Baths

B'ATH, noun

1. A place for bathing; a convenient vat or receptacle of water for persons to plunge or wash their bodies in. Baths are warm or tepid, hot or cold, more generally called warm and cold. They are also natural or artificial. Natural baths are those which consist of spring water, either hot or cold, which is often impregnated with iron, and called chalybeate, or with sulphur, carbonic acid, and other mineral qualities. These waters are often very efficacious in scorbutic, bilious, dyspeptic and other complaints.

2. A place in which heat is applied to a body immersed in some substance. Thus,

A dry bath is made of hot sand, ashes, salt, or other matter, for the purpose of applying heat to a body immersed in them.

A vapor bath is formed by filling an apartment with hot steam or vapor, in which the body sweats copiously, as in Russia; or the term is used for the application of hot steam to a diseased part of the body.

A metalline bath is water impregnated with iron or other metallic substance, and applied to a diseased part.

In chimistry, a wet bath is formed by hot water in which is placed a vessel containing the matter which requires a softer heat than the naked fire.

In medicine, the animal bath is made by wrapping the part affected in a warm skin just taken from an animal.

3. A house for bathing. In some eastern countries, baths are very magnificent edifices.

4. A Hebrew measure containing the tenth of a homer, or seven gallons and four pints, as a measure for liquids; and three pecks and three pints, as a dry measure.