LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

-- My hopes that LTC3 would address how decidedly UN-hygenic Roman baths could be in practice were dashed! Oh, the humanity!

-- For a more cynical take on Bathing and Bath-Houses, p. 37, see:

Scobie, Alex. Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality in the Roman World. KLIO 68

BTW first thread about LTC3 :)~

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

I'm not terribly surprised - I've caught plantars warts from the public pools and surrounding floors often enough that I know even water so chlorinated it makes my eyes water and errodes my bathing suit can't make public baths hygenic... and with those modern public baths expect you to be reasonably clean before getting into the pool in the first place!

At least the Romans had pumice stones for scraping the little blights off.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

The Romans still managed to set a standard for hygene that wouldn't be equalled for ~1500 years.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

-- It could be argued that was in spite of their particular bathing practices (e.g. the sick and infirm used the baths first).

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

As opposed to: "I take a bath once per year, whether I need it or not." -- Elizabeth I.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

I may need to look into this a little more but from what I understand it's somewhat over stated how dirty people of the middle ages were, especailly given the tendancy of people in the victorian period to portray the periods that came before as savage and uncivilised.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

This is likely. Nevertheless, it appears the "bath once a year" thing is largely a myth, or at least something restricted to certain places and/or times. E.g. where the climate was cold, or there were strong taboos against nudity...

For example, it sounds strange that people living in hot, wet climates would not bath themselves in rivers, lakes and the like.
Why wouldn't they? If it's hot, bathing or at least "splashing" oneself with fresh, unheated water is not displeasing at all. If only to remove some of the dirt and sweat.

The same goes for coastal and river populations - if you are a fisherman or a rice farmer (or even just if you do the laundry at the river^^) you are pretty much forced to bathe and to let your clothes dry... (even if you are not a good swimmer).
Even many dogs and other non-acquatic animals like to swim and "bathe" as soon as they have a chance to do so. Little children loves to bathe. Why low-tech humans should be so dirt-loving?

The following (unsourced) websites argue that people in the Middle Ages bathed more than we think, and more than "their descendants up to the 19th century":

http://www.triviumpublishing.com/art...iddleages.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_pe...in_middle_ages
http://www.medieval-life.net/bathing.htm

The last one argues that
"as the forests were depleted, firewood became expensive and the rising costs of heating the water forced most of the bathhouses to close. (...) By the mid-1300s, only the very wealthy could afford firewood for hot water in the winter. The rest of the population was forced to be dirty most of the time."
(Note that the mid-1300s is the very end of the Middle Ages; the last century of a millennium-long era. And that many, if not most, countries do not have any appreciable "winter", think about the southern mediterranean, West Asia, North Africa, India, Southeast Asia...)

Wikipedia has a section on the Western history of Bathing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathing#Western_history
It lists a few "practical" and ethical issues which made bathing less and less common just after the Middle Ages.

The wikianswers site, above, says that
"The Danes are described as generally bathing once a week; the Anglo-Saxons less often."

If I were a Dane in the middle age, in freezing climate with no hot water easily available, I really doubt I would bathe more than once a week. Actually I'd say that someone who bathed once a week in that conditions, was quite brave and/or really into personal hygiene.

So perhaps the oppositon to bathing was typical of Anglo-saxons in certain times, and it has been popularized as "universal of everybody in the middle ages" because of the worldwide influence of Anglo-saxon culture...
Just as the modern image of fantasy is largely shaped on British middle-age, and most westerners if you say "middle age" will think about Robin Hood and green forests rather than, say, Italian Comuni or Moorish Spain...
But that's just a conjecture on my part, if somebody knows more about history of bathing across different countries and ages (and about the hygiene practices of modern low-tech societies populations), I am ready to be corrected.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

There's also a difference between cleaning yourself and bathing. It's entirely possible to clean yourself without immersing yourself in water, or even significantly taking your clothes off (should nudity be an issue due to climate or religious/cultural reasons).

Sponge baths don't require nearly as much water to be heated, nor carted around. I'm a huge fan of long hot baths for various reasons, but even while camping I've managed to wash up myself "acceptably" with just a billy can of water - that's about a litre (or a quart). I still wanted a bath when I got home, but it's hard to shake me of that habit.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

Roman Baths or Public Baths should be more tackled in City Building IMO. It modifies morale and sanitation (which affects city size, health and resistance to disease).

If there were to be a more effective City and Community Building (designed to work with Mass Combat) I'm up for paying for that as well. Particularly one that calculates low tech GDP based a basic economic units like Families instead of Raw Population figures. Particularly something that allows for setting up Villages. Basically something more useful in tracking Cities, Holdings, Retainers and Land Assets which is pretty much the Conquerers (and Would-be Conqueror's) currency more than just Currency.

I recommend Kenneth Harl's work on Historical Economics should be a great resource for these. (His name as a search term brings up a lot of Byzantine and Roman economics).

As for LTC3, I wish it detailed horses a bit more. Although I'm open to spending $3-$5 on a Horses Low tech companion. Tables and TLs for Horses, riding perks or techniques, sample breeds and incorporating present day's rich sources and sciences on horses.

I'm aware I'm a very niche and particular concerns, but over all the I find LTC3 much more useful than LTC1, and more useful than LTC2 (w/c IMO should have more mass combat compatible stats and recommendations).

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

I agree.

