Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Hey it's Saturday. That means we have
Speaker 1: a vault episode for you. This is going to be
Speaker 1: Washing of the Waters, Part one, the first in a
Speaker 1: multi part series. This one first published on three fourteen,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. So without further ado, let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today we wanted to kick
Speaker 3: off a series examining something I recently became interested in
Speaker 3: due to a specific historical anecdote, which we're going to
Speaker 3: get to and maybe a later part in the series.
Speaker 3: But but we're kicking off a series on a very
Speaker 3: common belief across many human cultures throughout history, the belief
Speaker 3: that you can heal your body or purge your sicknesses
Speaker 3: by bathing or soaking in water, especially in certain places
Speaker 3: containing special waters, but in many cases just by bathing
Speaker 3: in waters or waters of a certain temperature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is I think a great topic because it
Speaker 1: relates to something that everyone has experience with, which is
Speaker 1: soaking in water cold or hot, the feeling of feeling
Speaker 1: restored by such practices. But then it covers a lot
Speaker 1: of ground as well. We can go back in time,
Speaker 1: we can look at different views, both scientific and superstitious,
Speaker 1: about what's exactly going on. And I think it's maybe
Speaker 1: worthwhile to just start off with just a little general
Speaker 1: information about bathing itself. And for this I turned to
Speaker 1: a book that I've had on the shelf for a
Speaker 1: long time and I occasionally turned back to. I remember
Speaker 1: I read it in full when it first came out,
Speaker 1: but it's from the Oxford University Press, titled Clean, A
Speaker 1: History of Personal Hygiene and Purity by Virginia Smith. I
Speaker 1: brought it up, at least in passing on the show
Speaker 1: many times because I think one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: about this book is that it looks just generally an
Speaker 1: overview at the history in human culture of on one hand,
Speaker 1: hygiene and on the other hand, purity, and how these
Speaker 1: become intertwined, and how there's this understanding that cleaning yourself,
Speaker 1: grooming yourself, applying cosmetics and whatnot, that it is a
Speaker 1: way of in many cases, it seems to be a
Speaker 1: way of inspiring some sort of health and cleanliness and hygiene,
Speaker 1: but also we have all these other ideas that get
Speaker 1: built up with it as well. Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bathing has a lot of symbolic loading in human culture,
Speaker 3: and I would imagine that kind of thing goes way
Speaker 3: way back, especially because even outside the context of bathing,
Speaker 3: water just has a lot of symbolic loading in human culture.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, Smith goes into it a quite a bit
Speaker 1: in this book. So our prehistoric ancestors would have obviously
Speaker 1: valued grooming, grooming being distinct somewhat from bathing for our
Speaker 1: purposes here, but they would have groomed in the same
Speaker 1: way that various other primate relatives do. And kind of
Speaker 1: a footnote here, Yes, there are certainly primates that engage
Speaker 1: in something a little more like bathing, setting and pools
Speaker 1: and all. We might have to come back to that
Speaker 1: and look at those behaviors in particular. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to water, the only real requirement Smith points out
Speaker 1: for human beings is fresh drinking water. So we might
Speaker 1: swim in water, we might fish in water. There are
Speaker 1: certainly other things we might do in and around water,
Speaker 1: but we don't need to actually have baths. We don't
Speaker 1: need to immerse ourselves in water, but we found water.
Speaker 1: We inevitably curious about water, and so nomadic Neolithic tribal
Speaker 1: groups inevitably discovered all kinds of natural waters, including cold
Speaker 1: water springs, rivers, and lakes, and they inevitably developed ideas
Speaker 1: about their healing properties. And so these waters there would
Speaker 1: be sources of fresh drinking water, maybe fishing waters in
Speaker 1: some cases, but you could also engage in soothing and
Speaker 1: hygienic washing or immersion in these waters. And those are
Speaker 1: just the cold waters to consider, because on top of that,
Speaker 1: then we have the naturally heated waters, hot springs and
Speaker 1: so forth, which would have seemed even more miraculous as
Speaker 1: they were discovered. I mean, can you imagine if you
Speaker 1: had never encountered hot springs before, or even if you
Speaker 1: knew hot springs existed, but you could only have access
Speaker 1: to hot water like this naturally occurring once a year
Speaker 1: twice a year, depending on what your cycle of moving
Speaker 1: around might be. And hot springs occur around the world,
Speaker 1: and Smith points out quote and hot springs seem to
Speaker 1: have played a significant role in human settlement patterns quote.
Speaker 1: For instance, many if not most, of the highly decorated
Speaker 1: Upper Paleolithic sacred cave systems in the French Pyrenees and
Speaker 1: the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain are within walking distance
Speaker 1: of important hot spring sites, also later exploited by the Romans.
Speaker 3: That is interesting, I've never read that before. So there
Speaker 3: is a correlation between evidence of habitation by prehistoric peoples
Speaker 3: and proximity to hot springs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think I've countered this in other sources
Speaker 1: as well, making the argument that these peoples inevitably moved
Speaker 1: around in order to survive and follow their food sources.
Speaker 1: If there was a hot spring in proximity to where
Speaker 1: they might stay, all the better. If there's a hot
Speaker 1: spring on the way of point A to point B,
Speaker 1: all the better.
Speaker 3: Now, it's probably difficult to figure out at what point
Speaker 3: immersion these waters would have taken on cultural associations with
Speaker 3: healing or with wellness of the body, because use of
Speaker 3: those sources could also just be for relaxation, for recreation
Speaker 3: or for hygiene.
