Through the ages tales have been told of tubs and bathing. Here are some you may recall.

Long ago Agamemnon, a solder returning home from the siege of Troy, while soaking his battle worn body in a hot bath, had a wife, who perhaps thinking he had been gone too long, creep up and whack him twice with an axe.

On a kinder note, Homers’ Odyssey tells how travellers were always greeted with a warm bath in a metal tub, the water heated over a wood fire and carried to the bath.

Who could forget Cleopatra soaking in her milk bath, or the ancient Greek Archimedes, discovering the physics of displacement while soaking in a tub, upon which he yelled “EUREKA” jumped from the tub and ran about telling everyone of his discovery.

He later proved it to the king, using balls of actual gold and some of lighter weight

The massive columned, domed public baths of Rome and Greece gave way eventually to smaller, personal, bathtubs.

The first of these was found in Crete, built for King Minos in 1700BC and styled almost identically as today’s.                                                                                                        
In more current times.1833, water pipes were installed in the White House. but not until 1851 was a bathtub put in for President Millard Fillmore.

Before that, many were against bathing as Adam Thompson discovered when in 1842 he defied the then current belief  and installed a bathtub in his own home.

It was considered a menace to public health to bathe in winter, or too often.

Tubs were even banned in Boston for a few years in 1845.

President Taft, at 335 pounds, actually got stuck in the White House bathtub. The story leaked. He took his own super sized tub with him while on a tour from Key West to Colon, aboard the ship “Arkansas”.

In our own little world, the Saturday bath has give way to the lovely practice of daily bathing, and the porcelain tub, once a mark of the wealthy, has been fitted with an engine and become a model for a famous high-seas race.

Written by Barbara Smith.

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