BENEDICT & GINGRICH 
 
 1433 East Colorado Street 
 PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 
 
 Phone, Colorado 1856 
 
THE STORY 
 OF THE BATH 
 
Copyright 1922 
 
 Domestic Engineering Company 
 Chicago, U. S. A. 
 
 Price Twenty-five Cents 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 OT so long ago there was a man who 
 lived in the country. He was neither 
 rich nor poor — just fairly well-to-do, 
 as the saying goes. One day it was 
 rumored that President Roosevelt 
 expected to come that way on a 
 hunting trip. In their younger years 
 Roosevelt and the man had been at 
 Harvard together, and together they 
 had roughed it in the wooly West. 
 Then life’s scrimmage caught them 
 up and drifted them apart. Hearing the news of the 
 expected trip, the man’s wife thought it would be a 
 fine thing to entertain the President. It would get 
 their name into the newspapers, excite the envy of 
 the neighbors, give the family prestige. She was all 
 aflutter. But to entertain a President as she thought a 
 President should be entertained, certain improvements 
 ought to be made in the home. So the man invested 
 in new decorations, a water system and a bathroom. 
 
 And then they waited for the President. And they 
 waited. But a change in the affairs of state kept the 
 President at the White House. 
 
 And there they were — the man and his wife and 
 their children. He had spent his savings, and they 
 had a fine home. More than that — they had a glorious 
 bathroom, with hot and cold water and everything. 
 Having such a bathroom, they used it. And in using 
 it the family gained in health, wealth and happiness. 
 
 They had missed the President, but they had found 
 
4 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 the fountain of youth and learned the fine art of living. 
 And that was worth something. Well, I guess so. 
 
 President Roosevelt did his work and passed on 
 without ever knowing, so far as I know, of the great 
 blessing he had been the means of bringing into the 
 lives of the man and his wife and their children. 
 
 And that is all there is to the story, which, come to 
 think of it, isn’t a story at all, is it? It is merely a 
 climax, or the last chapter. 
 
 So, too, the story of the bath may turn out to be the 
 last chapter in the age-old search for the fountain of 
 youth. The last chapter, you know, sums up all that 
 has gone before — brings to life little things overlooked 
 or forgotten-leaves everybody facing the East, happy 
 forever after. 
 
 The story of the bath is not a new story. It is as 
 old as time; as fresh as this morning’s morning. 
 Where did it begin? Nobody knows. Where will it 
 end? Ah ! that is for you to decide. 
 
 This much we know. All of us are creatures of 
 habit. That is to say, we do or we do not do certain 
 things today because somebody did or did not do 
 certain things yesterday. Then there are the little 
 turns in our lives, like the turn in the lives of the man 
 and his wife and their children. If these turns are 
 to the right, they help us ; if they are not, they hinder us. 
 
 We ought to live to be a hundred, and we will when 
 we know how to live. Of course we will. There is no 
 doubt of it. Then we shall be so radiant with health 
 and energy that to fall sick will be to fall from grace. 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 5 
 
 A boy’s Saturday night protest is not a protest against 
 the bath. It is but an echo of a time-worn wail against 
 washtubs filled too hot or too cold, gouged ears, and 
 skins polished raw with the soft side of gunny sacks. 
 Who wouldn’t protest? Boys like water. For nine- 
 tenths of their body cells are water cells. But they 
 like it humanely administered. And so does father 
 and mother and all the rest of us. 
 
 Make it easy to bathe and the protest will take 
 flight along with colds, bad complexions, that tired 
 feeling, and other disagreeable things. 
 
 As far back as history takes us, which is far enough, 
 nations that climbed to the top — that did things, and 
 that live because of the things they did — used plenty 
 of water. 
 
 When Egypt wore the crown of civilization, the 
 Egyptians were frequent bathers ; when Greece was 
 the glory of the world, her bathing was the glory of 
 the Greeks; when all roads led to Rome, all feet led 
 to the Roman baths. But that was then. Just so. 
 
 But this is now. In Japan, where everybody takes 
 a bath a day, and apologizes for not taking two, progress 
 moves at a swift pace. In Russia, where millions of 
 people get only three baths in their whole lives — one 
 after they are born, one before they are married, and 
 one after they die — there is stagnation, poverty, 
 misery. 
 
 Such wide differences may not be entirely due to the 
 bath. Maybe not. But it is a vital step in the upward 
 climb. It promotes health, energy, self-respect, and 
 
ft 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 only a healthy, energetic, self-respecting people are 
 prosperous. 
 
 On sight you can tell a man who is not a regular 
 bather. Of course you can’t tell him much, but — 
 well, you can tell that a bath a day is not his habit. 
 The daily bath is a body builder. It is the first step 
 in the fine art of living. It molds character, and then 
 emphasizes it. 
 
