Bathing
Bathing is the immersion of the body, wholly or partially, usually in water, but often in another medium such as hot air. It is most commonly practised as part of personal cleansing, and less frequently for relaxation or as a leisure activity. Cleansing the body may be solely a component of personal hygiene, but is also a spiritual part of some religious rituals. Bathing is also sometimes used medically or therapeutically, as in hydrotherapy, ice baths, or the mud bath.
People bathe in water at temperatures ranging from very cold to very hot, or in appropriately heated air, according to custom or purpose.
Where indoor heated water is available, people bathe more or less daily, at comfortable temperatures, in a private bathtub or shower. Communal bathing, such as that in hammams, sauna, banya, Victorian Turkish baths, and sentō, fulfils the same purpose, in addition to its often having a social function.
Ritual religious bathing is sometimes referred to as immersion. This can be required after sexual intercourse or menstruation, or as baptism.
By analogy, the term "bathing" is also applied to relaxing activities in which the participant "bathes" in the rays of the sun or in outdoor bodies of water, such as in sea bathing or wild swimming.
Although there is sometimes overlap, as in sea bathing, most bathing is usually treated as distinct from more active recreations like swimming.
History
Ancient world
Bathing in ancient China may be traced back to the Shang dynasty, 3000 years ago. Archaeological findings from the Yinxu ruins show a cauldron to boil water, smaller cauldrons to draw out the water to be poured into a basin, skin scrapers to remove dirt and dead skin. Three 2000-year-old baths with exquisite tiles and a sewage system can be seen in Xi'an. Bathing grew in importance in the Han dynasty where officials were allowed to take a day's leave for bathing at home every five days, and bathing became the reason for a bank holiday for the first time.An accountable daily ritual of bathing can be traced to the ancient Indians. They used elaborate practices for personal hygiene with three daily baths and washing. These are recorded in the works called grihya sutras which date back to 500 BCE and are in practice today in some communities. In Hinduism, “Prataha Kaal” or “Brahma Muhoortham” begins with the 4 am “snanam” or bath, and was considered extremely auspicious in ancient times.
Ancient Greece utilized small bathtubs, wash basins, and foot baths for personal cleanliness. The earliest findings of baths date from the mid-2nd millennium BC in the palace complex at Knossos, Crete, and the luxurious alabaster bathtubs excavated in Akrotiri, Santorini. A word for bathtub, , occurs eleven times in Homer. As a legitimate Mycenaean word for a kind of vessel that could be found in any Mycenaean palace, this Linear B term derives from an Aegean suffix -inth- being appended to an Akkadian loan word with the root namsû. This luxurious item of the Mycenaean palace culture, therefore, was clearly borrowed from the Near East. Later Greeks established public baths and showers within gymnasiums for relaxation and personal hygiene. The word gymnasium comes from the Greek word gymnos, meaning "naked".
Ancient Rome developed a network of aqueducts to supply water to all large towns and population centers and had indoor plumbing, with pipes that terminated in homes and at public wells and fountains. The Roman public baths were called thermae. The thermae were not simply baths, but important public works that provided facilities for many kinds of physical exercise and ablutions, with cold, warm, and hot baths, rooms for instruction and debate, and usually one Greek and one Latin library. They also represented an important moment of socialization and exchange between the members of the community. They were provided for the public by a benefactor, usually the Emperor. Other empires of the time did not show such an affinity for public works, but this Roman practice spread their culture to places where there may have been more resistance to foreign mores. Unusually for the time, the thermae were not class-stratified, being available to all for no charge or a small fee. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the aqueduct system fell into disrepair and disuse. But even before that, during the Christianization of the Empire, changing ideas about public morals led the baths into disfavor.
Medieval Japan
Before the 7th century, the Japanese were likely to have bathed in the many springs in the open, as there is no evidence of closed rooms. In the 6th to 8th centuries the Japanese absorbed the religion of Buddhism from China, which had a strong impact on the culture of the entire country. Buddhist temples traditionally included a bathhouse for the monks. Due to the principle of purity espoused by Buddhism these baths were eventually opened to the public. Only the wealthy had private baths.The first public bathhouse was mentioned in 1266. In Edo, the first sentō was established in 1591. The early steam baths were called iwaburo or kamaburo. These were built into natural caves or stone vaults. In iwaburo along the coast, the rocks were heated by burning wood, then sea water was poured over the rocks, producing steam. The entrances to these "bath houses" were very small, possibly to slow the escape of the heat and steam. There were no windows, so it was very dark inside and the user constantly coughed or cleared their throats in order to signal to new entrants which seats were already occupied. The darkness could be also used to cover sexual contact. Because there was no gender distinction, these baths came into disrepute. They were finally abolished in 1870 on hygienic and moral grounds. According to author John Gallagher, bathing "was segregated in the 1870s as a concession to outraged Western tourists".