Speaker 1: Right right, But then, of course, in the human mind
Speaker 1: and the human imagination, how quickly do any of those
Speaker 1: categories potentially touch on the sacred right? Whin does relaxation
Speaker 1: then become meditation? When does hygiene, become purity, etc. So
Speaker 1: Smith writes that washing and bathing properly likely began during
Speaker 1: the Neolithic period, and late Neolithic technology tackled the problems
Speaker 1: of water heating, storage, and draining as they took the
Speaker 1: experience of these baths out of their natural environment during
Speaker 1: stretches of greater stability, prosperity, and surplus. And so a
Speaker 1: true culture of bathing evolves, as do various ideas about
Speaker 1: the benefits of bathing. And again, this kind of runs
Speaker 1: the gamut. You can imagine it being just entirely subjective experience,
Speaker 1: serience's actual hygienic value, and then supernatural ideas and everything
Speaker 1: in between. Smith also points out that it connects with
Speaker 1: a very old notion that the human body is unfinished
Speaker 1: and that it is left to us to clothe, adorn, groom,
Speaker 1: and apply cosmetics in order to finish ourselves to a
Speaker 1: level that meets individual and or cultural expectations. And this
Speaker 1: is an idea that the author comes back to again
Speaker 1: and again. And on one hand, it might seem like
Speaker 1: an overstatement of the obvious, like if I'm you know,
Speaker 1: you wake up in the morning, you're not fully ready,
Speaker 1: or you know, you're naked, you're not fully prepared for
Speaker 1: the world. But this takes it a step a step further,
Speaker 1: considering the idea that you were not finished until you
Speaker 1: have done these things, like there's sort of a base
Speaker 1: level of who you are and what a human being is,
Speaker 1: but then there has to be this cultural extension to
Speaker 1: meet this ideal or as ideal of a self as
Speaker 1: one can achieve the sort of real world.
Speaker 3: This raises a really interesting idea that I don't think
Speaker 3: I'd ever considered before, which is that in a sense,
Speaker 3: you could think of bathing as a form of body modification.
Speaker 3: So in its natural state, just living your life, your
Speaker 3: body is going to be covered in various substances and
Speaker 3: bits of dust and dirt from the environment, and with
Speaker 3: oils that are naturally coming from your skin and all
Speaker 3: the other things that accumulate through living your life. By
Speaker 3: bathing and removing those things from the outer layer of
Speaker 3: your skin, you are in a way changing yourself, much
Speaker 3: in the same way that somebody might be changing themselves
Speaker 3: by say, applying a tattoo or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, yeah, I mean, without even getting into the
Speaker 1: higher levels of tattoos and cosmetics, just altering your body
Speaker 1: hair changes your appearance. But also, as pointed out, we'll
Speaker 1: get to this example in a bit like there are
Speaker 1: cases where hair removal has an impact then on the
Speaker 1: potentiality for lice. So you are potentially augmenting your parasite load,
Speaker 1: which is not something you need. Bathing and any kind
Speaker 1: of hygiene culture for obviously mere grooming in non human
Speaker 1: animals also can do the same thing, and many other
Speaker 1: animals have some sort of of a parasite to regulation
Speaker 1: practice in their habits. But yeah, it's fascinating to think
Speaker 1: about all of this, and I feel like you can
Speaker 1: see the basic template of healing waters in a refreshing
Speaker 1: hot shower, bath and all of this. So the experience
Speaker 1: relaxes are perks you up, it's hygienic, But there is
Speaker 1: also this long human history again of associating physical hygiene
Speaker 1: with spiritual purity, and in bathing our incomplete body, we
Speaker 1: elevate it to a level at least just beyond the
Speaker 1: naturally occurring world, if not like maybe a few steps
Speaker 1: beyond the natural world, and we feel restored, we feel
Speaker 1: capable of dealing with I guess life in general, if
Speaker 1: not particular obstacles.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, and when it comes specifically to hot waters.
Speaker 3: This is not based on any kind of scientific theory
Speaker 3: I'm aware of, but I just I personally have thought
Speaker 3: before that it seems to me there is a correlation
Speaker 3: between visible rising gases or visible amounts of particle matter
Speaker 3: rising in the air, and spiritual beliefs or beliefs about
Speaker 3: sort of hidden mechanisms of power. So think about how
Speaker 3: many religious rituals or beliefs about hidden mechanisms of power
Speaker 3: are associated with smoke or steam or anything else that
Speaker 3: you see rising and floating through the air.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, It's a short step between so many
Speaker 1: things about bathing and hotter cold waters to get to
Speaker 1: some sort of spiritual interpretation or some sort of tradition
Speaker 1: of sacred waters. Like I was just thinking about this.
Speaker 1: You know, you get into either cold water or hotter water,
Speaker 1: warm water to hot water, and one of the things
Speaker 1: you're gonna experience is you're gonna have sort of a
Speaker 1: full body experience all that cold or all that heat,
Speaker 1: and it's like literally going to put you back into
Speaker 1: the experience of your body more. You know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be You're gonna at least have a better shot at
Speaker 1: experiencing the now, just because the ambient temperature touching your
Speaker 1: entire skin is not just air temperature.
Speaker 3: Now. One problem we're going to encounter in the series,
Speaker 3: since we're talking about beliefs about the healing power of
Speaker 3: immersion and water, is that this subject has the potential
Speaker 3: to be somewhat confusing because it touches on many different related,
Speaker 3: sometimes overlapping beliefs and practices, both supernatural and natural, both
Speaker 3: ancient and modern, both outlandish and mundane. So to sort
Speaker 3: out a few common terms you might encounter in this area,
Speaker 3: especially in the use of immersion in water as it
Speaker 3: is practiced today in alternative medicine or even in standard medicine,
Speaker 3: you've got the term hydrotherapy. This is a general umbrella
Speaker 3: term that includes lots of different kinds of treatments, the
Speaker 3: unifying feature of which seems to me to be the
Speaker 3: application of water to the outside of the body. So
Speaker 3: many things that are called hydrotherapy involve immersion in water
Speaker 3: or somehow applying water to the outside of the body,
Speaker 3: maybe by massage or spraying of some kind. The specific
Speaker 3: term aquatic therapy seems more often, as best I can
Speaker 3: tell to refer to a type of physical therapy involving
Speaker 3: exercises you do while immersed in water. And it seems
Speaker 3: to me that hydrotherapy is again a potentially confusing term
Speaker 3: because it encompasses so much and includes some practices which
Speaker 3: seem to me to be pretty strongly supported by empirical evidence,
Speaker 3: maybe certain types of physical therapy involving exercises done underwater,
Speaker 3: But it also includes all kinds of therapies that seem
Speaker 3: to me obviously not to be supported by strong evidence,
Speaker 3: and then others which are somewhere in between, maybe where
Speaker 3: the evidence is somewhat ambiguous.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In Smith's book, the author points out that the
Speaker 1: term hydrotherapy is usually linked to eighteenth and nineteenth century
Speaker 1: European health trends, but then these trends go in and
Speaker 1: out of fad even into more modern times. So if
Speaker 1: you're seeing it used in like literature for some sort
Speaker 1: of health or wellness business, they're probably not using it
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth or nineteenth century sense of it, but
Speaker 1: they may it still maybe part of that fad. There
Speaker 1: may be some similar ideas that are tied up in it.
