Baths and bathing

Use in the book

Bathing is judged by patient, temperature, frequency and purpose. Among causes of melancholy, excessive or untimely baths allegedly dry, overcool or overheat the body; Guianerius rejects hot baths for adust melancholy and reports gout relieved at the cost of madness. Burton immediately qualifies the account: what cures one melancholy person may cause the condition in another. In the remedial section, natural and artificial baths both have special uses. Alexander praises their speed, Aetius daily use, and Galen his results, but Montanus’s marginal comment questions the boasting. Rhazes’s moistening programme joins bathing to subsequent anointing; Crato also allows fresh water alone. Different authorities prescribe different frequencies, while the distinction between warm and hot water is tied to avoiding sweat.

Natural baths expose disagreement rather than a single rule. Marcus de Oddis condemns heating and drying but elsewhere praises sulphurous cleansing. Mercurialis prescribes drinking Lucca waters and pouring them over the head; the margin also includes the stomach. Hercules de Saxonia restricts the drying, sweat-producing baths to hypochondriacal melancholy, excluding head and whole-body forms. Burton notices a tension when physicians diagnose a hot liver yet send a patient to hotter waters. Montanus adds cooling applications, and Gabelius limits the favourable account to cold diseases. English hot baths receive the same caution. Cardan, from Agathinus, nevertheless advocates cold-water bathing for all ages and constitutions, especially hot ones; Burton introduces this after noting sparse mention and opposition. These are attributed historical positions, not current medical advice.

The use changes with the local task. Prepared fresh-water baths reappear in the treatment of head melancholy, with Guianerius’s twice-daily proposal. Bathing in the love-cure section accompanies fasting, exercise and sweating; the margin specifies cold rather than hot baths. To bath an affected part with a moist application is a narrower external treatment than whole-body immersion. The philosopher’s bath supplies a different kind of example: an imagined dog is resisted by reasoning, in Burton’s reply that a sufferer may correct himself to some degree. The tale does not demonstrate a cure for the illness caused by a mad-dog bite.

Baths are also social places and objects of cultural judgment. Burton moves from Roman monuments and luxurious habits to public and private facilities in Constantinople and Fez, cleansing and Jewish observance; his description of the latter as superstitious belongs to Christian polemic. Reports of mixed bathing at Baden contrast with separate Greek baths and jealous reactions elsewhere. These are attributed comparisons, not a verified survey of entire peoples. A bath’s ordinary wetness also serves an argument for contentment: a man already wet gains no further kind of wetness in an ocean, just as enough cannot be exceeded in kind.

The figurative “Balneum Diaboli” makes melancholic humour the devil’s bathing place, a bodily medium through which he supposedly acts; the argument retains humoral mediation rather than replacing it with demonic causation. In the consolation for despair, natural causes of frightening appearances remain possible, demonic power is limited, and mixed diseases call for mixed remedies. “Balneum Dianæ” is instead a preparation name in the account of Paracelsian boasts; Burton later rejects both extremes in the mineral dispute, and no composition is supplied. Cupid’s bath at Aix belongs to a poem and a qualified comparison with love charms. The dedication’s “MILITI DE BALNEO” is the honorific Knight of the Bath.

Bathing also enters accounts of erotic sight and suspicion. A cold bath supposedly heated by naked Caelia belongs to tales Burton asks readers to accept with “poetical faith”; the next example, from Aristaenetus, makes a bathing girl the object of a fisherman’s startled gaze. In the jealousy discussion, Martial’s women allegedly feign illness to visit baths, and the following Penelope-to-Helen comparison insinuates infidelity. These are literary examples and hostile allegations, not verified accounts of bathers.

The devil’s-bath metaphor also introduces an account of thoughts supposedly forced upon sufferers against their wills; Burton’s next distinction stresses their abhorrence and resistance, rather than consent.

