Encyclopaedia Britannica; A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 Excerpt: ...exit to the hot air. The question must for the present remain unsettled; if the laconicum was only one end of the calidarium, it is difficult to see how that end of the room was kept so much hotter than the rest of it; on the other hand to have had flames actually issuing from the laconicum, must have caused smoke and soot, and have I been very unpleasant. The most usual order in which the rooms were employed seems to have beea the following, but there does not appear to have been any absolute uniformity of practice then, any more than in modern Egyptian and Turkish baths. Celsus recommends the bather first to sweat a little in the tepidarium with his clot tics on, to be anointed there, and then to pass into the calidarium; after he has sweated freely there he is not to descend into the solium or cold bath, but to have plenty of water poured over him from his head, --first warm, then tepid, and then cold water, --the water being poured longer over his head than on the rest of the body; next to be scraped with the strigil, and lastly to be rubbed and ano.ip.ted. The warmest of the heated rooms, i.e., the calidarium and laconicum, were heated directly from the hypocaustum, orer which they were built or suspended (suspensura); while from the hypocaustum tubes of brass, or lead, or pottery carried the hot air or vapour to the walls of the thcr rooms. The walls were usually hollow, so that the hot air could readily circulate. The water was heated ingeniously. Close to the furnace, about 4 inches off, was placed the calidarium, the copper (ahenum) for boiling water, near which, with the same interval between them, was the copper for warm water, the tepidarium, and at the distance of 2 feet from this was tin receptacle for cold water, or the frigidarium, often a pla.