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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“Balnea si calidis queras sudantia thermis,

In claris intrabis aqua, ubi corpus inungit,

Callidus, et multo medicamine spargit aliptes’,

Mox ubi membra satis geminis mundata lacertis

Laverit et sparsos crines siccaverit, albo

Marcida subridens componit corpora lecto.”

Already, in the time of Saint Louis, the number of bath-keepers was so great that they had a trades union; they were almost all barbers, too; they washed the body, cut hair, trimmed corns and nails, shaved and leeched.

Bath houses more than multiplied from the twelfth century, imitations of Oriental customs, due to the crusaders. Baths were run not only by men, but by old harridans and fast girls. No respectable woman ever entered a public bath-house; Christine de Pisan bears witness to that fact in the following lines: “As to public baths and vapor baths, they should be avoided by honest women except for good cause; they are expensive and no good comes out of them, for many obvious reasons; no woman, if she be wise, would trust her honor therein, if she desire to keep it.”