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