 Like Tolstoy’s shoemaker, who judged people by 
 their shoes, and nearly always was right, it is easy to 
 pick out of a crowd those with the bath habit. The 
 shoemaker had his shop in a basement. When he 
 looked up from his work he saw the feet of the people 
 as they passed. He could not see their faces — only 
 their feet. He learned that shoes emphasize character. 
 One day a man went by barefoot. The shoemaker 
 jumped up and rushed out — but then, that’s another 
 story. 
 
 you are very, very young, a hundred 
 years seem a long, long time. But 
 if you are very, very old, gracious 
 me! a hundred years seem next to 
 nothing. Suppose, for instance, a 
 woman, who is one hundred years 
 old today, could touch fingertips 
 with a woman who lived a century 
 ago, and she, in turn, could touch 
 fingertips with a woman who lived one hundred years 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 1 
 
 before that, and so on down the steps of time. Do 
 you know there would be only sixty century-old old 
 women from this year of luxury back to the scantiness 
 of Mother Eve? Think of that. Then think of this. 
 Of the sixty little old women in a row only the last 
 three ever used soap. The other fifty-seven never 
 even so much as heard of it. And but one, if you 
 please — still hale and hearty — knew the conveniences 
 of a modern bathroom. 
 
 Of course people always bathed, more or less— in 
 rivers, ponds, lakes, and so forth. And for the want 
 of soap some of the little old women used oils or sand. 
 Like the Arab, who bathes in sand — rolls in it, rubs it 
 over him — they came clean by erasure. 
 
 So far as we know the first bathroom was in the 
 city of Cnossos, on the island of Crete, four thousand 
 years ago. The ruins of a much later model, dating 
 back only twenty-five hundred years, have been found 
 in Tirgus, which is in Greece. 
 
 The Greeks were the first to use bath tubs, though 
 the tubs they used were not tubs at all. They were 
 bowls — overgrown punch bowls, you might say, which 
 rested upon pedestals three feet high. They were 
 large enough to hold the water for a bath, but not 
 large enough to hold the bather. The bather stood 
 on a stone slab, dipped water from a bowl and poured 
 it over his body. The Greeks regarded warm water 
 as weakening — “effeminate” I think they called it — 
 and so they took their baths cold. 
 
 Civilization got its start in Egypt. Along with the 
 
8 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 cultivation of wheat , the Egyptians cultivated the bath 
 
 habit. 
 
 Some thirty-four hundred years ago, you remember, 
 while taking her daily bath in the river Nile, one of the 
 daughters of one of the Pharaohs found a baby floating 
 in a basket. She named the baby Moses, a word 
 borrowed from the Hebrew, meaning “to draw out,” 
 because she had drawn him out of the water. And 
 Moses grew up, as babies have a habit of doing, and 
 became the world’s first great teacher. 
 
 Among other things Moses taught hygiene, sanita- 
 tion, and the fine art of living. He knew that to keep 
 clean is to prevent disease, and to prevent disease is 
 to build a strong race of people. 
 
 His aim was to fix the habit of cleanliness, for a habit 
 once fixed usually sticks. To fix the habit — to impress 
 with authority— Moses uttered his teachings as 
 Divine commands. “Thus saith the Lord,” he would 
 say. This gave the bath a religious touch. And why 
 not? Is not a morning bath like a morning prayer? 
 I will leave it to you. 
 
 More than three thousand years after Moses went 
 up into the mountain and forgot to come back, another 
 teacher, John Wesley, the first Methodist, was riding 
 along a road in England when he came to the dirty 
 little village of Burslem. 
 
 It so happened that in Burslem there lived a poor, 
 lame potter by the name of Josiah Wedgwood. This 
 potter was to become the richest man in England, who, 
 up to that time, had made his own fortune? also, he 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 9 
 
 was to become the grandfather of Charles Darwin, the 
 world’s greatest scientist. 
 
 Now Wedgwood was a worker who mixed much 
 teaching with his work. John Wesley drew rein as 
 he saw Wedgwood trying to teach his potters the 
 lesson Moses had tried to teach— -that keeping clean 
 increases health, which increases energy, which in- 
 creases efficiency. And there, sitting on his horse, 
 and seeing what he saw, Wesley spoke for the first 
 time the now-famous phrase: “Cleanliness is next to 
 godliness.” 
 
 And Wedgwood looked up, smiled, and added : 
 “Yes, and sometimes it is next to impossible.” 
 
 "Jo^rv 
 
 We$icv 
 
 HE modern club grew out of the Roman 
 bath. Before, as well as after Nero’s 
 brief violin performance, it was not 
 unusual for the wife of a Roman 
 business man to receive a note like 
 this: “Adored One — I cannot sup 
 with you this evening, for I have an 
 appointment with a citizen at the 
 Therma.” 
 
 The business man of today picks up a telephone: 
 “Hello— is that you, dear? This is me. Say, I won’t 
 be home for dinner. Got to meet a man at the club. 
 Who? John Smith from Kalamazoo. Won’t be late. 
 Bye-bye.” 
 
10 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 And that is the difference between the Rome that 
 was and the America that is. 
 
 The Roman bath was called Therma, meaning heat, 
 from which we get thermos — thermos bottle. The 
 Thermas did not have canned music, electric lights 
 nor ash trays, but, in magnificence, they outshone any 
 club of this year of peace and plenty. 
 