Speaker 3: Yes, Now there are also much more specific terms such
Speaker 3: as the term balneotherapy bal ineo balneotherapy, which is specifically
Speaker 3: the treatment of disease by bathing or soaking, often in
Speaker 3: specific types or sources of water, such as mineral springs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Smith dates bound theology back at least to
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks. It's something that's like documented by Homer,
Speaker 1: but was likely centuries old by that point, even influenced
Speaker 1: by various cultures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then you've got other things like thilasso therapy.
Speaker 3: This is treatment of disease with seawater. This is something
Speaker 3: that apparently plenty of the Elder was a fan of.
Speaker 3: We'll get to that a little bit later in this episode,
Speaker 3: but you know, plenty of the Elder was like, there
Speaker 3: is nothing better for health than salt from seawater and sun.
Speaker 1: Did we We did an older episode about drinking seawater,
Speaker 1: didn't weigh and we touched on us some of these
Speaker 1: these uh, these fads basically don't don't actually do it.
Speaker 1: Don't go drink a bunch of seawater because you heard
Speaker 1: it casually mentioned.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So in the series, even though we will inevitably shop
Speaker 3: against related topics, we're going to try to focus mainly
Speaker 3: on various balneo therapeutic beliefs and legends, beliefs about the
Speaker 3: healing powers of soaking or bathing, and especially the belief
Speaker 3: that there are specific places with waters that heal when
Speaker 3: you bathe or soak in them. And beyond exploring these
Speaker 3: legends themselves, I'm interested in the question are there any
Speaker 3: cases where there's empirical evidence that soaking or bathing can
Speaker 3: actually have a healing effect, and if so, how does
Speaker 3: that work?
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into ancient myths and legends a
Speaker 1: little bit here to sort of lay some of the
Speaker 1: ground work. It's kind of an interesting place to look
Speaker 1: at in times where the history sort of breaks down
Speaker 1: and look at some sort of general ideas about where
Speaker 1: some of these ideas came from and their importance to
Speaker 1: especially to ancient peoples. So, just concerning Greek myth, Smith
Speaker 1: points out, to the gods Apollo and Artemis, we're closely
Speaker 1: associated with sacred cold springs. But then to me anyway,
Speaker 1: a kind of unexpected figure emerges as kind of a
Speaker 1: hot spring and hydraulics technology. Hero I was not expecting
Speaker 1: to think about Hercules or Heracles in this regard.
Speaker 3: Oh, Heracles is kind of a hot spring mascot in
Speaker 3: some cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hot springs, but also just like harnessing the power
Speaker 1: of water. So he is associated with the invention of
Speaker 1: hot springs and Greek tradition this is after he was
Speaker 1: thrown into the pool at Thermopylae and regained his strength
Speaker 1: following the completion of his labors. Strong association here between
Speaker 1: virility and hot springs. Apparently, these hot sulfur springs in
Speaker 1: particular were also considered a gateway to the realm of Hades. Now,
Speaker 1: as for other myths about Heracles and water, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the one that should come to everyone's mind,
Speaker 1: in part because we talked about it in Weird Del
Speaker 1: Cinema if you listen to a Weird Del Cinema episodes,
Speaker 1: is the cleaning of the Igee and state the foulst
Speaker 1: stables in all the land. This is one of the
Speaker 1: challenges that Hercules had to deal with. This was of course,
Speaker 1: as one of his labors. And how does he clean
Speaker 1: them out? Well, he just redirects a river through them.
Speaker 3: That's smart thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting because I never really thought about it
Speaker 1: too much. I just figured, well, this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that a very strong but a very clever
Speaker 1: hero would do. Right. But yeah, you think about redirecting
Speaker 1: rivers and all you're getting into like the work of
Speaker 1: canals and ultimately hydraulic technology.
Speaker 3: Though actually when you think about it, I mean, if
Speaker 3: you've ever observed what happens when floodwaters go through a building,
Speaker 3: they do not actually clean it out. They make it
Speaker 3: quite filthy.
Speaker 1: Right right, But nowadays, if you're cleaning out stables, you're
Speaker 1: probably using redirected water one way or another in the process.
Speaker 1: Even if you're not just absolutely hosing everything out, you know,
Speaker 1: you're having to use other tools, et cetera. Nowle Slash
Speaker 1: Hercules also has some other encounters with various river gods
Speaker 1: and certainly water entities. But the other big one from
Speaker 1: the labors is the slaying of the Hydra, which was
Speaker 1: a water monster, and so this connection is not lost
Speaker 1: on other scholars that ran across the paper titled Heracles
Speaker 1: and Hydraulics by JV. Loose from two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: and this paper points out that both the stables and
Speaker 1: the Hydra are essentially hydraulic labors, and the author contends
Speaker 1: that there is a connection here between Heracles and late
Speaker 1: Helladic water technology and water management. So it's almost like
Speaker 1: we could think of him as the kind of like
Speaker 1: an ancient Greek saint of water technology.