Bathouses --and other practices associated with them-- were certainly not unknown during the middle ages:

http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/p...thkeepers.html

Additionally, there are quite a few accounts of people drowning while bathing in rivers or streams, or doing the laundry.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

A sentiment shared by one of the last of the old California prospectors 'Seldom Seen Slim'. ;)

I saw him once as a kid. My parents actually went out to Ballarat and had a meal with the man.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

As we've been saying from the beginning, horses deserve their own book. It's important to remember that horses aren't low-tech, as the GURPS tech series goes. They were vital for transport and agriculture well into TL6, far beyond the scope of the LT series. They need at least a 16-page volume, and it wouldn't surprise me if they could fill a very useful 32-page book.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

My grandparents were farming with horses well into TL7, though they had steam engines and later Caterpillar tractors as well.

My uncle, a police officer, kept horses to do his patrols in winter even mid TL7. Used to tell the eskimo joke: why do you hunt on dog sled? Can't eat a snowmobile!

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

So less often that the Anglo-Saxons frequently complained about the Danes (I presume this was in, or close to, the Danelaw), that their hygieinic practices were unfair and made it too easy for them to seduce Anglo-Saxon chicks.


As for bathing Danes in Denmark (which is not directly situated in the Gulf Stream), I imagine they had communal baths, each large farm stead having some kind of bathing annex (a separate building would mean more heat loss), with tubs, or else a steam house of some kind. Bathing indoors depends on available firewood (wood also being needed to build ships, to maintain the all-important tradition of violent tourism), rather than on how cold it is outside.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

Horses are extremely important for low-tech and pulp era settings, including from a player character perspective, so they certainly do deserve their own PDF.

I'm also imagining that it will be quite useful for non-GURPS GMs, similar to LTC1 and 3 (and parts of the main book). And it could make sense to name it LTC 4.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

There was a documentary about Pompeii on the BBC a few weeks back in which the presenter got to say something along the lines of "This is one of those famous Roman bath-houses. Very nice, isn't it? Now notice one odd absence. No drain in the bath."

Apparently, at least one Roman medical writer had the smarts to notice that people who went to the baths with an open wound tended to end up with gangrene.

And it's not quite fair to say that Roman bathing practices were lost until the modern era. After all, the idea was preserved in Constantinople. Which ended up as the capital of Ottoman Turkey. And today, we have Turkish baths. Though they do tend to have drains in the baths.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

That seems... I mean, it doesn't matter if you don't have a clue about disease theory, but wouldn't the water start to be mostly stewed sweat and assorted gunge, rather than water, after a while? Humans don't LIKE that smell, as a group. So how would they change the water when it started smelling like old socks?

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

While Rome may have fallen in 476, the Roman Empire did not fall until 1453 and Byzantium was its capital from about 330.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

No, Byzantium was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, although the point of view from Byzantium may have been that since the Western Roman Empire went to pieces that made the Eastern Roman Empire "the" Roman Empire, it's pretty important to track which Roman Empire you're talking about to avoid confusion. See also Holy Roman Empire and etc.

It's a popular name.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

If I remember correctly, one of the tenets of Turkish bathing culture is: "Only moving water cleans."
So it seems that they've avoided this pitfall of their predecessors.

Baths & draining
 

Remember old Rome was a slave culture.

I'd guess that when the water temperature reached that point, for a small bath-basin some burly slave would show up with a bucket and bail the sludge into the city cloaca.

For larger baths: From antiquarian William Smith: "In the cold bath of Pompeii the water ran into the basin through a spout of bronze, and was carried off again through a conduit on the opposite side." http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...*/Balneae.html. And from , describing various baths: "The fourth, E, was provided with a hot-water bath at its west end. The contiguous walls which p98formed three sides of this alveus were lined with vertical flue-tile communicating with the hypocaust below, the opposite wall of the chamber being also similarly lined. The bottom was of a single flag which rested upon the hypocaust pillars, and its sides were of red stucco, with a drain at the south end." [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...5*.html#baths]

So while some units may not have had drains others did.

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

-- Fellow bathers could have all sorts of diseases and problems, and if the water was not flushed out you probably were sitting in water that had already been used by those with dysentery, worms, diarrhoea, gonorrhoea, etc. Celsus noted that you shouldn't visit the baths with infected wounds, but he's the one that also prescribed the baths for all sorts of ills.

Re: Baths & draining
 

Somehow I doubt any business would wait until the water was "sludge", even. Although that's a good point - pure grunt labor, like a medieval bath runs on. Which in turn suggests that just because it doesn't have a drain doesn't mean the water wasn't changed regularly, and some peons didn't get the job of emptying the bath and scrubbing it down to clean up algae, soap skum (for the areas that had soap) and the inevitable oil residue from the whole oil-scraping routine.

I'm just having problems visualizing this as significantly worse than, say, lake water (which can be pretty damn bad for you depending on who else is swimming in the lake) but since lake water is basically the water standard for the time, I'm thinking the horror is a little overstated.

The unspoken implication is that it's more like a neglected swimming pool, stale standing water with algae and human body fluid, and I don't think there's an era where someone wealthy enough to build a roman-style heated bath complex would tolerate that, let alone attract customers with it.

What with roman engineering being what it was, I'm not surprised to read this. I mean, they figured out how to pipe IN water...

Re: LTC3 Hygenic Roman Baths
 

It's a Moslem thing, rather than specifically Turkish.