 Rome knew only two classes of people — the washed 
 and the unwashed. And then, as now, the unwashed 
 were crowded beyond the pale of polite society. 
 
 Every family that could afford a bathroom had one. 
 Those who could not afford this convenience, as well 
 as those who could, spent their idle hours at the public 
 Thermas. Bathing became an art, a recreation, a 
 pleasure — a worship of health and beauty through 
 skins kept clean. 
 
 The largest Therma covered a square mile of ground. 
 The huge Diocletian could take care of thirty-two 
 hundred bathers at one time, while the Caracalla, the 
 finest of them all, had room for half as many. Besides 
 hot and cold baths, the Thermas were provided with 
 perspiring rooms, dressing rooms, swimming pools, 
 athletic fields, gymnasiums, lecture halls, and places 
 for rest, refreshment and conversation. And there 
 were Thermas for women, as well as for men. 
 
 In these public baths the Romans exercised, kept 
 their bodies clean, stimulated the circulation of their 
 blood, prevented disease or cured whatever ailed 
 them, rested, enjoyed the companionship of their 
 fellows, and fed their souls with the beautiful carvings 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 11 
 
 of ancient sculptors — all for one quadrans, which, in 
 Uncle Sam’s money, would be one-fourth of one cent. 
 
 For six hundred years, so Pliny, the historian, says, 
 Rome used no medicine but her baths. 
 
 A real Roman cleansing consisted of a sweat, a 
 scrape and a shower. Or, as the invention of the 
 shower was yet to be, perhaps “pouring” is a better 
 word. That is, after a sweat and a scrape, water was 
 poured over the body until it was washed clean. 
 Then came a massage or rubdown, followed by a good 
 rest. Thus from Rome, by the way of Turkey, arrived 
 the Turkish bath, which finally reached America in 
 1865. 
 
 Scraping off the perspiration brought about the 
 invention of the perspiration scraper. Usually we get 
 what we need when we need it. 
 
 Every age that has yet been born has blazoned its 
 symbol of wealth. What is the good of gold if it 
 can’t be shown? In one age furs bespoke personal 
 wealth ; in another, beads ; then silks ; then combs for 
 milady’s hair; then full-length mirrors, that the fair 
 might see themselves as others saw them ; next it was 
 the carriage or the piano ; and now — now what shall 
 we say? Is it the latest motor or a flying boat? 
 
 In the age of the Roman Therma the symbol of 
 wealth was the perspiration scraper. Of course a 
 smooth piece of wood would do ; but then, wood was 
 so common. Anybody could have wood. So the 
 wealth of the wealthy was displayed in bone, bronze, 
 silver and gold scrapers. 
 
 
12 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 The Romans carried their scrapers down to the 
 bath much as we modern mortals carry our bathing 
 suits down to the beach. 
 
 The upper classes were scraped by their slaves; 
 but the poor, thank goodness, could scrape themselves. 
 
 Once in a while Roman politicians opened their 
 private baths to the free use of the public. American 
 politicians give free outings. Instead of picnics, as is 
 the American custom, politicians of Rome, from the 
 Emperor down, mingled with the people by bathing 
 with them. 
 
 And so politics is politics — in Rome as in America — 
 yesterday as today. 
 
 One time, while at a public bath, the Emperor 
 noticed an old soldier rubbing his back against a 
 marble wall. The Emperor asked the soldier why he 
 used the wall as a scraper. 
 
 “Alas, sire,” answered the soldier, “I am very poor 
 —too poor to own a slave, and too feeble to scrape 
 myself with a scraper.” 
 
 Forthwith the Emperor gave the soldier money and 
 a slave. 
 
 The next day, when the Emperor came to the bath, 
 he found a long row of old men rubbing their backs 
 against a wall. 
 
 And so human nature is human nature— in Rome as 
 in America— yesterday as today. 
 
 A clean nation is a progressive nation, and a pro- 
 gressive nation is a ruling nation. But alas, alack, 
 the thirst for power— the spirit of conquest — reaching 
 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 13 
 
 out and out for more and more— and Rome crumbled, 
 
 and progress crumbled with her. And the world went 
 to sleep and slept for a thousand years, or, to say it in 
 another way, a thousand years without a bath. 
 
 THOUSAND years without a bath! 
 Surely, those were Dark Ages— 
 dark with dirt. But wait. Before 
 going into that, let me say this : 
 Knights of the Bath are not Saturday 
 Nights. 
 
 The Order of the Bath, from 
 whence emerged the Knights of the 
 Bath, was a little pleasantry set 
 agoing by Henry the Fourth of England in the year 
 thirteen hundred ninety-nine. But was it a pleasantry? 
 One never can tell about an Englishman. Henry may 
 have been serious. He lived in a serious time, and 
 serious times make serious people. Europe was be- 
 ginning to rub its eyes and creep out of the filth of ten 
 mouldy centuries. Perhaps King Henry thought it 
 time to wash up, which is to wake up. 
 
 “In days of old, the knights were bold,” so the poet 
 wrote — but not bold enough to take a bath. Henry 
 knew this. He knew that a knight shied at water 
 like an elephant shies at a mouse. Hence the Order 
 of the Bath. 
 