Speaker 3: Wow, I've seeing Hercules in a whole new way. Is
Speaker 3: the King of wet Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, going back to Smith, though, you also just have
Speaker 1: to realize you have various ancient cultures that prize both
Speaker 1: naturally occurring hot and cold springs and or the utilization
Speaker 1: and development of technologies to artificially recreate these experiences in
Speaker 1: the home, or in some homes or adjacent to the home,
Speaker 1: or in some sort of communal setting. And you know,
Speaker 1: I would I would refer back to some of our
Speaker 1: invention episodes that deal with various hydraulic technologies and plumbing
Speaker 1: and so forth, and inevitably if you would probably be
Speaker 1: surprised at just how far back some examples of these
Speaker 1: technologies really go. Smith also shares a couple of great
Speaker 1: examples that are in the book related to divine baths
Speaker 1: of the ancient world. So these again are not We're
Speaker 1: not necessarily talking about naturally occurring waters here. We're talking
Speaker 1: about some sort of prepared water, or in some cases
Speaker 1: there's not even something in the real world. It's just
Speaker 1: again purely getting into religion and mythology. But first of all,
Speaker 1: in ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian priests, who along with keeping
Speaker 1: their bodies shaved and this had to do with with
Speaker 1: lies apparently oiled, also bathed in cold water twice each
Speaker 1: day and twice each night to help maintain this kind
Speaker 1: of ideal higher body that befit one in contact with
Speaker 1: the divine.
Speaker 3: If you're more familiar with Bible traditions, those also include
Speaker 3: various kinds of ritual bathing in preparation for say, entrance
Speaker 3: into the temple or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, people are always having baths or getting their
Speaker 1: feet cleaned by Jesus. It's just there's a lot of it,
Speaker 1: and there's so many examples from so many cultures, you know,
Speaker 1: because again these ideas of hygiene and beurity becomes so
Speaker 1: wound up with each other. Now, the pharaoh himself didn't
Speaker 1: have to go through all of this, was not taking
Speaker 1: necessarily two cold baths a day and two at night,
Speaker 1: but still certainly had an extremely high standard of personal grooming,
Speaker 1: and was purified via some sort of a bathing ritual
Speaker 1: at birth, at death, and then in the after life
Speaker 1: as well, according to their beliefs. So Smith writes that
Speaker 1: in the afterlife, it was said that he would be bathed, fumigated, shaved,
Speaker 1: and oiled by the Goddess nut. I believe Smith doesn't
Speaker 1: specify the goddess, but I believe it's newt in this case,
Speaker 1: and this would not only clean but revive him. Quote
Speaker 1: he received his bones of metal and stretched out his
Speaker 1: indestructible limbs. His body came together and was entirely refashioned. WHOA,
Speaker 1: So that's a heck of a bath. It like physically
Speaker 1: reassembles your body into some sort of unbreakable form for
Speaker 1: the afterlife. And you have plenty of other examples of this,
Speaker 1: but just one in passing here. Homer has a whole
Speaker 1: bit in the Iliad describing the goddess Hera cleaning herself,
Speaker 1: putting on cosmetics. So even the gods in some traditions
Speaker 1: have to strive to achieve the finished body, just like
Speaker 1: mortals do. I guess they have a better starting place,
Speaker 1: but they still have to do things to reach this
Speaker 1: ideal level of godhood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And speaking of Homer and the Iliad, this brings
Speaker 3: us to the role of bathing and especially medicinal bathing
Speaker 3: in Greek and Roman culture, which, though by no means
Speaker 3: the only culture is to employ these practices, We're lucky
Speaker 3: to have a lot of sources on so I wanted
Speaker 3: to turn to a paper called Water and Spas in
Speaker 3: the Classical World, published in the Journal Medical History in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety by an author named Ralph Jackson. I looked
Speaker 3: him up. Jackson was a scholar working at the time
Speaker 3: for the Department of Prehistoric and Romano British Antiquities at
Speaker 3: the British Museum, and it might not come as a
Speaker 3: surprise to listeners here that one major source consulted on
Speaker 3: this matter is Plenty the Elder in his Natural History,
Speaker 3: who in book thirty one writes, quote everywhere in many
Speaker 3: lands gush forth beneficent waters here cold, they're hot, They're
Speaker 3: both in some places tepid and lukewarm, promising relief to
Speaker 3: the sick. And so Jackson writes that in the first
Speaker 3: century CE, the time of Plenty's writing, the Roman Empire
Speaker 3: had many spas, which they called aqui, and at the
Speaker 3: time this paper was published, there was thought to be
Speaker 3: written evidence of references to roughly one hundred or so
Speaker 3: unique spa locations places usually fed by natural springs. Many
Speaker 3: of these at the time of writing had not been
Speaker 3: physically located or excavated by modern scholars. At some Roman
Speaker 3: spa locations we know where they are, though it seems
Speaker 3: the springs have run dry. At other places, there's basically
Speaker 3: been continuous usage since ancient times.
Speaker 1: I believe Smith, and this was a book from two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, so I'm not sure where the account
Speaker 1: still stands. But Smith writes that some four hundred major
Speaker 1: bath sites from them the area outside of Rome had
Speaker 1: been found, but still more, of course, were completely unhearthed.
