184 
MOSCOW. 
CHAl’. 
VIII. 
Public 
Baths. 
number of men and women are often seen stark 
naked, lounging about before the public baths, 
and talking together, without the smallest sense 
of shame, or of the indecency of the exhibition. 
In many parts of Russia, as in Lapland, the 
males and females bathe promiscuously. It is 
well known that a clergyman's daughter, with 
unsuspecting simplicity, did the honours of the 
bath for Acerhi, at Kemi, in the north of the 
Gulph of Bothnia' . As soon as the inhabitants 
of these northern nations have endured the 
suffocating heat of their vapour baths , which is 
so great that Englishmen would not conceive it 
possible to exist an instant in such temperature, 
they stand naked, covered with profuse perspi- 
ration, cooling themselves in the open air ; in 
summer they plunge into cold water; during 
winter they roll about in snow ; without sus- 
taining any injury, or ever catching cold. When 
the Russians leave a bath of this kind, they 
moreover drink copious draughts ot mead, as 
cold as it can be procured. These practices, 
which would kill men of other nations, seemed 
to delight them, and to add strength to their 
constitutions. 
(1) See Acerbi’s Travels, vol. I. p.338. Land. 1802. where this 
scene is described. The author has often heard Signor Acerhi relate 
the same circumstance, during the time they were together in Sweden * 