 Candidates for this order were selected by the 
 
 
M 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 King. But, before a candidate could be initiated, he 
 must take a bath. Ah ! there was the rub ! 
 
 Having been led into the bath, and having survived 
 the shock, the knight became a shining example to 
 others, who, though less favored, were equally in need 
 of water. 
 
 Habit ever clings like a clinging vine. For even 
 now, when a man is about to be initiated into a secret 
 order, he takes a bath on suspicion. 
 
 The pendulum never swings half way. It swings 
 from one extreme to the other. Thus, from the 
 cleanliness and the glowing health of Rome, the 
 pendulum swung to the uncleanliness and the stalking 
 pestilence of the years that followed. The bath had 
 been a part of Rome’s pagan splendor. With the rise 
 of Christianity, what was more natural than the 
 thought that water loosens morals as well as dirt? 
 The early Christians turned their backs upon the 
 bath — they would have none of it — and because of this 
 civilization suffered for a thousand years. 
 
 Europe forgot, or did not know, that nature demands 
 a clean skin. So the bath was given absent treatment ; 
 Christianity marched on its victorious way; plague 
 pursued the unbathed in the still watches of the 
 night ; London was without a drainage system ; each 
 person in Paris had to get along with one quart of 
 water a day. What wonder that disease and death 
 perched on every doorstep? People died like flies. 
 Christian leaders said it was the will of God. But 
 today we know better. I should say we do. They 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 15 
 
 died for the want of proper sanitation, for the want of 
 plenty of water, for the want of regular bathing. 
 
 King Henry knew what he was about when he 
 founded the Order of the Bath. I think so. 
 
 Great as we are, and smart as we are, we Americans 
 have not moved so fast, sanitarily speaking. It is 
 only a hundred years since the first pumping station 
 in this country started to pump. Chicago was our 
 first city to have a real sewerage system, and that was 
 not until 1855. We had no public baths until 1891. 
 Even today some families think so little of their bath 
 tubs they use them for coal or vegetable bins. 
 
 Less than forty years ago yellow fever and smallpox 
 were frequent callers. And before that cholera boldly 
 strode the highways and byways counting its victims. 
 Plague spots dotted our landscape. Now all that is 
 changed. And what did it? This, and nothing more : 
 Pure water piped into the home; poisonous waste 
 piped out of the home ; bathing ; learning how to live, 
 which, I’m sure you will agree, is better than learning 
 how to die. 
 
 The science of living, or sanitation — they mean the 
 same — has to do with heat, light, water, cleanliness 
 and ventilation. And these have to do with the five 
 most important things of life — comfort, health, ambi- 
 tion, efficiency, happiness. Where sanitation is a 
 stranger, sickness is a constant guest. 
 
 The Crusaders of the Dark Ages went into the East 
 carrying the Cross. They came back bearing the 
 standard of the bath, for the bath had never been lost 
 
16 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 to the people of the East. This was a fair exchange. 
 And with the bath restored, civilization slowly scrubbed 
 itself and resumed its onward march. 
 
 We are only just now recovering from that long, 
 sleepy, bathless stretch o’ time. 
 
 But, if you don’t mind, let us go back to the famous 
 Saturday Nights, which, by the way, have never left 
 us. They were handed down by the old Norsemen, 
 who dubbed Saturday “washing day.” 
 
 Their bathroom, or “wash hut,” as they called it, 
 was as air-tight as logs and clay could make it. In 
 the center of the hut was an oven-like pile of stones. 
 A hole in the roof let the smoke out. A fire was kept 
 burning under the stones until they were hot. Then 
 the fire was raked away and the hole in the roof 
 covered over. Buckets of cold water were carried 
 into the hut; switches, soaked soft, were placed in 
 handy places. 
 
 What ho ! the Saturday night bath was ready. The 
 family assembled. Sometimes the neighbors came. 
 It was a gala night. 
 
 The hut was closed tight. Water poured over the 
 hot stones produced steam; steam produced sweat; 
 switches used on each other increased the circulation 
 of the blood; cold water thrown over the bathers 
 created a warm, tingling sensation and washed their 
 bodies clean. 
 
 And that was the beginning of our Saturday Nights, 
 which, you see, have nothing at all to do with Knights 
 of the Bath. 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 17 
 
 HE dream of Ponce de Leon lias come 
 true. The elusive fountain of youth, 
 for which he searched, has been 
 found. Today we know where this 
 fountain is. Like happiness, it is in 
 our own home — in our own bath- 
 room. And it does all that Ponce 
 de Leon hoped for. It rests the 
 weary, heals the sick, and adds vigor 
 to the creeping years. 
 
 This fountain of youth was first used in an American 
 home at about eight o’clock on the morning of Decem- 
 ber 20, 1842, in the City of Cincinnati, State of Ohio, 
 by one Adam Thompson. 
 
 Thompson had been on a trip to England. There 
 he got to know Lord John Russell, who, a dozen years 
 before, had invented a bath tub. The English were 
 as slow in taking to the tub as the knights of old had 
 been in taking to the bath. When Thompson and 
 Russell met, Lord John was the only man in England 
 who took a bath a day. Thompson tried this English 
 tub, and then came home to make improvements. 
 
