History of Sanitation

50 HISTORY OF SANITATION persons contented themselves with cold baths only, instead of going through the severe course of perspiration in the warm apartments; and as the frigidarium could have had no effect alone in baths like these, the natatio must be referred to when it is said that at one period cold baths were in such request that scarcely any others were used. There is a platform or ambulatory around the bath, also of marble, and four inches of the same material dis- posed at regular intervals around the walls, with pedestals for statues probably placed in them. The ceiling is vaulted and the chamber lighted by a window in the center. The annexed woodcut represents a frigidarium with its cold bath at one extremity, supposed to have formed a part of the Formain Villa of Cicero, to whose age the style of construction, the use of the simple Doric order, undoubtedly belongs. The bath itself, into which water still continues to flow from a neighboring spring, is placed under the alcove, and the two doors on each side opened into small chambers. 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. It was also fur- nished with a waste pipe under the coping to prevent the water from run- ning over. No. ii is a small chamber on the side opposite to the frigidar- ium, which might have served for shaving or for keepingunguents or strigils; and from the centers of the side of the frigidarium, the Atlantes. From an old woodcut bather W h O