Speaker 3: So going into Jackson's overview of the Greek and Roman
Speaker 3: medicinal uses of water, he writes that if you go
Speaker 3: farthest back in Greek history to like the Homeric period,
Speaker 3: which is literary period from before the classical Greek period,
Speaker 3: bathing facilities were mainly associated at this point with just
Speaker 3: hygiene and comfort. So if you're a rich person, an
Speaker 3: important part of being a good host is providing bathwaters
Speaker 3: for your guests. But by the time of the ancient
Speaker 3: Greek physician Hippocrates, like the fifth to the fourth century BCE,
Speaker 3: it seems bathing had come to signify more than just
Speaker 3: cleanliness and comfort. Bathing was part of medicine, and so
Speaker 3: many Greeks of this period saw bathing, specifically the use
Speaker 3: of hot and cold bathwater as a way to regulate
Speaker 3: the bodily humors. Now we've gone into a lot more
Speaker 3: detail on humoral theory in the past and other episodes,
Speaker 3: but in very short order, Humorism is an obsolete medical
Speaker 3: theory that traced health and disease to the balance or
Speaker 3: proportion of four fluids also known as humors within the body. Yeah,
Speaker 3: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. This was thought
Speaker 3: to explain a range of facts about a person, and
Speaker 3: interesting note, there are still artifacts of this way of
Speaker 3: thinking in our language today. So when you maybe describe
Speaker 3: a person's temperament as sanguine or as phlegmatic, you are
Speaker 3: referring to flim and blood blood the fluid. This is
Speaker 3: based on the humor theory of personality. So under the system,
Speaker 3: your personality or your current mood could be explained by
Speaker 3: humoral equilibrium. Maybe your depression is a result of too
Speaker 3: much black bile, et cetera, but diseases of the body
Speaker 3: somatic diseases could also be explained by an imbalance of
Speaker 3: these four fluids, and the four humors were each associated
Speaker 3: with various states of hot or cold and wet or dry. So,
Speaker 3: for example, yellow bile was hot and dry, blood was
Speaker 3: hot and wet, black bile was cold and dry, and
Speaker 3: phlegm was cold and wet. And according to some ancient
Speaker 3: Greek physicians like Hippocrates, one way to help regulate your
Speaker 3: humoral balance would be to heat the body, cool the body,
Speaker 3: moisten it, or dry it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even today, you go to any kind of
Speaker 1: like robust spa situation, you have various means at your
Speaker 1: disposal to tinker with those settings, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you can tweak the knobs. Now. While the
Speaker 3: humoral framework may have occasionally produced apparent healings or apparently
Speaker 3: good results, we know today these probably would have been
Speaker 3: due to placebo effect or maybe in some cases just
Speaker 3: happy accidents. Humoral theory has no general factual basis, But
Speaker 3: this did not stop bathing from becoming and remaining an
Speaker 3: extremely popular treatment for disease and ill health for centuries
Speaker 3: all throughout the classical Greek and Roman regions. Why would
Speaker 3: this be well? Jackson offers an observation that this is
Speaker 3: not proof of exactly why it worked this way, but
Speaker 3: Jackson writes, quote, baths were both pleasant and by the
Speaker 3: Roman Imperial period at least comparatively freely available. So they
Speaker 3: were just pleasant. They're just nice, They felt good, and
Speaker 3: you could easily get to a bath. These are a
Speaker 3: couple of features shared by not all, but many popular
Speaker 3: alternative medical treatments to this day. You might notice like
Speaker 3: there may be no real evidence that this essential oil
Speaker 3: has a direct mechanism of action against I don't know
Speaker 3: what you're arthritis, but it's relatively cheap to get, it's
Speaker 3: easy to get, and it smells nice, which makes you
Speaker 3: feel good, So you know that it's not hard to
Speaker 3: see why it would be a popular treatment.
Speaker 1: It also fit I think we've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: It also checks off that box of something is happening,
Speaker 1: like a really strong smelling oil, or certainly just a
Speaker 1: very hot shower or even just a very cold shower,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Like it. There's a certain shock to the
Speaker 1: system that occurs that that you if you lean into
Speaker 1: any kind of expectation, well then there you have it.
Speaker 1: There is the that's surely the effect observed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes you feel something different or sense something different,
Speaker 3: which helps create the feeling that something is happening in
Speaker 3: your body.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, the ancient Greeks and Romans had a number of
Speaker 3: different beliefs about the medicinal and therapeutic uses of baths.
Speaker 3: But just to cite a few examples featured in this paper,
Speaker 3: warm water was often believed to help with the absorption
Speaker 3: of nutrients from food because it quote softened the bather's body.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I found this image so funny,
Speaker 3: but I did. I was trying to think, why would
Speaker 3: you think of it that way? Softening the body to
Speaker 3: absorb nutrients better? And I wonder maybe this is similar
Speaker 3: to observing something from food like that kind of warm
Speaker 3: concoctions or warm does tend to emulsify and absorb ingredients
Speaker 3: more easily. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, just speculating there.
Speaker 3: Then again, I don't know how cold their dough in
Speaker 3: ancient Rome would ever get. I mean they didn't have refrigerators.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're in water long enough, of course you
Speaker 1: do get get kind of wrinkly, right, Yeah, you could
Speaker 1: maybe be seen as a softening of the skin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but also hot water baths were thought to treat
Speaker 3: symptoms from pneumonia, including back in chest pain, to treat fatigue, headaches,
Speaker 3: and trouble with urination, to encourage urination. But in Roman times,
Speaker 3: public baths were also important and complex community facilities. I
Speaker 3: think it's very important to understand the like the many
Speaker 3: different roles they combined, and how important they were for
Speaker 3: a local community. Their function was at once hygienic, social, recreational,
Speaker 3: and medicinal. So according to Jackson, for example, you know
Speaker 3: you might go to the baths for hygiene and grooming,
Speaker 3: so you're gonna go there to wash your body. Of course,
Speaker 3: you can bathe in the water, but you can also
Speaker 3: get your skin scraped. They had these instruments called strigils
Speaker 3: where they'd like kind of it wouldn't be exactly shaving,
Speaker 3: but kind of scraping you down with a blade to
Speaker 3: get like oil and dirt off your skin, and then
Speaker 3: they would you know, maybe apply a new perfumed oil
Speaker 3: to you. You could also get your hair taken care of.
