Bath is the immersion of the body in water, or an apparatus for this purpose. The use of the bath as an institution apart from occasional immersion in rivers or the sea, is, as might be anticipated, an exceedingly old custom. Homer mentions the bath as one of the first refreshments offered to a guest; thus, when Ulysses enters the palace of Circe, a bath is prepared for him, and he is anointed after it with costly perfumes. No representation, however, of a bath as we understand it is given upon the Greek vases, bathers being represented either simply washing at an elevated basin, or having water poured over them from above. In later times, rooms, both public and private, were built expressly for bathing, the public baths of the Greeks being mostly connected with the gymnasia. Apparently, by an inversion of the later practice, it was customary in the Homeric epoch to take first a cold and then a hot bath; but the Lacedemonians substituted the hot-air sudorific bath, as less enervating than warm water, and in Athens at the time of Demosthenes and Socrates the warm bath was considered by the more rigorous as an effeminate custom.
The fullest details we have with respect to the bathing of the ancients apply to its luxurious development under the Romans. Their bathing establishments consisted of four main sections: the undressing room, with an adjoining chamber in which the bathers were anointed; a cold room with provision for a cold bath; a room heated moderately to serve as a preparation for the highest and lowest temperatures; and the sweating-room, at one extremity of which was a vapour-bath and at the other an ordinary hot bath. After going through the entire course both the Greeks and Romans made use of strigils or scrapers, either of horn or metal, to remove perspiration, oil, and impurities from the skin. Connected with the bath were walks, covered race-grounds, tennis-courts, and gardens, the whole, both in the external and internal decorations, being frequently on a palatial scale. The group of the Laocoon and the Parnese Hercules were both found in the ruins of Roman baths.
With respect to modern baths, that commonly in use in Russia consists of a single hall, built of wood, in the midst of which is a powerful metal oven, covered with heated stones, and surrounded with broad benches, on which the bathers take their places. Cold water is then poured upon the heated stones, and a thick, hot steam rises, which causes the sweat to issue from the whole body. The bather is then gently whipped with wet birch rods, rubbed with soap, and washed with lukewarm and cold water; of the latter, some pailfuls are poured over his head; or else he leaps, immediately after this sweating-bath, into a river or pond, or rolls in the snow.
The Turks, by their religion, are obliged to make repeated ablutions daily, and for this purpose there is, in every city, a public bath connected with a mosque. A favourite bath among them, however, is a modification of the hot-air sudorific-bath of the ancients introduced under the name of Turkish Bath into other than Islamic countries. A regular accompaniment of this bath, when properly given, is the operation known as 'kneading,' or massage, generally performed at the close of the sweating process, after the final rubbing of the bather with soap, and consisting in a systematic pressing and squeezing of the whole body, stretching the limbs, and manipulating all the joints as well as the fleshy and muscular parts.
Public baths were common in Europe during the late 19th century, but the first English public baths and wash-houses of the kind common in all cities during the late 19th century were established in Liverpool and near the London docks in 1844. In 1846 an act was passed for their encouragement, and a Baths and Wash-houses Act of 1878 authorized the establishment of cheap swimming-baths.
The principal natural warm baths in England are at Bath in Somersetshire (the hottest), and Brixton and Matlock in Derbyshire. The temperature of the Bath springs ranges from 109 to 117 degrees, while that of the Buxton and Matlockwaters scarcely exceeds 82 degrees. The baths of Harrogate, which are strongly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, are also of great repute for the cure of obstinate cutaneous diseases, indurations of the glands, etc. The most celebrated natural hot baths in Europe are those of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the various Baden in Germany; Toeplitz, in Bohemia; Bagnieres, Bareges, and Dax, in the south of France; and Spa, in Belgium. Besides the various kinds of water-bath with or without medication or natural mineral ingredients, there are also milk, oil, wine, earth, sand, mud, and electric baths, smoke-baths and gas-baths; but these are as a rule only indulged after specific prescription.
The practice of bathing as a method of cure in cases of disease falls under the head of hydrotherapathy; in the 19th century it was advised that even when bathing was employed simply for pleasure or purification due regard should be paid to the physiological condition of the bather. During the Victorian era in Britain writers were concerned about the potential dangers of bathing, and one warned:
'in many cases cold bathing should be avoided altogether, especially by those who have any tendency to spitting of blood or consumption, by gouty people, or by those who have any latent visceral disease or apoplectic tendency. Wherever the bath is followed by shivering instead of by a healthy reactionary glow, it is undesirable; and a cold bath in the morning after any debauchery or excess in eating or drinking on the previous evening is exceedingly imprudent. Delicate persons and children ought not to bathe in the sea before ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, and in no case should bathing be indulged after a long fast. In cold streams and rivers additional precautions should be taken, the cold plunge, when heated or fatigued, being frequently attended with fatal results. Even warm baths are not wholly free from danger; apoplexy and death having been known to follow a hot bath when entered with a full stomach. As a rule the temperature should not exceed 105 degrees, and they should not be too long continued. Frequent indulgence in them has an enervating effect, though the majority of people need as yet no renewal of Hadrian's prohibitive legislation in this matter.'
