The secret of the Russian steam room
Experts who are professionally involved in the history of baths in Rus' identify four main features of the Russian steam room, which distinguish it from a number of similar national steam rooms, hammams, thermal baths and sinks:
- Extremely high temperature of the steam room at 70-80% air humidity. It could only be obtained using boiling water and a heater installed inside the steam room;
- Use of brooms and custard infusions for bath procedures;
- Contrast dousing or swimming in the river;
- The wooden lining inside the bathhouse held the heat well in the steam room even at sub-zero air temperatures outside.
For your information!
According to reviews from professionals, the one who came up with the idea of steaming inside a wooden frame actually became the inventor of a real Russian bathhouse. It was the wooden frame that turned the black dugout with a heater built from pebbles into a Russian bathhouse. Why? A talented man, who lived in the territory from the Black Sea to Karelia and the Urals, came up with a way to retain the heat of hot wet steam in a confined space.
History of the bath: the origin and development of bath art in different countries of the world
Hello, lovers of steam and fragrant birch broom!
The well-known proverb “The day you steam, the day you don’t grow old” quite subtly captures the whole essence of the bath business. Our distant ancestors also knew and greatly appreciated all the miraculous properties of the bathhouse.
Man noticed the healing abilities of steam and hot water almost from the moment he learned to use fire. Therefore, the simplest prototype of a bathhouse can be considered stones heated on a fire, which emit “magical” heat. So, the history of the bathhouse goes back far into the past and can go back several dozen centuries.
From this article you will learn:
Who invented the sauna log house and why?
If you take a closer look at the “relatives” of the Russian bath - Roman, Greek and Turkish, then the problem that the territories of ancient Rus' faced in attempts to equip a primitive semblance of a steam room becomes clear.
Anyone who has ever had to set up a camp bathhouse knows how difficult it is to create a suitable degree of steam in a tent or dugout. Greece, Italy, Turkey are located much further south, the climate is warmer, so there are no problems with heat loss. There is no point in comparing an oriental bathhouse, even Roman baths, with an ancient Russian steam room.
In thermal baths and hamams, in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arab baths, one does not steam in the sense of a Russian bath, but rather warms up and sweats in a slightly heated, very humid atmosphere. To experience the full power of a steam room in the Russian frost, you need someone talented to come up with a warm log house and a real stove-stove.
Later, the design of the stove and chimney was borrowed from their southern and eastern neighbors in the Russian bathhouse, and the warm bathhouse is very similar to the Finnish sauna. No matter how or who proves the authorship of the invention, the chopped bathhouse in Rus' is an exact copy of the Finnish steam room. Most likely, the warm log house was invented by the people living in the northern territories, from Karelia to the Urals.
Greek laconiums - the center of the cultural life of the Hellenes
In Europe, baths first appeared in Ancient Sparta. They were small round buildings with springs, in the middle of which there was a fireplace. The temperature in the building was high. Classical baths - laconiums - appeared in Greece during the Hellenistic era and were used by all citizens, regardless of status. The founder of the Laconiums was Alexander the Great. In 330, he was on a campaign in Egypt and there he became addicted to bathhouse traditions. Returning to his homeland, the emperor launched a grandiose construction project throughout the country and soon the laconiums became the center of the cultural life of the Greeks.
So who invented the Russian bathhouse?
It is very difficult to establish exactly when bathhouses - log houses - appeared in Rus'. The first mention dates back to the records of Nestor the chronicler of the 5th-6th centuries. At that time, only wealthy communities, artels and princes could build a real bath house. Today it seems that it’s easy to install a chopped frame, but at that time it was very difficult to come up with and install a log house, without modern tools. Yes, in modern times it is quite difficult to find a craftsman who would come up with and make a good bathhouse from a log.
The community was required to build one of its own log bathhouses; no one was allowed into it except its own. A full-fledged bathhouse was built on the outflow of the river; steam rooms were not installed on ponds and lakes; it was believed that a merman or a goblin could live in such a building. Nearby they could come up with a black steam room in which the sick, livestock could be treated, and a traveler or stranger could spend the night.
Luxury or necessity
In Rus' there were steam rooms in almost every yard, if its size allowed. Once a week, most often on Saturday, the home baths were heated and washed by the whole family. Those who did not have a large courtyard and soap shop had the opportunity to visit the common steam rooms.
