fascinating reading.
BATH TIME!
CELEBRATING THE EVERYDAY
Advantages and Pleasures of the Bath
The pleasures of the bath!
Ah! How I love my bath and wouldn’t miss it for the world! Every day my heart gives
a happy little leap when my brain gets round to announcing that it’s bath time. There
is such a release in stripping off all one’s clothes and climbing into that little sea of
deliciously soothing hot water.
“There is something almost magical about hot water. It was probably in the
environment of hot water that the primordial soup coalesced into the dance of
spinning molecules known as life. All the conditions had to be quite right – plus
something extra. Something that calls life out of chaos: something that heals.
Slipping into a warm bath, a part of you remembers and allows itself to be supported
and buoyed up, warmed and nurtured to the core. It reminds you to let go of physical
and mental tension, to give up all the striving and activity, to just be held by the
penetrating warmth”.
But getting into the bath is not only a kind of regress into the evolution of life in
general – it also takes us back at some level into our personal pre-natal sea in the
maternal womb. The technique of rebirthing homes in on this and advocates lengthy
soaks in the tub by candlelight. Flotation tanks are another interesting way of
disconnecting with our hectic present lives and immersing ourselves in the void.
The human race has long intuitively recognized the enormous benefits of hot water.
Natural hot springs often became sacred areas for healing and regeneration. I like to
think of my bathroom as my private spa, where I daily take the cure.
So, hot water in our homes is far more than just a convenience – it’s actually a
powerful therapeutic too, a form of hydrotherapy. The physiological effects of hot
water include:
* Temporarily increased blood pressure followed by decreased blood pressure.
* Increased superficial circulation.
* Increased blood supply to muscles.
* General muscle relaxation, relief of muscle spasm.
* Increased heart rate.
* Increased blood volume.
* Promotion of sweating and increased elimination of metabolic waste.
* Increased metabolism with more oxygen to the tissue and increasing carbon
dioxide production.
* Increased respiration rate.
* Stimulation of the immune system and increased antibody production.
* Stimulation of liver chemistry and lactic acid conversion.
* Sedation of sensory motor neurons and pain relief.
Hydrotherapy is one of the most ancient of all health treatments. There is Kneipp
therapy, hot water treatments, cold water treatments, mud baths and packs, saunas,
Sitz baths, and many more. Water therapies abound.
Soaking in very hot water was a form of treatment for mental illness not so long ago.
The novel, ‘I Never Promised You A Rose Garden’ describes how patients were
strapped into tubs containing very hot water. On a lighter note, Dodie Smith said that
“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression”.
When there’s a baby or a small child in the house the bathroom becomes a
playroom. How many times have I visited friends, or my own grown-up children, and
had to remove mountains of yellow plastic ducks, ships of all shapes and sizes and
endless brightly –coloured beakers, etc., before I can get near the tub. Baby’s bath is
a major bonding scene.
There are so many interesting things one can put in the water: I always use olive oil
because of my very dry skin. A few drops of aromatherapy oils add a huge dimension
to healing of body and mind. Then there are herbs of various kinds. For example,
lavender to sedate; rosemary to stimulate and awaken. Adding sea salt is a popular
way to cleanse negative energies. And of course one can create a terrific ambience
with candles.
Going down to Cape Town on holiday every year as a child, I was always fascinated
to find that the bath water was brown. But I haven’t found it brown in my adult years: I
wonder why.
BUT BATHS CAN BE DANGEROUS!
Baths can also be lethal! My father’s little brother was scalded to death – and there
was always a whisper in the family that my Dad was blamed. The nurse poured
boiling water into the tub and then left the room to fetch the cold water. Dad and his
brother were only very small children, but Dad was the older.
My Aunt Lillian died in her bath – was it a heart attack? It was never quite clear to us.
Statistics reveal that about 365 people drown in their bathtubs every year.
And then of course there are all the murder stories where the victim is cleverly
electrocuted in the bath.
My late ex-husband, a gynaecologist, always used to warn me: “don’t soak long in
very hot water – it melts the fat around your kidneys” – but other doctors with whom
I’ve checked this say that they’ve never heard of such a thing!
Macrobiotics prescribes only a very few minutes in the shower and total avoidance of
the bath for sick people – presumably because it is too weakening – one loses
mineral salts and blood pressure falls.
Did you know that bubble baths and foam baths can cause or aggravate urinary tract
infections? What a pity!
STRANGE USES OF BATHTUBS
Bathtubs have sometimes been used for very strange purposes!
One hears periodically of people sleeping in the empty tub when no bed is available.
A friend gave Dorothy Parker a small alligator. She put it into the bathtub until she
could figure out what to do with it, then left for an appointment. When she returned,
she found this note from the maid: “I have resigned. I refuse to work in a house
where there is an alligator in the bathtub. I would have told you this before, but I did
not think the matter would ever come up”.