The eminent author, George Black, in 1892, while generally encouraging bathing, and describing bathing as 'likely to be of excellent use and efficacy both in the prevention and cure of disease.' Also went on to warn:
'Baths should never be taken immediately after a meal, nor when the body is very much exhausted by fatigue or excitement of any kind, nor during nor just before menstruation; and they should be sparingly and guardedly used by pregnant women.' Research Bath
Cotton-spinning is a term employed to describe in the aggregate all the operations involved in transforming raw cotton into yarn. The word 'spinning' has also a more limited signification, being used to denote the concluding process of the series. The following affords a general notion of the nature and order of the successive operations carried on in the manufacture of cottonyarn:
(1) Mixing, the blending of different varieties of raw cotton, in order to secure economical production, uniform quality and colour, and an even thread in any desired degree.
(2) Cleaning, an operation partly effected in mixing, partly by scutching, the cotton being prepared in the form of a continuous lap or rolled sheet for the next process.
(3) Carding, an operation in which the material is treated in its individual fibres, which are taken from the lap, further cleansed, and laid in a position approximately parallel to each other, forming a thin film, which is afterwards condensed into a sliver - a round, untwisted strand of cotton.
(4) Drawing, the drawing out of several slivers to the dimensions of one, so as to render the new sliver more uniform in thickness, and to place the fibres more perfectly in parallel order.
(5) Stubbing, the further drawing or attenuation of the sliver, and slightly twisting it in order to preserve its cohesion and rounded form.
(6) Intermediate or second stubbing, a repetition of the former operation and further attenuation, not necessary in the production of coarse yarns.
(7) Having, a continuation of the preceding, its principal object being to still further attenuate the sliver, and give it a slight additional twist.
(8) Spinning, which completes the extension and twisting of the yarn. This is accomplished either with the throstle or the mule. By means of the former machine the yarn receives a hard twist, which renders it tough and strong. By means of the latter yarns of less strength are produced, such as warps of light fabrics and wefts of all kind.
Up to the middle of the 18th century the only method of spinning known was that by the hand-wheel, or the still more primitive distaff and spindle. In 1767 a poor weaver of the name of Hargreaves, residing at Stanhill, near Blackburn, in Lancashire, invented a machine for spinningcotton, which he named a spinning-jenny. It consisted at first of eight spindles, turned by a horizontal wheel, but was afterwards greatly extended and improved, so as to have the vertical substituted for the horizontal wheel, and give motion to from fifty to eighty spindles. In 1769 Arkwright, originally a barber's apprentice, took out a patent for spinning by rollers. From the circumstances of the mill erected by Arkwright at Cromford, in Derbyshire, being driven by water-power, his machine received the name of the water-frame, and the thread spun on it that of water-twist. The next important invention in cotton-spinning was that of the mule, introduced by Samuel Crompton, of Bolton, in 1775, and so called from its combining the principle of the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves with the roller-spinning of Arkwright.
