Note 11 — THE TURKISH BATH.1

“Third, the shampooers spend eight hours daily in the steam. They undergo great labour there, shampooing perhaps, a dozen persons, and are remarkably healthy.11 They enter the bath at eight years of age. The duties of the younger portion are light, and chiefly outside in the hall, to which the bathers return after their bath. Still there they are from that tender age exposed to the steam and heat, so as to have their strength broken if the bath were debilitating. The best shampooer under whose hands I have ever been, was a man whose age was given me as ninety, and who, from eight years of age, had been daily eight hours in the bath. I might adduce, in like manner, the sugar-bakers in London, who, in a temperature not less than that of the bath, undergo great fatigue, and are also remarkably healthy.”