 He had a Cincinnati cabinet-maker make a tub of 
 mahogany, seven feet long by four wide, and line it 
 with sheet lead. When finished it weighed nearly a 
 ton. A pipe carried water from the backyard pump to 
 a tank in the attic. Two pipes reached from the tank 
 to the tub. One of these carried cold water; the 
 
18 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 Crude? Yes. But from that first crude tub has 
 grown the plumbing industry, which does a business 
 of something like a thousand million dollars a year. 
 And yet, with all this business, there are millions of 
 homes that do not have real bathrooms. Progress is 
 slow, even when it seems fast. 
 
 On that December morn, eighty years ago, Thomp- 
 son took a bath in his bath tub. He was so pleased 
 that in the evening he took another. Wonderful! He 
 must show the fountain of youth to his friends. So he 
 gave a Christmas party. Four of the party, a bit 
 braver than the rest, took a bath. And what do you 
 think? Nothing happened to them. 
 
 The news spread. People came to see the “new- 
 fangled contraption.” Then the agitators started to 
 agitate. Newspapers said a bath a day would ruin the 
 democratic simplicity of the republic. Doctors pre- 
 dicted rheumatism, inflammation of the lungs, and 
 other ailments that only doctors could pronounce. 
 
 Bathe in winter? Why, the idea ! 
 
 Remembering the command of Moses, “Bathe his 
 flesh in running water and be clean,” the preachers 
 said nothing. 
 
 Had Adam Thompson introduced his bath tub a few 
 centuries earlier, he might have been the center of a 
 bonfire. In which case we would now be building 
 monuments to his greatness. As it is, he lives only 
 because of the stir he stirred. 
 
 For instance, Philadelphia, “the cradle of liberty,” 
 tried to put a ban on bathing from the first of November 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 19 
 
 to the middle of March. And the ban would have been 
 put had not a majority of two in the common council 
 been blessed with a sense of humor and voted “nay.” 
 Virginia took a slap at bathing by placing a tax of 
 thirty dollars a year on every tub brought into the 
 state. Hartford, Providence, Wilmington and other 
 cities blocked the bath habit with extra heavy water 
 rates to bathers. Soak ’em — that was their motto- 
 soak ’em in the tub and out of it. 
 
 Boston, forgetting her little tea party, in 1845 made 
 bathing unlawful except upon medical advice. Bath 
 prescriptions ! What do you think of that? No wonder 
 Shakespeare smiled and wrote, “What fools these 
 mortals be.” 
 
 Like every other new idea, the bath had to fight its 
 way. For a matter o’ that, it is still fighting. Not half 
 the people take half the baths they should. Yet the 
 bath is worth more to our well-being than any tonic 
 put up in bottles. 
 
 In 1850, after Zachary Taylor's death, and Vice- 
 President Millard Fillmore became President, he 
 ordered a bath tub installed in the White House. And 
 this tub served the official family until Grover Cleve- 
 land moved in thirty-five years later. 
 
 By 1860 every first-class hotel in New York had a 
 bath tub, and a few boasted of even two or three. 
 Now hotels advertise, “1,000 rooms with 1,000 baths.” 
 When a new idea arrives, we laugh, then condemn, 
 then adopt. And thus progress continues to progress. 
 
 Aside from human doubt, which is ever with us, 
 
20 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 there was another reason for the slow advance of the 
 bath tub. When Thompson shocked the nation with 
 a bath a day, people were using the old oaken bucket 
 and the backyard pump. A tub in the home called 
 for water in the home. But how was water to be 
 gotten there? That was the question. Water systems, 
 sanitation and plumbing were not often mentioned, 
 and were less often seen. 
 
 One thing always leads to something else. The bath 
 tub led to a flow of water into the home and a flow of 
 waste out of the home, and the two led to better 
 living. 
 
 Then came the shower. It added convenience and 
 pleasure to bathing, and these made bathing more 
 
 popular. 
 
 History has a habit of frequently leaving us in the 
 dark. And so just what the shower was before it was 
 a real shower, is hard to say. If may have been 
 suggested by nature’s own. At any rate, the first 
 invention of the kind was called “rain bathing.” It 
 came a year after Thompson’s tub. It consisted of a 
 trough, and a wooden box with holes bored in the 
 bottom. The wooden box was stationary, and was 
 placed a little higher than a man’s head. The trough 
 was lowered and raised by ropes and pulleys. To 
 take a shower, all one had to do was to lower the 
 trough, fill it with water, pull it up, tie it, tilt it, and the 
 water would run out of the trough, into the box, 
 through the holes, onto the bather. Simple, was it 
 not? 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 Z\ 
 
 From this beginning, which was hardly a beginning 
 at all, the shower has been perfected within a space of 
 thirty years. 
 
 A bath is a bath. Its value never grows less. The 
 only change is in the many improvements which make 
 for comfort, ease and the economy of time. In this — 
 I mean in the manufacture of bath equipment — 
 America leads the world. 
 
