


The other undid the cord on his pajama trousers so that they dropped to the floor. Ignoring him, the attendants broke off from their mumbled conversation. If you want me to climb into a bath and lie there, I'll do it. "I don't need the hammock," he told them. Close to, they were revealed as having a kind of hammock slung in the water. From a distance they looked like ordinary baths. There were eight baths in a row, only three feet apart. He was the first in that day, so the echoing room, where even ordinary speech was magnified to a shout, was quiet except for the sound of filling baths. They were talking to one another as they came for him and continued to talk to one another as they fastened the muff on his wrists and led him along the corridor to the treatment room. But this pair was of the most unsettling kind, the sort that ignored him. Some were frightened and, like first-timers at a steer branding, hid their fear in swearing and brutality. The attendants came for him as a pair, as always. Forbes Winslow, Turkish Bath in Mental Disorders (1896) He is not permitted the use of his limbs when in the water, but is detained there, or taken out and plunged again in the bath, until the required effect of tranquility is produced. A violent and excited patient is forcibly taken by his legs and plunged head foremost into an ordinary swimming bath.
