurentius speaks of milk baths, which I find approved by many others. After every bath the body is to be anointed with oil of bitter almonds, violet oil, fresh butter or capon fat, especially along the backbone; then come head washes, applications of liquid remedies, and so on.

Baths of this kind were much frequented in former times, in many different forms, and are still generally used in those eastern countries. The Romans had very sumptuous and stupendous public baths, such as those of Antoninus and Diocletian. Pliny, book 36, says that Rome had an immense number of them and that they were heavily frequented. Some people bathed seven times a day, as the emperor Commodus is reported to have done; usually they bathed twice a day, and afterwards were anointed with very costly ointments.

Rich women bathed in milk, some in the milk of five hundred she-asses at once. Many ruins of such baths have been found on this island among the ruined walls and rubble of old Roman towns. Lipsius, On the Greatness of the City of Rome, book 3, chapter 8; Rosinus; Schott of Antwerp; and other antiquaries tell remarkable stories of their baths.

Gillius, book 4, final chapter of his Topography of Constantinople, counts 155 public baths in Constantinople, handsomely built. Turks of every kind, men and women, still frequent them in that city and throughout Greece and those hot countries, presumably to wash away the offensive sweat to which they are subject there.

Busbecq, in his letters, describes their customs at great length: how the women go covered, followed by a maid carrying a box of ointment to rub them with. The richer people have private baths in their houses; the poorer go to the public ones. They are generally so particular about this that they will neither eat nor drink until they have bathed—some before and after meals—and will not urinate or empty their bowels without washing their hands.

Leo Africanus, book 3, mentions a hundred separate baths at Fez in Africa, very sumptuous and endowed with large revenues. Buxtorf, chapter 14 of The Jewish Synagogue, speaks of many Jewish ceremonies of this kind. They are very superstitious in their bathing, especially the women.

Natural baths are praised by some and condemned by others, but on different grounds. Marcus de Oddis, in his work on Hippocratic affections, consulted about baths, condemns them because of the liver's heat, since they dry the body too quickly. Yet shortly afterwards, in another consultation for the same disease, he approves of them because the sulphur makes them cleansing, and recommends drinking their water.

Aretaeus, chapter 7, recommends alum baths above the rest; Mercurialis, consultation 88, recommends those of Lucca for hypochondriacal illness. He would have his patient stay there for fifteen days, drink the water and be bucketed—that is, have the water poured over his head. Giovanni Battista Silvatico, controversy 64, recommends all the baths in Italy and the drinking of their water, whether they contain iron, alum or sulphur; so does Hercules de Saxonia. But because they cause sweating and dry the body so much, he confines their use to hypochondriacal melancholy, excluding melancholy of the head and the other kind.