 Any home, no matter where or how small, can 
 afford its own fountain of youth. Afford it? Why, 
 bless you, we can afford anything but poor health. 
 
 WO men met. One was cheerful, the 
 other was not. “See!" exclaimed 
 the cheerful one, “what a beautiful 
 woman!” “Huh!” grunted the 
 grouch, “bones — bones covered with 
 skin.” The cheerful one smiled, 
 “Yes; but what a skin!” All of 
 which serves to remind us that a 
 beautiful skin is the result of beauti- 
 ful health, and beautiful health is the result of — — — -. 
 But that is the point. What is beautiful health the 
 result of? 
 
 The skin is more than a covering for bones. It is 
 the human keyboard. Play on it plenty of water and 
 every organ of the body will echo in harmony. There 
 is nothing like water for stirring to action or lulling to 
 
22 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 
 rest the human machine, so simple, yet so wonderful. 
 
 When the world seems blue, take a bath and watch 
 it grow rosy. 
 
 There is so much water, and it costs so little, I 
 wonder if we appreciate its full value? Just suppose 
 you got up in the morning and found there was not a 
 drop of water in the whole world. 
 
 But we were speaking of skin. Exactly. Well, here 
 is a square inch of skin under a glass which makes 
 things seem large. Look at it. Surprised? No doubt. 
 Do you see those little pores? Little sewer outlets, I 
 call them. There are about twenty-five hundred of 
 those sewer outlets to every square inch of our eighteen 
 square feet of skin surface. Omitting the fat woman 
 and the living skeleton, who have more or less, each 
 of us averages between three and four million outlets. 
 
 Take another look. You see each outlet is connected 
 with a little drain pipe. If these millions of drain 
 pipes were put end to end, they would make one pipe 
 many miles long. A covering for bones — why, say, 
 our skin holds the greatest system of sanitation ever 
 invented. This system empties onto the surface of 
 the skin about two pounds of waste matter every 
 twenty-four hours. And every day our skin collects a 
 lot of smoke and dust which must be gotten rid of. 
 
 Ah ! but suppose the skin is not kept clean — suppose 
 the waste matter and the dust are not washed off — 
 what then? The sewer outlets get stopped up, don’t 
 they? The waste can’t get out. And when the waste 
 can’t get out, it clogs the drain pipes, doesn’t it? So, 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 23 
 
 with drains clogged and outlets closed, the waste has 
 no place to go but back into the body. And there the 
 waste turns to poison. Then what happens? A des- 
 perate struggle begins. 
 
 We sometimes speak of conscience as the regulator 
 of the mind. Did you ever think of the organs as the 
 regulator of the body? Without a clean outside, there 
 cannot be a clean inside ; without a clean inside, there 
 cannot be clean organs ; without clean organs, there 
 cannot be a clean mind — a clean conscience. Thus 
 beautiful health, a beautiful skin, honesty, thrift, 
 right thinking— all have their beginnings in a clean 
 skin. 
 
 One might be prosperous and dirty, or progressive 
 and filthy, or even learned and foul. Yes, one might. 
 And so might a President, or a champion heavy-weight, 
 or a prize beauty be in chronic need of a bath. But 
 such extremes rarely travel together. 
 
 But let us go back. When waste matter — poison — 
 is in the body, the organs are forced to work overtime. 
 They must do their own work; also the work of the 
 closed drains and outlets. If the work becomes too 
 heavy, disease sets in, and there’s a hurry call for the 
 doctor. 
 
 And that is the first reason for a good soap and water 
 scrubbing — to keep the surface clean and the outlets 
 open. Those with the daily bath habit need only one 
 weekly scrubbing. But those who are yet to know 
 the pleasure of a bath a day, should scrub two or three 
 times a week, and be sure to use a pure, mild soap. 
 
24 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 A second reason for keeping the outlets open is 
 this: The skin is the “third lung.” We breathe 
 through the skin. And this skin-breathing ventilates 
 the body — keeps it refreshed with fresh air. 
 
 / Many years ago Cellini, the great Italian artist, 
 / gilded a child from head to foot. The gilt closed the 
 4$ pores — the skin could not breathe. And the child 
 lived only two hours. Later a dancer painted his body 
 with gold paint. He thought he would win lasting 
 fame. He did. He died. Close the pores of the skin 
 and death is as sure as taxes. 
 
 The morning dip or shower cleanses. And it does 
 more. It is a tonic. It exercises the skin and tones 
 the whole body. To start the day with a bath is to 
 start with that “grand an’ glorious feeling.” 
 
 And this is how the daily bath does its work. The 
 blood vessels of the skin, just under the surface, hold 
 more than half the blood of the body. These blood 
 vessels surround the ends of the nerves. The nerves, 
 like little telephone wires, connect the outer surface 
 with the inner central exchange. Water on the skin 
 creates certain stimulating sensations. These sensa- 
 tions are taken up by the ends of the nerves and 
 hurried over the wires to “Central,” which, in *urn, 
 relays them to every organ of the body. 
 