At the beginning of the Edo period there were two different types of baths. In Edo, hot-water baths were common, while in Osaka, steam baths were common. At that time shared bathrooms for men and women were the rule. These bathhouses were very popular, especially for men. "Bathing girls" were employed to scrub the guests' backs and wash their hair, etc. In 1841, the employment of yuna was generally prohibited, as well as mixed bathing. The segregation of the sexes, however, was often ignored by operators of bathhouses, or areas for men and women were separated only by a symbolic line. Today, sento baths have separate rooms for men and women.
Mesoamerica
chronicles describe the bathing habits of the peoples of Mesoamerica during and after the conquest.Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes Moctezuma in his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España as being "...Very neat and cleanly, bathing every day each afternoon...".
Bathing was not restricted to the elite, but was practised by all people; the chronicler Tomás López Medel wrote after a journey to Central America that "Bathing and the custom of washing oneself is so quotidian amongst the Indians, both of cold and hot lands, as is eating, and this is done in fountains and rivers and other water to which they have access, without anything other than pure water..."
The Mesoamerican bath, known as temazcal in Spanish, from the Nahuatl word temazcalli, a compound of temaz and calli, consists of a room, often in the form of a small dome, with an exterior firebox known as texictle that heats a small portion of the room's wall made of volcanic rocks; after this wall has been heated, water is poured on it to produce steam, an action known as tlasas. As the steam accumulates in the upper part of the room a person in charge uses a bough to direct the steam to the bathers who are lying on the ground, with which he later gives them a massage, then the bathers scrub themselves with a small flat river stone and finally the person in charge introduces buckets with water with soap and grass used to rinse. This bath had also ritual importance, and was vinculated to the goddess Toci; it is also therapeutic when medicinal herbs are used in the water for the tlasas. It is still used in Mexico.
Medieval and early-modern Europe
has always placed a strong emphasis on hygiene. Despite the denunciation of the mixed bathing style of Roman pools by early Christian clergy, as well as the pagan custom of women bathing naked in front of men, this did not stop the Church from urging its followers to go to public baths for bathing, which contributed to hygiene and good health according to the Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian. The Church also built public bathing facilities that were separate for both sexes near monasteries and pilgrimage sites; also, the popes situated baths within church basilicas and monasteries since the early Middle Ages. Pope Gregory the Great urged his followers on the value of bathing as a bodily need.Great bathhouses were built in Byzantine centers such as Constantinople and Antioch, and the popes allocated to the Romans bathing through diaconia, or private Lateran baths, or even a myriad of monastic bath houses functioning in the eighth and ninth centuries. The Popes maintained baths in their residences which were described by scholar Paolo Squatriti as "luxurious baths", and bath houses including hot baths were incorporated into Christian Church buildings or those of monasteries, which were known as "charity baths" because they served both the clerics and needy poor people. Public bathing was common in larger towns and cities such as Paris, Regensburg and Naples. The Catholic religious orders of the Augustinians and Benedictines had rules for ritual purification, and inspired by Benedict of Nursia encouraged the practice of therapeutic bathing; Benedictine monks played a role in the development and promotion of spas. Protestantism also played a prominent role in the development of the British spas.
File:Jörg Breu - Augsburg - Summer.JPG|thumb|Public bathing in Augsburg, by Jörg Breu the Elder, c. 1531
In the Middle Ages, bathing commonly took place in public bathhouses. Public baths were also havens for prostitution, which created some opposition to them. Rich people bathed at home, most likely in their bedroom, as "bath" rooms were not common. Bathing was done in large, wooden tubs with a linen cloth laid in it to protect the bather from splinters. Additionally, during the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation, the quality and condition of the clothing were thought to reflect the soul of an individual. Clean clothing also reflected one's social status; clothes made the man or woman.
Due to Black Death plague, introduced from Asia to Europe, public baths were closed to avoid contagion. In the sixteenth century, the popularity of public bathhouses in Europe sharply declined, perhaps due to the new plague of syphilis which made sexual promiscuity more risky, or stronger religious prohibitions on nudity surrounding the Protestant Reformation. Some Europeans came to believe the false idea that bathing or steaming would open pores to disease.