Can you believe that people play Monopoly in a bathtub? The longest Monopoly
game played in a bathtub lasted 99 hours.
The French writer Edmond Rostand spent much of his time writing in the bathtub
because he hated to be interrupted while working.
Sex in the bath is the subject of a host of risqué jokes...
A BIT OF BATHTUB HISTORY
The earliest plumbing systems ever discovered date back nearly 6000 years to the
Indus River Valley in India where copper water pipes were excavated from the ruins
of a palace.
3000 years later the ancestor of the pedestal tub was unearthed on the island of
Crete. Five feet long, made of hard pottery, in shape resembling the 19th century claw
foot tub.
The Greeks believed it unmanly to use hot water. The Spartan had a polished marble
bowl about 30 inches high in which he would stand, having a slave douse him with
cold water from head to toe - the colder the better.
The Romans, on the other hand, were devoted to communal rituals of a pleasurable
sort. From 500 BC to AD 455 they championed the daily ritual of bathing, but public
baths were the norm, with private indoor baths being basically smaller indoor pools
taking up a whole room.
During the Dark Ages bathing virtually disappeared. People who could afford it used
expensive perfumes to cover up the unpleasant body odors, with fragrant herbs
being strewn on straw-covered floors.
The early Christians rejected virtually everything Roman, including the value of
cleanliness. “All is vanity,” stated an early Christian writer. St. Benedict ruled that “to
those that are well, and especially for the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted”.
A 4th century pilgrim to Jerusalem boasted that she had not washed her face for
eighteen years, so as “not to disturb the holy water used at her baptism”.
In Renaissance England around the time of Shakespeare, people were stitched into
their elaborate clothes for months on end. Once or twice a year the clothes were
removed for the ceremonial bath. Water was boiled in kettles over open fires and
carried in to fill a large tub. The master of the household had the first immersion,
followed by the hierarchy in order: wife, children, servants. Queen Elizabeth I was
immortalized as the queen who took a bath once a month “whether she needed it or
not” and who had her tub carried with her on all her great progresses round England.
There were bathtubs made of leather for traveling. Others were made of tin or copper
or of wood.
The bath as we know it had to wait for the invention of appropriate piping systems.
Up until the 1800s in the U.S, most water pipes were made of hollowed trees. Cast
iron pipes were first imported from England, and then produced in New Jersey.
In 1883, virtually simultaneously, two American companies began the process of
enamelling cast iron bathtubs to form a smooth interior surface. The first claw foot tub
was advertised as: “a horse trough/hog scalder” which, “when furnished with four
legs will serve as a bathtub”. These tubs soon became mass-produced as the public
appreciated the extremely sanitary surface that was easy to clean, thus preventing
the spread of bacteria and diseases.
The end of World War I saw a construction boom in the U.S. Bathrooms were fitted
with a toilet, sink, and bathtub; mostly claw foot bathtubs. But even in 1921, only 1%
of American homes had indoor plumbing. An old Kentucky law required citizens to
take a bath at least once a year. Outhouses were still the norm in rural areas. The
Sears catalogue, with its uncoated, absorbent pages, was a popular form of toilet
paper often found hanging inside the outhouse.
Over time, the once-popular clawfoot tub metamorphosed into a built-in tub with
apron front. This enclosed style afforded much easier maintenance of the bathroom
and with the emergence of coloured sanitary ware in 1928, more design options for
the homeowner.
However – believe it or not, the trend today is shifting back to the elegant style and
luxury of a soaking claw foot tub. Homeowners are tearing out their dime-a-dozen
built-in tubs and replacing them with reproduction roll rim footed tubs. Now available
in both the classic cast-iron or lighter weight acrylic styles, claw foot bathtubs are
produced in a variety of styles and foot finish options. Today I visited a big bathroom
shop and was shown a big array of Victorian-style bath-tubs. The salesman told me
that it was only the price that held people back when the present vogue, even here in
South Africa, favours the old free-standing type. The most expensive bathtub was
R16 500, the cheapest built-in one, R480.
When I was in boarding-school in my early teens, we each had only five minutes to
hop in the free-standing tub in an inch or two of tepid water. When I was in my late
teens in London, I stayed occasionally with friends who only lit the boiler once or
maybe twice a week in order to bath. And many of us have had the experience of
poverty-stricken periods in that great city, when we had to drop coins in the gas
meter in order to get any hot water. But now, in my later years, I treasure my daily
soak. I wallow in water as hot as I can bear. Yes, I’m well aware that a bath uses two
or three times more water than a shower – and I will admit that showers can be very
invigorating, especially in very warm weather – but I love my soothing hot water soak,
and I pray to the Lord: “Give us today our daily bath.”