For bathing, nudity was also the norm, whether the baths were taken for reasons of hygiene or for the therapeutic effect. The figures represented (somewhat schematically) taking the water at Puzzoli are entirely naked. Medicinal baths could also be prepared at home by adding infusions of plants and other substances prepared by an apothecary to the hot water. Illustrations sometimes show baths with what amounts to a canvas tent on top, open to allow access to the bather. The aim of the canvas structure seems less to conceal nudity than to protect the bather from cold and to concentrate the medicinal vapors. Medical theory had not yet come to consider water as bad for the health, and indeed prescribed its use for new born babies, mothers in labor and for a wide range of illnesses. Bathing was nevertheless seldom undertaken at home. Even the wealthiest urban homes seldom had private bathrooms. Household inventories reveal how rare bathtubs were in the fifteenth, except in the homes of clerics, who would possess a bath because of the ill-repute surrounding public bath houses, rather than for reasons of modesty.
Bathing establishments were common in towns, and the authorities would try to ensure that men and women did not use them together. Nakedness was customary for bathers, and attendants wore very light shifts. Well cooked meals were plentiful with wine were often served to people in the bath tub itself. The transformation of public bath houses into dens of vice and prostitution, progressively closed or abandoned by a populace without the wherewithal to practice hydrotherapy at home, probably helped to break the custom of social nudity whose roots were to be found deep in Antiquity.
Outside the towns were some seigneurial families had systems for baths or bathing in their castles. Although denied this luxury, their servants and local peasentry, rich or poor, did not have to do without the pleasure of water completely. Solitary or all male baths are frequently represented. The documents with which they are an everyday occurrence, taken from reality: for example a falconer swims across a small lake with all his clothes on (appart from his cap) piled in a heap on the bank: harvesters, also stark naked, swim in a river or dry themselves in the sun. Women on the other hand hardly ever appear except in set pieces-illustrations to the bible, for example, such as Bathsheba’s bath, or mythological scense such as bathing in the fountain of Youth-which suggest that female nudity was much less frequent or socially acceptable phenomenon than its male counterpart.
Bathing establishments were common in towns, and the authorities would try to ensure that men and women did not use them together. Nakedness was customary for bathers, and attendants wore very light shifts. Well cooked meals were plentiful with wine were often served to people in the bath tub itself. The transformation of public bath houses into dens of vice and prostitution, progressively closed or abandoned by a populace without the wherewithal to practice hydrotherapy at home, probably helped to break the custom of social nudity whose roots were to be found deep in Antiquity.
Outside the towns were some seigneurial families had systems for baths or bathing in their castles. Although denied this luxury, their servants and local peasentry, rich or poor, did not have to do without the pleasure of water completely. Solitary or all male baths are frequently represented. The documents with which they are an everyday occurrence, taken from reality: for example a falconer swims across a small lake with all his clothes on (appart from his cap) piled in a heap on the bank: harvesters, also stark naked, swim in a river or dry themselves in the sun. Women on the other hand hardly ever appear except in set pieces-illustrations to the bible, for example, such as Bathsheba’s bath, or mythological scense such as bathing in the fountain of Youth-which suggest that female nudity was much less frequent or socially acceptable phenomenon than its male counterpart.