Speaker 3: You can get unwanted hair removed. You might also go
Speaker 3: to this bath for exercise, so in a way be
Speaker 3: kind of like a gym. You also go there to
Speaker 3: hang out and socialize with friends. You could get a massage,
Speaker 3: or you could treat your diseases or get advice about
Speaker 3: diet or health. So it combines all these different things.
Speaker 3: It's got elements of a gym, a barber shop, like
Speaker 3: a IMCA with a pool and hot tubs. It's got
Speaker 3: a hospital or a clinic, uh and and a public
Speaker 3: bathing facility just all together into one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For many people it becomes just a center of
Speaker 1: their social life.
Speaker 3: I remember we did an Invention episode about the invention
Speaker 3: of toilets, and one of the really funny things was
Speaker 3: the Roman facilities that had apparently just like social toilets
Speaker 3: where people would go, you know, sit on a latrine,
Speaker 3: but it's just a row of them all in the line,
Speaker 3: where people would just hang out, I guess, and chat
Speaker 3: while they're pooping.
Speaker 1: You know. I this this is I have nothing to
Speaker 1: back it up, but I do wonder like maybe they
Speaker 1: had curtains and the curtains didn't survive, Like what would
Speaker 1: what would people make of of a bathroom today where
Speaker 1: the stalls had been removed and they were like they
Speaker 1: might think, we'll look at this. They just had one
Speaker 1: toilet next to another, they just walk in in there
Speaker 1: the toilets. Oh maybe, I don't know, but I mean
Speaker 1: probably probably not, probably not.
Speaker 3: But there were also many specific examples of ancient authors
Speaker 3: prescribing hot or cold baths for different medical complaints. So
Speaker 3: one figure talked about in this paper is named Esklepiades,
Speaker 3: who was an ancient Greek physician who worked in Rome
Speaker 3: and lived from like the one twenties BCE to about
Speaker 3: forty BCE. And Esclepiades advised the use of baths as
Speaker 3: a treatment for the sick and preventive medicine for the healthy.
Speaker 3: And though it seems prescriptions for hot water baths were
Speaker 3: generally more common at the time, Esclepiades was known for
Speaker 3: advising cold water, which led plenty of the elder to
Speaker 3: refer to him with the nickname the cold water Giver.
Speaker 3: One of his followers Antonius Musa, So this is a
Speaker 3: guy who came up in the school of Esclepiades even
Speaker 3: famously treated the emperor Caesar Augustus with cold baths, and
Speaker 3: this is chronicled in Suetonius's biography Life of Augustus, in
Speaker 3: which he writes, and this is translation by J. C.
Speaker 3: Rolfe quote. In the course of his life, he suffered
Speaker 3: from several severe and dangerous illnesses, especially after the subjugation
Speaker 3: of Cantabria, when he was in such a desperate plight
Speaker 3: from absesses of the liver that he was forced to
Speaker 3: submit to an unprecedented and hazardous course of treatment. Since
Speaker 3: hot fomentations gave him no relief, he was led by
Speaker 3: the advice of his physician Antonius Musa, to try cold ones.
Speaker 3: So he's getting cold baths for absesses of the liver,
Speaker 3: and the use of this treatment by the emperor led
Speaker 3: to fame and riches for Antonius Musa and led the
Speaker 3: cold water treatment to become somewhat fashionable. In fact, this
Speaker 3: is another thing I think we can see patterns of
Speaker 3: today's you know, like one celebrity gets some particular type
Speaker 3: of surgery or does some kind of health trend or something,
Speaker 3: and it becomes fashionable. A bunch of other people want
Speaker 3: to pick up on it. And in the case of
Speaker 3: cold baths for the liver, some practitioners at the time
Speaker 3: even advised patients to bathe in cold water during the
Speaker 3: depths of winter, so they took it seriously. On the
Speaker 3: other hand, you had the Roman physician Kelsus, I think
Speaker 3: sometimes maybe pronounced Celsus cel s Us, but I think
Speaker 3: those Roman seas are supposed to be a hard K sound,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to say Kelsis recommended baths is a
Speaker 3: treatment for quote skin complaints, diseases of sinews, gout wounds,
Speaker 3: digestive disorders, wasting diseases, eye diseases, and fevers, as well
Speaker 3: as in convalescence after surgery. And Kelsis here did not
Speaker 3: agree with Esclapiattes and Musa on cold baths for absesses
Speaker 3: of the liver. Kelsus recommended hot baths and said quote
Speaker 3: all cold things must be especially avoided. So you got
Speaker 3: different schools of thought. There's also an ancient school of
Speaker 3: medicine at this time known as the Methodists, and this
Speaker 3: might be obvious, but no relation at all to the
Speaker 3: Christian denomination. They were just called Methodists. They were named
Speaker 3: after their supposed adherence to the They were fond of
Speaker 3: recommending baths and mineral springs, not just for immersion but
Speaker 3: also for drinking. And the Methodist idea of physiology seems
Speaker 3: a little hard to understand. I wasn't familiar with it
Speaker 3: before I was reading and trying to put it together.
Speaker 3: Jackson explains it by saying that they classified diseases into
Speaker 3: either acute or chronic, so to an extent we still
Speaker 3: do that today, but that they saw the cause of
Speaker 3: disease as stemming from either excessive constriction or excessive relaxation,
Speaker 3: and that baths could be used to treat these states. So,
Speaker 3: for example, the Methodist physician named a Souranas of Ephesus,
Speaker 3: who lived from the first to the second century CE,
Speaker 3: thought baths were an important treatment for inducing relaxation and
Speaker 3: patients whose diseases were caused by too much constriction, and
Speaker 3: he also advised the use of hot baths for women
Speaker 3: in later stages of pregnancy. Now, most of what I've
Speaker 3: been talking about up to this point has been focused
Speaker 3: on ancient Greek and Roman beliefs about the medicinal or
Speaker 3: therapeutic uses of hot or cold baths in general, but
Speaker 3: there were also beliefs about the special healing properties of
Speaker 3: specific waters the sites often called spas, such as sulfur springs,
Speaker 3: alum springs, bitumen springs, alkaline and acid springs, as well
Speaker 3: as of sea water, which, as I mentioned earlier, plenty
Speaker 3: endorsed as being you know, there's nothing more beneficial for
Speaker 3: the body than salt. And I think we're going to
Speaker 3: come back to more thoughts about these specific water sources
Speaker 3: and their associated spas in the next episode or later
Speaker 3: in the series. But I couldn't leave it off here
Speaker 3: without a taste of a brief reading from Plenty the
Speaker 3: Elder in the Natural History book thirty one, about people
Speaker 3: who take it a little too far, who get a
Speaker 3: little too excited about the alleged healing powers of the spa.
