Why did public baths go out of fashion?
They went out of fashion because the infrastructure to run them — the mechanisms that brought them water, that heated their water, that separated out the different heats of the various pools — required an enormously sophisticated and complicated infrastructure, which the Roman Empire had. But when the empire started to fall apart, people couldn’t maintain that, and the invading barbarians disabled the aqueducts. There was never an empire large enough to support that again. How have attitudes about cold versus hot water for bathing changed over the centuries? They haven’t changed much. One of the most wonderful, long-lasting, historical continuities is the people who support cold-water bathing, who think it’s virile and virtuous, versus the people who want to bathe in warm or hot water. They don’t attach any moral significance to their choice of warm or hot water. They just think it’s way more comfortable, and easier, to clean yourself in warm or hot water. There’s a German expression