Such establishments operated for a small fee, and anyone could take a steam bath. Even during the reign of Vladimir Krasno Solnyshko, baths were used to treat various ailments. And a century later, the famous monk-healer Agapius healed the sick only with a bath and medicinal herbs. Following the rules of the holy place, all those who suffered visited the baths three times a month.
The first baths in Rus'
The first Russian steam rooms were adobe or adobe tents with a stove-stove lined inside from pebbles. The coating quickly cracked, so someone came up with the idea of lining the walls inside the steam room with a slab. The heater was laid out on clay and fired for several days in a huge fire pit, long before the building itself was built. The result was a stove that had to be slowly heated a day before the start of the bath procedures.
The poorest sections of the population could be content with smoking and black bathhouses. The problem was in the stove; often from the heat and water it became covered with cracks and filled the dugout or chicken house with acrid smoke. For a long time, a smoke sauna was the only way to fight dermatitis and lice, until someone came up with a stove with smoke exhaust through a hole in the ceiling.
There were also camp baths or washing facilities. One of the military men came up with the idea of taking a steam bath while on a hike to relieve fatigue from the workload. The structure of the washing facilities was ingeniously simple; in essence, it was an insulated, leather-lined tent, soaked in fat and wax. A stone platform was laid out in a place of suitable size and a fire was lit. Next, the ash was removed, boards were laid on top of the heated stone, a tent was erected, and the Russian camp bath was ready.
The cult of the bath in Ancient Rome
The ancient Romans generally valued all bath procedures and even elevated the bath to a special cult. Here they not only washed and had massages, but also organized special rooms for reading books, studying poetry, and drawing. Quite often, sports training sessions and even competitions were held in the baths.
Ancient Roman baths
In a word, the Romans preferred to relax in the bathhouse not only with their bodies, but also with their souls. The great healers of that time argued: in order to get rid of illness and get sick a little, you need to be clean in body, have a bright, strong spirit, adhere to a certain diet and engage in moderate physical activity. These statements are more relevant today than ever.
The rich rulers of Rome spared no expense to build the most luxurious baths. The most expensive materials were used in architecture, which were imported from different countries. Very often, Roman baths (therms) were decorated with fountains, sculptures, columns and various paintings on the walls. Many of them even surpassed the palaces and “noble apartments” of rulers in their beauty.
In terms of its technical equipment, the baths can be considered high-tech structures of their time. In the latest versions of the baths, a central heating system with floor and wall heating was developed and widely used. All rooms were heated in this way: relaxation rooms, massage rooms, washrooms, steam rooms, rooms with a swimming pool.
Water was supplied through special water pipelines, and the sewage system was arranged in such a way that all water was drained through gutters into the central system. Small baths were heated with ordinary wood, and large “bath complexes” even used oil for heating.
Steam room from the Middle Ages, who invented the stove
From about the 11th-12th centuries, the bathhouse in ancient Rus' was a wooden frame, often built in the form of a dugout. Even then they came up with a hole in the ceiling into which they placed a tub of water. The exhaust gases from the furnace were discharged through a chimney - a long pipe made of stone and clay, laid in the ground at a slope at ceiling level.
The poorest population built bathhouses from aspen slabs, often far from the hut. In those days, bathhouse buildings, like livestock, were subject to taxes and taxes, so they were hidden and removed from view as best they could. In addition, the bathhouse was considered the habitat of a brownie or evil spirits, so the building was never consecrated by the clergy. They tried not to anger the “owner” of the bathhouse and appeased them as best they could. This is where the tradition came from: moss, herbs and brooms were stored under the canopy of the building.
Bath huts were invented for the wealthy segments of the population; in fact, this is the prototype of the modern Russian bathhouse. The room, made of good quality logs, was divided into two halves by a huge stove made of crushed stone on a mixture of lime and clay. This is the so-called “Milanese” stove. She warmed the bathhouse with only one back wall. We lit the stove from the street, after 6-8 hours the fire was extinguished, and we could steam for several hours.
Unwashed Europe and clean Russia
Later sources indicate that bath culture also existed in Ancient Rome, whose rulers spread it to the conquered territories of Western Europe. However, after the fall of the Roman Empire, both the bathhouse and ablution as such were forgotten in Western Europe. There was a ban on bath culture, which was explained, among other things, by widespread deforestation and, as a consequence, a shortage of firewood. After all, in order to build a good bathhouse and heat it well, it is necessary to cut down a lot of trees. Medieval Catholic ethics also played a certain role, which taught that nudity of the body, even for washing, was sinful.