Speaker 3: So are you ready for this, yes, Plenty rights. Sulfur waters, however,
Speaker 3: are good for the sinus alum waters for paralysis and
Speaker 3: similar cases of collapse. Waters containing bitchumen and soda, such
Speaker 3: as those of coutelia, are good for drinking and as
Speaker 3: a purge. Many people make a matter of boasting the
Speaker 3: great number of hours they can endure the heat of
Speaker 3: these sulfur waters, a very injurious practice, for one should
Speaker 3: remain in them a little longer than in the bath afterwards,
Speaker 3: rents in cool fresh water, and not go away without
Speaker 3: a rubbing of oil. The common people find these details irksome,
Speaker 3: and so there is no greater risk to health than
Speaker 3: this treatment. Because an overpowering smell goes to the head,
Speaker 3: which sweats and is seized with chill, while the rest
Speaker 3: of the body is immersed. Those make a like mistake
Speaker 3: who boast of the great quantity they can drink. I
Speaker 3: have seen some already swollen with drinking to such an
Speaker 3: extent that their rings were covered by skin since they
Speaker 3: could not void the vast amount of water they had swallowed.
Speaker 3: So it is not good to drink these waters without
Speaker 3: a frequent taste of salt. It's back on the salt again.
Speaker 3: So that's the problem. People go into the spa that
Speaker 3: they're like, they sit in the sulfur water too long,
Speaker 3: it goes to their head. But then they're also like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna drink all this spa water. I'm gonna drink
Speaker 3: so much that you won't be able to see my
Speaker 3: jewelry anymore. My rings will disappear between the swollen skin
Speaker 3: and the problem I didn't get some salt in between,
Speaker 3: that's the problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love this because also there is some
Speaker 1: sound advice here. I mean, obviously, if you drink too
Speaker 1: much water that can hurt you. Yeah, and also if
Speaker 1: you stay in some sort of a hot tub or
Speaker 1: asana or a steam room situation longer than advised. You
Speaker 1: can also run up against some ill consequences. So you know,
Speaker 1: at heart there's some good advice here, and just not
Speaker 1: necessarily a modern understanding of exactly what the risks are.
Speaker 3: No, I totally agree, actually plenty giving sound advice.
Speaker 1: That is right, my sound advice, And this is why
Speaker 1: IMCA advice is, don't get into a conversation with a
Speaker 1: talkative old fella in the sauna because that guy, no
Speaker 1: matter how nice he is, he can inevitably sustain it
Speaker 1: enhance temperatures for far longer than you can, and it
Speaker 1: will be harder and harder to tear yourself away as
Speaker 1: you become overheated, and while trying to remain polite and
Speaker 1: nodding your head to their stories.
Speaker 3: That is also sage advice, if I may say, pliny
Speaker 3: and caliber. But like I said, we'll come back to
Speaker 3: discuss some more specific mineral springs and spas and localized
Speaker 3: water traditions in the next episodes.
Speaker 1: Now, do you want to come back to Virginia Smith
Speaker 1: for just a little bit, because the author has an
Speaker 1: entire chapter on the Roman baths, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: to run through some bits here that may shed some
Speaker 1: additional light on so what we've been talking about. First
Speaker 1: of all, Smith writes that the Romans were heavily influenced
Speaker 1: by the Greek concept of the managed life, which seems
Speaker 1: to line up fairly closely with this idea of the
Speaker 1: Finnished body. But in both cases Greeks and Romans, but
Speaker 1: especially the Romans, bathing was also part of politics and
Speaker 1: state craft. So again, I mean, part of it comes
Speaker 1: down to like where you hanging out, but also it
Speaker 1: gets tied up in these just ideas of culture, and
Speaker 1: with the Romans, the Roman bath becomes part of their
Speaker 1: civilizing process.
Speaker 3: Yes, I get the sense that for the Romans, like
Speaker 3: having a good local bath facility was part of kind
Speaker 3: of town pride. It was a part of what made
Speaker 3: you show that your society was sophisticated and powerful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the Roman elite, they certainly had their
Speaker 1: baths and like their bath, but they also somewhat erradically
Speaker 1: over time spent money on healthy services for the people
Speaker 1: that included public baths, along with other things like town doctors,
Speaker 1: sports programs. Kind of get getting into that what you're
Speaker 1: talking about with the idea of the Roman bath as
Speaker 1: being this gymnasium slash mcas you know, and everything else.
Speaker 1: These programs, Smith rights, would have only impacted about a
Speaker 1: quarter of Roman imperial residents, those living in cities and
Speaker 1: regular bathers, so those two things had to line up.
