In Western Europe, the "Turkish bath" is a method of cleansing and relaxation which became popular during the Victorian era. The process involved in taking a Turkish bath is similar to that of a sauna, but is more closely related to ancient Greek Roman bathing practices.
The Turkish bath starts with a relaxation in a room (known as the warm room) that is heated by a continuous flow of hot, dry air, allowing the bather to perspire freely. Bathers may then move to an even hotter room (known as the hot room) before they wash in cold water. After performing a full body wash and receiving a massage, bathers finally retire to the cooling-room for a period of relaxation.
The Victorian Turkish bath was described by Dr Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Thudichum in a lecture to the Royal Society of Medicine given in 1861, one year after the first Victorian Turkish bath was opened in London: 'The discovery that was lost and has been found again, is this, in the fewest possible words: The application of hot air to the human body. It is not wet air, nor moist air, nor vapory air; it is not in any shape or form whatever. It is an immersion of the whole body in hot common air.' The hammam combines the functionality and the structural elements of its predecessors in Anatolia, the Roman thermae (large imperial bath complexes) and baths, with the Central Asian Turkic tradition of steam bathing, ritual cleansing and respect of water. It is also known that Arabs built versions of the Greek-Roman baths that they encountered following their conquest of Alexandria in 641. During those centuries of war, peace, alliance, trade, and competition, the two cultures – Hellenized Roman and Anatolian Turkish – had tremendous influence on each other. Moving beyond the re-use of the Greek baths in their new lands, new bath were constructed as annex buildings of mosques, the complexes of which were community center as well as houses of worship.
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