 Then, too, the action of water on the skin causes 
 the blood to react. In other words, a cold dip or shower 
 cools the blood at the surface. As this cool sensation 
 is ’phoned throughout the body, it starts a reaction 
 which grows into a warm, up -and -doing feeling— -a fit 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 25 
 
 attitude for the day’s battle. It makes work a pleasure. 
 
 If the water is warm instead of cold, the opposite 
 effect is the result. That is, a warm dip or shower 
 warms the blood at the surface, and this warm sensa® 
 tion sets in motion a reaction which soothes and rests 
 the nerves that have been worn jagged by too much 
 doing. 
 
 You might say that a cool bath warms, and a warm 
 bath cools. Also that a cool bath quickens the pace of 
 the person who is easy-going ; while a warm bath slows 
 down the one who wants to go too fast. 
 
 A bath a day is the best health insurance, for it 
 prevents sickness by keeping the bather in good 
 condition. 
 
 Sickness is not like the old man’s troubles, most of 
 which, he said, “had never happened.” Sickness 
 overtakes the best of us unless we do the things which 
 keep ourselves in good health. 
 
 Any person who can take time to be sick, can take 
 time to bathe. Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale, says 
 the wage earners of America lose an average of nine 
 days a year through sickness. A bath a day would 
 save much of this lost time, and also save many 
 dollars for the bathers. 
 
 To live long and well is no longer a mystery. Bathe 
 daily, scrub weekly, breathe deeply, drink plenty of 
 water, chew your food. That’s all. To practice these 
 is to practice the fine art of living — the science of 
 sciences — for we must be healthy before we can be 
 anything else. 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 2i 
 
 LIVER WENDELL HOLMES once 
 said, “Because I like a pinch of salt 
 in my soup is no reason I wish to be 
 immersed in brine.” What he had 
 in mind was this : Enough is plenty ; 
 more than enough is too much. To 
 exercise is to grow strong, but to 
 over-exercise is to grow “stale.” 
 Eight hours’ sleep will fit a man for 
 a big day’s work, but to double his sleeping hours 
 will not double his working ability. 
 
 And so it is with bathing. Enough is enough. 
 Don’t do too much, and don’t do the wrong thing. 
 
 A thorough soap and water bath is good. But such 
 a scrubbing every day would rob the skin of its oil — 
 cause it to lose some of its softness. And because a 
 bath a day fills you with the joy of living, don’t imagine 
 that two baths a day will make you twice as joyful. 
 
 Another warning may not be out of place. A friend 
 waxes warm, so to speak, over his bath. You say to 
 yourself, “If that kind of a bath is good for him, it 
 ought to be good for me.” You try it. And you 
 shiver and shake, or grow tired and lose your “pep” 
 for the rest of the day. Right away you condemn it. 
 No bath a day for you — no, sir. And you slip back to 
 the old Saturday Nights. 
 
 Friends are good for many things, but not for 
 picking our baths. The bath is individual — the most 
 individual thing in the world, unless it be whiskers or 
 the length of a woman’s skirt. Pick your own bath. 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 £f 
 
 and pick it by finding out what is good for you. It is 
 as easy to know the bath that suits you as it is to know 
 whether you like olives or spinach. 
 
 There are five kinds of daily baths-— cold, cool, 
 tepid, warm, hot. Aside from cleanliness, each bath 
 is for just one thing: exhilaration — gladness — the joy 
 of being alive. If a cold bath gives you this fine, 
 glowing feeling — whets your appetite and stimulates 
 your energy — then a cold bath is the bath for you. 
 If it doesn’t do this, try a cool, tepid, warm or hot 
 bath, or start the water a little warm and let it grow 
 cold. Try a different one every day until the reaction, 
 or the come back, as it were, exactly suits you. You 
 will know when you have found your bath, for the 
 nerves will shout the news. 
 
 We must learn to fit ourselves with baths just as 
 we have learned to fit ourselves with shoes. 
 
 The right bath, rightly taken, is good for most ail- 
 ments. All down the shifting sands of time water 
 has been called “Big Medicine.” Do your bathing 
 before eating, not afterward. If perchance your heart 
 or kidneys are weak, or you feel the pangs of rheu- 
 matism, or you are wide awake when you should be 
 fast asleep, stick to the warm bath. It will strengthen, 
 relieve pain and bring rest. 
 
 Half the good of a bath lies in the work of taking it. 
 To rub with a rough towel is to exercise. One minute 
 is long enough for the daily dip or shower ; two minutes 
 for rubbing — three minutes all told. 
 
 The best that can be said of any good habit is that 
 
28 
 
 THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 it leads to other good habits. The habit of a bath a 
 day leads to the habit of clean clothes and clean 
 homes, hard work and hard play, promptness and 
 courtesy, straight thinking and a willingness to serve. 
 And such habits, so once said John Jacob Astor, will 
 make any man well-to-do. 
 
 BRY little while somebody is heard 
 to say: “What’s all this talk about 
 a bath a day? Why listen, my 
 father used to take a bath in a 
 wash tub in the kitchen on Saturday 
 night, and he lived to be seventy- 
 eight. And my grandfather didn’t 
 take a bath oftener than once a 
 month, and he died at eighty-two.” 
 
