[Crisis and decline of bath houses]

For centuries bath-houses and barber-surgeons formed such an integral part of public life that one is mystified by their vanishing from modern view with hardly any trace left. Previous authors have offered a variety of reasons for this disappearance: the bath-houses' notorious reputation, developing fuel-shortage, the "new" fashion of taking the waters and the outbreak of previously unknown contagious diseases are among those mentioned most frequently. While these factors may be valid reasons for a crisis afflicting the "hot-houses" they would hardly explain why fate overtook the barber-surgeons' entire trade. Judging from the sources available one cannot help but feel that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were largely responsible for such a dramatic change of society. Sceptical philosophy discarded the wisdom of the ancient medical authorities replacing traditional steam-bathing with "modern" cold-bathing. Society itself was subject to equally revolutionary changes: the local masters of the trade had to make room for surgeons educated at medical schools setting the stage for a new reality which has become "normal" to us.