Numerous improvements in cotton-spinning have been subsequently introduced up to the present day, but they are all, more or less, modifications of Arkwright's spinning-frame and Crompton's mule-jenny. Among the principal of these may be mentioned the throstle, an extension and simplification of the original spinning-frame, introduced about the year 1810. Research Cotton-Spinning
Most British boroughs came into being through the action of the King or some great noble or bishop in selecting a strong point, primarily as a centre of defence, in late Anglo-Saxon or early Norman times. In the more peaceful days, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, town burgesses began to increase their freedom to control markets and trade by purchasing charters, or documents setting out the town's right to the status of borough, free to conduct its own affairs in return for an annual payment to the King. The wording of the charter often included the right to hold a weekly market and an annual fair. The market was the most important weekly event in the life of a mediaeval town, and the essential nucleus of the town became the market square. This was the place where agricultural produce from the surrounding countryside could be sold, and where the town craftsmen could display their wares. Stalls and booths, at first temporary and later permanent, began to be erected in the centre of the market place, and outlying parts of the
market were set aside for the sale of livestock. Later, many towns acquired a market hall, or town hall, with a meeting hall for the transaction of business on the upper floor and open arches at ground level where goods might be displayed out of the rain. The market was concerned with supplying local needs; a similar form of business held in certain towns was the fair which had a wider significance because they attracted traders from other parts of England and even from the Continent. At fairs one might buy the specialised products of certain parts of England, such as Sussex iron, Worcestershiresalt, Derbyshire lead or Cornishtin, or spectacle lenses ground at Augsburg in Germany, beaten copperware from Dinant in modern Belgium or cutlery from Solingen in Germany. Research Market Towns
Topiary is the art of clipping, cutting and trimming trees and shrubs into ornamental designs and regular forms, human figures, animals, cups and saucers, peacocks, etc. Modern custom confines topiary work to solitary specimens, often grown in tubs, and specially trained; but at some country mansions, notably Levens Hall in Westmorland, and Elvaston in Derbyshire, whole topiary gardens of mature trees, in some instances over one hundred years old, are maintained. The trees which lend themselves most readily to clipping are box, yew, and holly. Topiary clipping needs an accurate eye and a steady hand, as a false move of the shears will often spoil the symmetry of a tree for a whole season. Research Topiary
David Hume was a British historian and philosopher. He was born in 1711 at Edinburgh and died in 1776. He was destined for the law, but was drawn away by his love of literature and philosophy; and retired to France, where during three years of quiet and studious life he composed his Treatise upon Human Nature. The work was published at London in 1738, but, in his own words, 'fell dead-born from the press.' His next work, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (published at Edinburgh, in 1742), met with a better reception.
In 1745 he became companion to the insane Marquis of Annandale; and he accompanied General Sinclair in 1746 and 1747 in his expedition against France and in a military embassy to Vienna and Turin. He now published a recasting of his Treatise upon Human .Nature, under the title of an Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding (1747). In 1752 he published his Political Discourses, which were well received, and his Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. The same year he obtained the appointment of librarian of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, and began to write his history of England, of which the first volume appeared in 1754. It was, like most of the succeeding volumes, severely attacked both for its religious and political tendencies; but, in spite of adverse criticism, his History of England, after its completion in 1761, was recognized as a standard work. Its merits are chiefly clearness and force of narrative and philosophical breadth of view in the judgment of men and events.
In 1763 he accepted an invitation from the Earl of Hertford, then proceeding as ambassador to Paris, to accompany him, and was enthusiastically received by Parisian circles in his character of philosopher and historian. After the departure of LordHertford in 1756, he remained as charge d'affaires, and returned to England in 1766, bringing with him Rousseau, for whom he procured a pension and a retreat in Derbyshire. But the morbid sensitivity of Rousseau brought about a disagreement which put an end to the friendship.
In 1767 he was appointed under-secretary of state, a post which be held until 1769, when he retired to Edinburgh. Here he lived until his death on August the 25th, 1776. As a philosopher, in which quality his reputation is perhaps greatest, David Hume's acute sceptical intellect did great service by directing research to the precise character of the fundamental conceptions on which our knowledge and our beliefs are based. His acute negative criticism of these conceptions (e.g. his reduction of the ideas of personal identity, conscience, causality, to mere effects of association) compelled philosophy either to come to a dead halt or to find, as Kant did, a new and profounder view of the nature of human reason. Research David Hume
Delia Derbyshire was a British composer and the inspiration behind modern electronic music. She died in 2001. As a studio manager at the BBC, working in the radiophonic workshop she arranged the theme tune for the 1960's television series 'Dr Who' from a few suggested notes passed to her on a scrap of paper by her boss. Delia Derbyshire composed music from adjusting sounds she found in everyday life, such as a metal lamp shade being struck by a stick, or a key run along a piano string, a sound which features in the Dr Whotheme tune, recording these sounds onto short pieces of tape, and splicing them, adjusting the speed at which they were played and playing them backwards to produce revolutionary new sounds, all without the benefit of computers or synthesisers. Research Delia Derbyshire
James Brindley was an English engineer and mechanic. He was born in 1716 at Thornsett, Derbyshire and died in 1772. He built the BridgewaterCanal in 1758 and the Grand Trunk Canal. *James Brown James Brown is an American singer, songwriter, arranger, and dancer. He was born in 1933. While at the Alto Reform School (having been convicted of breaking into cars), he formed a gospel quartet which was discovered by the musician Little Richard, and James Brown developed into 'The Godfather of Soul'. Research James Brindley
Abbreviations
Research Bath