Related entries

Non naturals

Complexion and temperament

Hypochondria

Water and springs

Venery

Fasting

Places to read

1. The Anatomy of Melancholy · paragraph 21The phrase gives George Berkeley’s title in the dedication.
2. Subsection 2 a Digression on the Nature of Spirits Evil Angels or Devils And… · paragraphs 16–18Melancholic humour is imagined as a medium in which the devil mingles and finds his opportunity.
3. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraphs 19–22Excess, unsuitable timing and extreme temperature condition the alleged harm. The same kind of treatment may cure one person and cause melancholy in another.
4. Member 2. Retention and Evacuation Corrected · paragraphs 31–48Natural and prepared baths, moistening claims, conflicting frequencies, social bathing, and the natural-bath debate with its final cold-water qualification. Rhazes’s bathing and anointing are distinct parts of his moistening programme. Crato also allows a fresh-water bath without added ingredients. Baths as public establishments and objects of cultural judgment. The marginal thermal-bath and fountain labels accompany the Constantinople account. Praise and condemnation concern different effects: sulphurous cleansing versus heat and drying. Cold-water bathing is praised as suitable for all ages and constitutions, especially hot ones.
5. Member 6 Subsection 1 Disturbances of the Mind Corrected Through The… · paragraphs 23–25The bath is the setting in an anecdote about resisting a frightening imagined dog.
6. Member 3 Against Poverty and Want and Other Such Adversities · paragraphs 60–62Being wet in a bath supplies an analogy for having enough: immersion in a larger river or ocean adds no further kind of sufficiency.
7. Subsection 4 Precious Stones Metals and Minerals as Alteratives · paragraphs 39–43The name appears among remedies associated with extravagant Paracelsian claims.
8. Subsection 5 Compound Alteratives Criticism of Compounds and Mixed Medicines · paragraphs 29–31Moist medicines on linen bathe and cool particular affected parts.
9. Subsection 5 Alteratives and Cordials That Strengthen the Body, Disperse The… · paragraphs 24–26Prepared fresh-water baths recur in the treatment of head melancholy.
10. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of The… · paragraphs 15–21Poetic heating of a bath is explicitly qualified by poetical faith; a bathing scene then exemplifies the beholder’s response to beauty.
11. Subsection 5 Procurers and Love Potions as Causes · paragraphs 16–20The bath is given a mythical power to make bathers lovers.
12. The Cure of Love Melancholy by Work, Diet, Medicine, Fasting and Other Means · paragraphs 21–23Bathing accompanies hunger, exercise and sweating in the treatment of love melancholy.
13. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence… · paragraphs 6–11Mixed bathing at Baden is an example of custom without supposed jealousy.
14. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence… · paragraphs 74–77Feigning illness to visit baths appears in the jealousy catalogue, followed by Martial’s Penelope-to-Helen insinuation.
15. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 28–31The metaphor accompanies a distinction between imposed thoughts and the sufferer’s abhorrence or resistance.
16. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 2–4The metaphor returns in consolation for despair, alongside limited demonic power.

In this edition

“Baths are either artificiall or naturall” becomes baths artificially prepared or natural. The Latin Balneum aquæ dulcis means a bath of fresh water; sweet water in the later preparation also means fresh, not sugared. The body’s moderate warmth and the margin’s moistening through cooling are preserved without forced agreement. The verb bath is modernized to bathe. In the Constantinople margin, Thermæ and Nympheæ are adjacent labels for baths and fountain structures, not interchangeable definitions.

The first devil’s-bath passage consolidates Latin and English into one modern phrase; the later passage represents both with devil’s bath and devil’s bathing place. Diana’s bath translates a name, without identifying its ingredients. Aix is rendered Aachen, while the following happily is perhaps and retains the comparison’s uncertainty. The dedication’s Latin dative is carried by its opening address to the patron.

balneum

Printed “Balneum” (Latin; lemma).

A bath.

Here: Crato says a bath of fresh water alone has very often helped.

Context: This is an attributed observation, not a claim that herbs or other ingredients are always necessary, or a modern treatment recommendation.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Balneum aquæ dulcis solum sæpissimè profuisse compertum habemus

Modern rendering: We have found that a bath of fresh water alone has very often been beneficial

Word and construction: Balneum supplies a bath; aquæ dulcis fresh water, solum alone, and sæpissimè very often.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

balneum diaboli

Printed “Balneum Diaboli” (Latin; phrase).

