Читать книгу Medicine in the Middle Ages. Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor онлайн

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Paris had many bath-houses. From early dawn until sunset the streets were filled, with cryers for bath-houses, who invited all passers-by to enter. In the time of Charles VI., bath-keepers introduced vapor baths. Some of these latter were entirely given up to women; others were reserved for the King and gentlemen of the court. The price of vapor baths was fixed by Police ordinance at twenty centimes for a vapor bath and forty centimes for those who washed afterwards. This price was subject to revision only at the pleasure of the municipal authorities.

During times of epidemics vapor baths were discontinued. It was for sanitary reasons, probably, that an order of the Mayor of Paris, named Delamere, forbade all persons taking vapor baths until after Christmas eve, “on penalty of a heavy fine.” This same proclamation was repeated by act of Parliament on December 13th, 1553, “the penalty corporeal punishment for offending bath-keepers.”

Parisian vapor baths had such wide-spread reputations and success that an Italian doctor of the sixteenth century by the name of Brixanius, who arrived in Paris, wrote the following verses: