There is an elevated marble platform in the middle, where the bathers lie at full length, for the purpose of having their sinews relaxed, and joints examined. Both the apartment, and this process in particular, have been most ridiculously described, and, either through malice or ignorance, most egregiously exaggerated by travellers; for example, the public are informed that, "A dense vapor sometimes so fills the saloon, that he (the bather), sees nothing distinctly, but figures flit before him like visions in a mist. Having walked, or sat in this heated mist, till a profuse perspiration bursts out, the tellak again approaches, and commences his operations. He lays the bather on his back or face, and pins him to the ground by kneeling heavily on him, and having thus secured him, he handles him in the rudest and most painful manner. He twists and turns the limbs, so as to seem to dislocate every joint. The sufferer feels as if the very spine was separated, and the vertebræ of the back torn asunder. It is in vain he complains of this treatment, screams out in anguish and apprehension, and struggles to extricate himself. The incubus sits grinning upon him, and torturing him, till he becomes passive from very exhaustion."
In the first place, there is no dense vapor in a Turkish bath, but the heat is produced by the flues in the walls; true, there is sometimes the appearance of mist, which is only created momentarily by the quantity of hot water poured over the bathers, and is soon dispersed by ventilation, for such an atmosphere is never tolerated by the natives.
Now, as to the bather being pinned to the ground in the rudest and most painful manner, etc., there is more of a spirit of ridicule than simple truth in this description; it being only resorted to in cases of rheumatism, and the like maladies, when the patient is extended on the marble platform, and all his joints examined and rubbed by the tellak, or assistant, who, owing to the relaxed condition of the nervous system, easily discovers the seat of any local pain, and proceeds to dispel it by friction.
Many having experienced decided relief from this mode of treatment, it is very frequently resorted to in Turkey. No such treatment, therefore, ever occurs on ordinary occasions, unless the farce is got up by special request, and for the benefit of strangers or travellers, who, not content with the usual modus operandi, insist upon the realization of their own extravagant ideas.