The Devil’s bath: a figurative bathing place or congenial medium for demonic activity.

Here: Melancholic humour is imagined as a medium in which the devil mingles and finds his opportunity.

Context: Burton says presumably and reports a cure by purging black bile; the preceding passage preserves a bodily immediate cause alongside alleged demonic agency.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Balneum Diaboli, the devils Bath

Modern rendering: the Devil’s bath

Alignment scope: Original Latin phrase plus separate English gloss consolidated into one modern phrase

Word and construction: The Latin phrase and Burton’s English restatement are consolidated into the one modern expression the Devil’s bath; Diaboli supplies the possessor.

Further local use

Printed “Balneum Diaboli” (Latin; phrase).

Here: The metaphor returns in consolation for despair, alongside limited demonic power.

Context: Burton first allows natural causes of terrors, then demonic molestation only by God’s permission; mixed causes justify mixed remedies.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Balneum Diaboli, the divels bath

Modern rendering: the devil’s bath, the devil’s bathing place

Sense relation: The same metaphor under explicit limits on demonic power.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “balneum diaboli” (Latin; phrase).

Here: The bath metaphor introduces Burton’s account of unwanted blasphemous thoughts imposed against the sufferer’s will.

Context: The phrase is attributed to Serapio. Burton distinguishes thoughts supposedly forced by the devil from the sufferer’s own thoughts; the sequel stresses abhorrence and resistance rather than consent.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Melancholy is balneum diaboli, as Serapio holds, the divels bath, and invites him to come to it.

Modern rendering: Melancholy is the devil’s bath, as Serapio holds—the devil’s bath, inviting him into it.

Word and construction: Balneum diaboli supplies the devil’s bath; the source’s Latin and separate English gloss both reappear in the paired modern wording.

Sense relation: Same lexical sense in a meaningfully different argumentative setting; local speaker, purpose and qualification are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Balneum Dianae

Printed “Balneum Dianæ” (Latin; phrase).

Diana’s bath, the name of a historical chemical or sympathetic preparation.

Here: The name appears among remedies associated with extravagant Paracelsian claims.

Context: Burton presents the efficacy and longevity claims as boasts, then rejects both extremes in the dispute over minerals. Its precise composition is not supplied here.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Balneum Dianæ

Modern rendering: Diana’s bath

Word and construction: Balneum supplies bath and Dianæ the genitive Diana’s; together they name the preparation.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

bath · Baths

Printed “Baths” (English; lemma).

Bathing waters or preparations, either naturally occurring or artificially prepared.

Here: The opening distinction introduces different uses in melancholy and competing claims about their efficacy.

Context: Alexander praises their speed, Aetius daily use, and Galen his cures; Montanus’s marginal reservation calls the praise boastful.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Baths are either artificiall or naturall

Modern rendering: Baths are either artificially prepared or natural

Word and construction: Baths names the bathing waters or preparations; artificiall and naturall distinguish their origin.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Baths” (English; lemma).

Here: Excess, unsuitable timing and extreme temperature condition the alleged harm.

Context: Burton distinguishes excessive drying from excessive cooling; Montanus adds overheating of the liver and Struthius putrefaction.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Baths dry too much, if used in excess

Modern rendering: Baths, whether natural or artificial, dry the body too much if used excessively

Alignment scope: Main drying clause with the original intervening natural/artificial qualification incorporated into modern wording

Word and construction: Baths names the treatment; dry too much and if used in excess supply effect and condition. The modern phrase also relocates the adjacent natural/artificial qualification.

Alignment qualification: Whether natural or artificial appears immediately after the selected original clause; the modern sentence moves it into that clause.

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

Further local use

Printed “Baths” (English; lemma).

Here: The same kind of treatment may cure one person and cause melancholy in another.

Context: Guianerius rejects hot baths in adust melancholy and reports a gout cure followed by madness; Burton expressly makes judgment depend on hot or cold humour.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Baths may be good for one melancholy man, bad for another

Modern rendering: Baths may benefit one melancholy person and harm another

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Bathes” (English; lemma).

Here: Praise and condemnation concern different effects: sulphurous cleansing versus heat and drying; Marcus de Oddis also recommends drinking the spring water.