Speaker 1: But that's still quite a lot of cleanliness for the
Speaker 1: time period. And Smith writes that quote urban Roman life
Speaker 1: would have been inconceivable and a lot more fetted and
Speaker 1: visibly filthy without the various public baths, latrines, fountains and
Speaker 1: taps served by the Roman aqueducts. And that, of course
Speaker 1: is that's a whole issue in and of itself. Like
Speaker 1: to power all of this, you need to be able
Speaker 1: to control the water. You need to be able to
Speaker 1: bring the water where you need it to be, and
Speaker 1: the aqueducts were a huge engineering victory on that front. Also,
Speaker 1: you need a good you need a good sewer system,
Speaker 1: and when they worked, the Kloaca or the Roman sewers
Speaker 1: were also an essential part of the system. This reminds
Speaker 1: me of our Invention episode on the toilet. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're tracing the history of the flushing toilet, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to be able to supply it with water
Speaker 1: quite another to have a good drainage or sewage system
Speaker 1: to back it up.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean I think you could argue that
Speaker 3: when it comes to waste disposal technology, the good drainage
Speaker 3: or sewer system is the more important element than the
Speaker 3: toilet itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like we were saying that the baths were
Speaker 1: an essential part of Roman life, and Smith points out that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, if you look at if there's a decline
Speaker 1: of the bath system in a given city, there's generally
Speaker 1: a sign of greater economic instability or some of their
Speaker 1: kind of unrest. Like you can use it as sort
Speaker 1: of a you know, the litmus test for how life
Speaker 1: is going in that particular corner of the empire or
Speaker 1: the empire as a whole. Now, Smith notes that the
Speaker 1: main reason for the Roman public baths was quote pleasure
Speaker 1: politics and propaganda rather than disease prevention proper. But the
Speaker 1: hygienic impact, while likely marginal, that thin margin still might
Speaker 1: have been enough to tip the scales in public health.
Speaker 3: Okay, but this would be talking about its actual effect
Speaker 3: on health rather than perceived effect on.
Speaker 1: Health, right, right, Like, how for all of this bathing
Speaker 1: and talk of the humors, like was it actually making
Speaker 1: any kind of an impact on the overall health of
Speaker 1: a population, and so the probably not to a large degree,
Speaker 1: but the small degree to which it did have an
Speaker 1: impact that might have been enough to say, sort of
Speaker 1: keep a society like a little more healthy than normal
Speaker 1: and maybe just on the right side of you know,
Speaker 1: pandemic illness, that sort of thing. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if we'll get into this in the next episode or not,
Speaker 1: but like another thing to consider with like the global
Speaker 1: history of bath cultures is that at times they're there,
Speaker 1: does become a disease fear regarding these places, and sometimes
Speaker 1: there's a moral panic regarding these places, and we see
Speaker 1: that played out with the popularity of say, you know,
Speaker 1: spas and saunas throughout European history. Now, the Romans were
Speaker 1: apparently initially resistant to the Greek idea of the bath gymnasium.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly why, but they eventually gave in
Speaker 1: between twenty nine and nineteen BCE according to Smith. So
Speaker 1: whoever was in Roman culture we're saying no, we should
Speaker 1: not have a gem at the bath, they're finally like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's fine, we can have a gym at the baths.
Speaker 1: I found this really interesting. So again, a lot of
Speaker 1: these the Greek enthusiasm for baths, this gets inherited and
Speaker 1: co opted by the Romans. But the Romans were likely
Speaker 1: so gung ho for all of this in part because
Speaker 1: of a pre existing bath culture connected to the various
Speaker 1: volcanic hot springs on the Italian peninsula.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, so here you see we see connections causal
Speaker 3: connections between culture in geology.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's also an important reminder that even if
Speaker 1: we're talking about sort of like the the importance of
Speaker 1: Greek bath culture Roman bath culture and how these different
Speaker 1: cultures and spread to different areas, it's still not a
Speaker 1: situation where somebody like Hercules is coming along and saying, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I just invented something. Get this, what if you put
Speaker 1: your whole body in warm water? Like and then everybody's
Speaker 1: mind is blown, you know. And no, it's it's like
Speaker 1: that these ideas would have been widespread already. So any
Speaker 1: place that suddenly encounters like the Roman idea of baths,
Speaker 1: it's not all completely new to them. There might be
Speaker 1: it might they might be stressing some things that were different.
Speaker 1: There might be some sort of wrapping for it. You
Speaker 1: know these I likes, say maybe the ideas of the
Speaker 1: humors or something to that effect, but just the idea
Speaker 1: of enjoying the benefits of a hot spring or a
Speaker 1: cold spring, those are likely already inherent in a given
Speaker 1: culture for one reason or another. But then there will
Speaker 1: also be different pre existing bathing cultures as well. And
Speaker 1: includes a nice example of this. So the Etruscans were
Speaker 1: apparently all about small half baths, and they didn't dig
Speaker 1: communal baths, even for like families. The Romans thought differently though,
Speaker 1: and so and even with the Romans, though, you have
Speaker 1: the situation where they had to come around to fully
Speaker 1: accepting the idea of the Greek gymnasium bath. So even
Speaker 1: though everybody might generally be okay with the idea of
Speaker 1: bathing in hot water or bathing in cold water, they're
Speaker 1: going to be different ideas about particular benefits or how
Speaker 1: you should go about doing these things culturally. And then
Speaker 1: again we get into the geography again, which sites are important,
Speaker 1: which sites are important within a given culture, and then
Speaker 1: which sites end up being co opted by cultures that
Speaker 1: you take over a given area in vada given area
Speaker 1: or just over the long course of time become dominant
Speaker 1: in a period that once had different ideas.
Speaker 3: All right, well, I think we're going to have to
Speaker 3: call it there for part one of the series, but
Speaker 3: we will be back next time to discuss more about
Speaker 3: the healing waters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, certainly. In the meantime, if you have anything you
Speaker 1: want to write in about concerning traditions of healing waters,
Speaker 1: or just experiences with pleasant waters, if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about particularly great springs you've been to, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, We're always interested in that. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much we'll be able to get into various cultures
Speaker 1: in the episode or episodes ahead on this topic. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something near and dear to your heart write in.
Speaker 1: We'd love to talk about it on a listener Mail episode.
Speaker 1: Those listener Mail episodes, by the way, come out on Mondays,
Speaker 1: our core episodes of stuff to blow your mind about
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Speaker 1: form artifact or monster fact, and on Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: on Fridays we just take a little time to talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
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