 Indeed? Well, well. 
 
 If there is any satisfaction in going into the past, 
 why stop at grandfather and his once-a-month? There 
 is Simeon the Syrian. He lived for thirty years with- 
 out taking a bath. 
 
 Simeon was a monk who feared that he might not 
 be true to his vows. So he climbed to the top of a 
 marble column, sixty feet high, and there on the cap- 
 stone for thirty years he lived beyond reproach. 
 During all those years his only bath was the bath of 
 wind and weather. 
 
 If we of this busy day lived as Simeon did— I do 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 29 
 
 not mean atop of a marble column, but out in the 
 open — or lived the life of our grandfathers, a daily bath 
 would not be so necessary to our welfare. Still, even 
 then, a bath a day would be worth while. 
 
 A century ago ninety-seven out of every hundred 
 Americans spent most of their waking hours out-of- 
 doors. The fresh air and the sunshine did much to 
 sanitate their bodies. Now more than two-thirds of 
 us are indoors most of the time. We neither work, 
 dress nor live as did your grandfather and mine. 
 Everything is different. We have gained in con- 
 veniences, comforts and luxuries, but in gaining these 
 we lost the great outdoors. 
 
 For everything we lose we must find something to 
 take its place. A bath a day is the best substitute for 
 outdoor living. It is more than a substitute. Bathing 
 does more for our bodies than wind and weather 
 can do. 
 
 We live much better than our grandfathers did, and 
 slowly but surely we are learning to live much longer. 
 Working hand-in-hand, sanitation and therapeutics— 
 the sciences of living — have, during the past century, 
 lengthened the span of life six years. In point of fact, 
 a child born today has an average chance of living six 
 years longer than had a child born no further back than 
 when a future President w T as splitting rails. 
 
 People who are sanitary are healthy, and healthy 
 people are sound, safe and sane. Dirt does not grow 
 out of poverty ; poverty grows out of dirt. The criminal, 
 the plotter agaii 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 — all are sick men — sick with a sickness born of un- 
 cleanliness. Change their sanitary condition and they 
 will begin to see “white,” instead of “seeing red.” 
 
 One hot day I tramped far off the 
 
 traveled trail. I came to a comfortable house. There, 
 in the welcome shade of a big tree, was a bubbling 
 fountain, like the ones you have seen in public squares. 
 Above it were the words, “Pure Water for Man or 
 Beast.” I drank; I bathed my face and hands. The 
 water, cool and clear, was like talcum to a sunburn. 
 
 An old man, with snow-white hair, came out of the 
 house. Old, did I say? Well, hardly. His fresh 
 skin, keen eye and youthful step — these spoke of 
 forty; not of sixty-five or so. 
 
 “Plenty of water has stopped the telltale signs of 
 aging years,” he said. “Water has given to mother 
 and me and the children a part of all that makes life 
 worth the living. That’s the reason for this 
 fountain. It invites other folks to get better ac- 
 
 rx 
 
THE STORY OF THE BATH 
 
 SI 
 
 quainted with water — to use more of it, inside and out.** 
 
 And so lie talked — and so I learned. 
 
 As I left the fountain I met another man. He must 
 have been a neighbor. He said he was thirty, but he 
 looked every minute of fifty. Pointing to the man I 
 had just left, the neighbor tapped his forehead signifi- 
 cantly and whispered, “Cracked, he is — water 
 cracked.” 
 
 A lump came up in my throat. I don’t know why — 
 only-well, somehow I felt glad for the man at the 
 fountain — the man who was called “cracked.” But I 
 knew better. And I’ll tell you why. 
 
 The man at the fountain was the man whose wife 
 once persuaded him to invest his savings in new 
 decorations, a water system and a bathroom, that they 
 might entertain a certain President. And this man 
 and his wife have lived long and well — long enough 
 to see their children grow up — to see one become a 
 Governor, another the sales manager of a great cor- 
 poration, and still another a rising young artist. A 
 bath a day did not pick them up and put them where 
 they are, but they say it helped them on their way. 
 
 “Cracked?” Well, I guess not. 
 
 And should you ever be a guest at the home of the 
 man and his wife, or at the homes of their children, 
 instead of the usual “Good morning, did you sleep 
 well?” you would be greeted with, “Good morning, did 
 you enjoy your bath?” 
 
 Is that a good way to begin the day? I say is it, or 
 isn’t it? And if it isn’t, what is? 
 
AND SO HERE ENDS THE STORY OF THE BATH, AS 
 TOLD BY EDWIN L. BARKER, ILLUSTRATED BY 
 ALBERT W, BARKER, AND PUBLISHED AND DIS- 
 TRIBUTED BY DOMESTIC ENGINEERING, WHICH IS 
 AT 190© PRAIRIE AVENUE, CHICAGO U. S. A. 
 
 1 / 
 
 4 
 
 W P, Dana Co.. Printer* 
 Cbicago 
 
 * BH 
 
 p > r - rr CM A RY 
 
 G^TTY Rr ' 'tRCH INSTITUTE 
 
wmm&M 
 HlS 
 
 fpiip 
 ifegglli 
 
1