Context: Marcus de Oddis gives opposed judgments; Hildesheim’s separate marginal recommendation is conditional on no hot liver or feared excessive drying.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Naturall Bathes are praised by some, discommended by others

Modern rendering: Natural baths are praised by some and condemned by others

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “bathing” (English; lemma).

Here: Cold-water bathing is praised as suitable for all ages and constitutions, especially hot ones.

Context: This is Cardan’s advice drawn from Agathinus, introduced after Burton finds little or no physician mention and notes contrary opinions.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: commends bathing in fresh rivers, and cold waters

Modern rendering: recommends bathing in fresh rivers and cold waters

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Baths” (English; lemma).

Here: Prepared fresh-water baths recur in the treatment of head melancholy.

Context: Burton cites Galen, Aetius and Rhazes; Guianerius proposes twice-daily use and subsequent anointing. The historical ingredients are named without a reconstructed recipe.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Baths are of wonderfull great force in this malady

Modern rendering: Baths have extraordinarily great power in this disease

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “baths” (English; lemma).

Here: Bathing accompanies hunger, exercise and sweating in the treatment of love melancholy.

Context: Hildesheim ranks hunger and fasting first; Magninus’s marginal qualification specifies cold rather than hot baths.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: adds often baths, much exercise and sweat

Modern rendering: frequent baths, much exercise and sweating

Alignment scope: Original verb with its object list aligned to the modern quoted list; adds is outside the selected modern unit

Word and construction: Baths supplies baths and often frequent; exercise and sweat are separate coordinated measures. The original adds is rendered immediately before the modern quoted list.

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

bath · baths

Printed “baths” (English; lemma).

Buildings or establishments for bathing.

Here: The Roman public baths are monumental, heavily visited facilities.

Context: Burton combines architectural history with reported bathing frequencies; these are not independently verified totals or habits.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: publick baths very sumptuous and stupend

Modern rendering: very sumptuous and stupendous public baths

Word and construction: Baths names the establishments; publick their public use, and sumptuous and stupend their splendour and scale.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Bathes” (English; lemma).

Here: Mixed bathing at Baden is an example of custom without supposed jealousy.

Context: Burton attributes the report to Antomarius Poggius and Münster; the ensuing contrast gives separate Greek baths and differing national judgments.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: go commonly into the Bathes together, without all suspition

Modern rendering: commonly enter the baths together without any suspicion

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Bath” (English; lemma).

Here: Baths become a suspected opportunity for sexual misconduct under the pretext of medical need.

Context: Burton invokes Martial’s invective within alleged causes of jealousy; the following Penelope-to-Helen couplet supplies the hostile sexual implication.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: counterfeited a disease to go to the Bath

Modern rendering: feigned illness to go to the baths

Word and construction: Bath names the bathing establishment or resort; counterfeited a disease gives the alleged pretext.

Sense relation: Same lexical sense in a meaningfully different argumentative setting; local speaker, purpose and qualification are retained.

Qualification: The source has singular Bath; the paired rendering uses plural baths. No identification with the English city is made here.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

bath

Printed “bath” (English; lemma).

Water or a receptacle in which one bathes.

Here: Being wet in a bath supplies an analogy for having enough: immersion in a larger river or ocean adds no further kind of sufficiency.

Context: Burton argues for contentment, not a literal measurement of wealth or a medical effect.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: he that is wet in a bath, can be no more wet

Modern rendering: A man wet in a bath can be no wetter

Word and construction: Bath supplies bath; wet and no more wet form the argument’s comparison.

Wider original source; Wider modern source: the passage

Wider original wording: These above-named remedies have happily as much power as that bath of Aix

Wider modern rendering: Perhaps these remedies have as much power as the bath at Aachen

Wider alignment scope: Corresponding wider comparison, with the backward reference condensed in the supplied modern wording.

Wider word and construction: Bath denotes the named hot spring; happily contributes Perhaps, qualifying the comparison, and Aix is rendered Aachen. Above-named has no separately expressed counterpart; these retains the backward reference, while that bath becomes the bath.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Bath” (English; lemma).

Here: The bath is the setting in an anecdote about resisting a frightening imagined dog.

