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History of Hydrotherapy In Depth: Roman Hot Tub and Spa Construction During the Classical Period Middle Ages Health & Beauty
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Middle Ages: Hot Tub Culture Public baths in Rome were viewed as social and political centers, popular with senators, merchants, soldiers, craftsmen, and commoners alike. They were expansive affairs housing markets, libraries, and even museums, and they attracted thousands of bathers every afternoon. For a bountiful “afternoon delight” Romans enjoyed an oil rub, steam bath, swim, massage, skin scrape, and cold rinse. Outside the cities, natural hot springs inspired health spas. Whether at home or on the road, the Romans sought to preserve their worthy ideal - “mens sana in corpore sano” – which translates literally as "A healthy mind in a healthy body." Over time, the phrase has come to mean that only a healthy body can produce or sustain a healthy mind. As the Roman Empire waned and Christianity came to dominate the Western world there coincided a marked decline in bathing among the population as a whole. Whether because people considered the flesh to be weak and lavish bath rituals to be too self-indulgent or because after the Crusades the Turkish influence lent the baths the image of an opulent and sin-shaded oases was difficult to reconcile with the dominant theology - less interest in physical hygiene was the order of the day. Except, ironically, among Christian monks whose daily reigimen included warm baths, running water, separate taps, and ritual hand washing before meals. In fact, medieval monasteries kept alive the idea of the bath even as they tended the light of learning. In England, that sceptered and septic isle, King John took a bath once every three weeks, and several centuries later Good Queen Bess bathed once a month, whether she needed it or not. The custom seemed to be about once every three to four weeks. In humbler homes bathing took place in a wooden tub shared by the entire family, to utilize the water in the hot tub while it was still hot. Medieval books of etiquette apparently insisted upon the washing of hands, face and teeth every morning, but not upon bathing, though King John of England is said to have taken a bath in a wooden hot tub about once every three weeks.As previously noted, during the Middle Ages it was more common to go dirty than clean. However the monasteries continued their separate hygienic traditions through the Middle Ages to be shining examples of the virtue that cleanliness is considered next to godliness. At Canterbury in England complete water service was installed in the monastery in 1150. It must have been efficient because that particular monastery was one of the few communities to escape the Black Death in 1349. A stream for drainage was important for the sitting of a monastery, and many of the secret passages which seem clandestinely to have linked monastery with convent are much more likely to have been chaste but practical sewers.
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