The decline in hygienic requirements led to the fact that Europe for many centuries was mired not only in its own sewage, but also in diseases. Monstrous epidemics of cholera and plague only for the period from 1347 to 1350. killed more than 25,000,000 Europeans!
Bath culture in Western European countries was completely forgotten, as evidenced by numerous written sources. Thus, according to Queen Isabella of Castile of Spain, she washed herself only twice in her life: when she was born and when she got married. An equally sad fate befell King Philip II of Spain, who died in terrible agony, consumed by scabies and gout. Scabies finally tormented and brought Pope Clement VII to the grave, while his predecessor Clement V died of dysentery, which he contracted because he never washed his hands. It is no coincidence, by the way, that dysentery began to be called “the disease of dirty hands” already in the 19th and 20th centuries .
Around the same period, Russian ambassadors regularly reported to Moscow that the king of France stank unbearably, and one of the French princesses was simply eaten by lice, which the Catholic Church called God's pearls, thereby justifying their senseless ban on baths and the culture of basic hygiene procedures.
No less curious and at the same time repulsive are the archaeological finds of medieval Europe, which today can be seen in museums around the world. Eloquently testifying to the widespread filth, stench and uncleanliness, exhibits are on display for visitors - scratchers, flea traps and saucers for crushing fleas, which were placed directly on the dining table.
Flea catcher - devices for catching and neutralizing fleas; in the old days an essential element of the wardrobe
Today it has already been proven that French perfumers invented perfumes not in order to smell better, but in order to simply hide the smell of a body unwashed for years under the fragrance of floral aromas.
Blokholovka
And all that remains is to sympathize with the daughter of Grand Duke Yaroslav the Wise , Anna , who, after marrying the French King Henry I , wrote to her father at home, saying:
Why did I anger you so much, and why do you hate me so much that you sent me to this dirty France, where I can’t even really wash myself?!
The quality of an old Russian bath
Around the 14th-15th century, Italian craftsmen who knew how to work with stove bricks appeared in Rus'. At that time in Italy, one of the talented craftsmen of Venice or Florence figured out how to properly burn bricks and build modern ovens. With the advent of the massive Russian stove, the bathhouse in Rus' began to acquire modern features.
In addition to the steam room itself, there was a stove in the room, tubs of water, and someone came up with the idea of building a heater separately. In old Russian baths, the heater was placed in the center on a special slab paved with flat stones. At that time, no one had yet figured out how to safely build a brick oven into a wooden partition, and there were no necessary materials.
The huge oven was filled with pebbled stones and thoroughly heated with firewood. Hot stones were placed on the stove and heated boiling water was poured over them. Only two hundred years later they figured out how to install a Russian stove so as not to accidentally burn the ceiling and the entire building. Evil tongues claim that the tradition of plunging into ice water began due to frequent burns and scalds with boiling water in the semi-darkness of the steam room. In fact, contrast bathing was invented long before the advent of the modern Russian bath, as a way to combat smoke inhalation.
Fashionable place
Until the beginning of the 19th century, "trade" soaps were places for washing and collecting gossip. But after the construction of large stone buildings in the center of large cities - with separate rooms, cozy buffets - the baths became the main place where representatives of noble families preferred to gather.
Aristocrats gathered in a narrow circle to solve important problems, read literature and simply relax. Following the Russians, foreigners also began to visit such steam rooms.
The most famous “secular” baths can rightfully be called the Sandunovsky baths, which at one time attracted the entire flower of the aristocracy. And today this object is an architectural monument.
Ancient India and Greece
After the Egyptians, the desire for cleanliness and relaxation captured India (this happened about two thousand years BC). Here the baths were used both as an excellent remedy and as a source of personal hygiene.
Ancient Greece also did not ignore the healing effects of steam. Baths were originally built here by the Spartans. They looked like round small buildings, in the middle of which there was an open hearth, where the stones were heated, and the high temperature inside was maintained.
Egyptian history
Already in a more civilized and familiar form, baths appeared in Ancient Egypt. There they became acquainted with their pleasant and beneficial effects six thousand years before you and me. The priests and the upper classes of society attached incredible importance to the purity of the body. They washed themselves four times a day, twice at night and twice during the day. Such a ritual was often carried out using baths, since in addition to cleanliness, the Egyptians revered massage and moderation in food, which together made it possible to preserve the youth of soul and body. And massage after a bath was considered one of the most healing methods of healing. Egyptian medicine of that time was recognized as one of the best, and doctors could not do without water procedures and tireless recommendations for steam and baths.