Context: Burton’s unnamed philosopher reasons against an appearance after a mad-dog bite; the tale does not establish that reason cures the infection.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: what should a dog do in a Bath?

Modern rendering: What would a dog be doing in a bath?

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Bath” (English; lemma).

Here: The bath is given a mythical power to make bathers lovers.

Context: A poem supplies the Cupid story; Burton compares love charms to this power and closes with perhaps, so the passage is not proof of efficacy.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: that hot Bath at Aix in Germany, wherein Cupid once dipt his arrows

Modern rendering: the hot bath at Aachen in Germany, where Cupid once dipped his arrows

Sense relation: The same bathing sense in a distinct argumentative setting; qualifications are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “bath” (English; lemma).

Here: A poetic conceit makes a beautiful body heat cold bathing water.

Context: Burton reports the extravagant tale and at the passage asks for poetical faith; this is not a physical explanation of heating.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a cold bath that suddenly smoaked, and was very hot when naked Cælia came into it

Modern rendering: a cold bath that suddenly steamed and grew very hot when naked Caelia entered it

Word and construction: Bath names the water; cold, suddenly smoaked, and very hot describe the fanciful transformation.

Sense relation: Same lexical sense in a meaningfully different argumentative setting; local speaker, purpose and qualification are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

bathe

Printed “bathe” (English; lemma).

To immerse or wash the body in bathing water.

Here: Rhazes couples bathing with subsequent anointing as a moistening treatment.

Context: Burton attributes the principal-cure claim to Rhazes, while naming other physicians’ different prepared baths.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to bathe and afterwards anoint with oyle

Modern rendering: to bathe and then anoint with oil

Word and construction: Bathe supplies immersion or washing; afterwards anoint with oyle names a subsequent distinct application.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “bathing” (English; lemma).

Here: Bathing exposes the girl to the fisherman’s sight in an example of beauty’s startling effect.

Context: Burton attributes the scene to Aristaenetus and uses it as an example of the beholder being overwhelmed by beauty.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a maid bathing her self by the Sea side

Modern rendering: a girl bathing by the sea

Word and construction: Bathing her self supplies bathing; a maid and by the Sea side identify the person seen and the setting.

Sense relation: Same lexical sense in a meaningfully different argumentative setting; local speaker, purpose and qualification are retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

bathe · bath

Printed “bath” (English; lemma).

To wet or wash a part with liquid.

Here: Moist medicines on linen bathe and cool particular affected parts.

Context: Burton lists epithems among external preparations; the verb does not require immersion of the whole body.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to bath and cool several parts misaffected

Modern rendering: to bathe and cool the affected parts

Word and construction: Bath supplies bathe; cool is a separately coordinated effect and several parts misaffected identifies the affected bodily areas.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

miles de balneo

Printed “MILITI DE BALNEO” (Latin; phrase).

To a Knight of the Bath.

Here: The phrase gives George Berkeley’s title in the dedication.

Context: Democritus Junior addresses his patron formally; this is a chivalric title, not a medical use or a claim about the title’s legal history.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: GEORGIO BERKLEIO, MILITI DE BALNEO

Modern rendering: George Berkeley, Knight of the Bath

Alignment scope: Matched patron-name and title phrase, with Latin dative governed by the dedication’s earlier To

Word and construction: Militi de Balneo supplies Knight of the Bath; the Latin dative of address is carried by the dedication’s opening To, outside this selected phrase.

thermae

Printed “Thermæ” (Latin; lemma).

Thermal baths or bath establishments.

Here: The marginal label accompanies the description of Constantinople’s public baths.

Context: Burton pairs it with Nympheæ, fountain structures; that pairing does not make the two words exact synonyms, and the count remains uncollated.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: Thermæ. Nympheæ.

Modern rendering: Thermal baths. Nymphaea.

Alignment scope: Equal-scope pair of marginal nouns; English wording is supplied apparatus

Word and construction: Thermæ supplies thermal baths; Nympheæ names a distinct neighbouring type of fountain structure.

Alignment qualification: The original marginal expression has no separately aligned modern-body counterpart; its meaning is explained here from its full note context.

Modern container: note