Meskó Csaba: Thermal Baths - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

ning errands for the master bath supervisor served just as long as any other apprentice. As a condition of being released from apprenticeship they were required to produce a masterpiece. This involved the preparation of some kind of medicine or a superior plaster. Besides the making of this masterwork, the apprentice had to pass an examination. Senior apothecaries and physicians, as well as respectable bath masters would question them to sound the depth of their knowledge. If the aspiring apprentice passed muster, he would be ceremonially initiated into the trade of bath mastership. Thereupon the novice journeyman treated his elders to a four-course master’s meal with ample drinks sewed, and then contributed his two florins’fee to the guild’s coffers. After this festive occasion he would take to the road and travel for four years to find out how his trade was practised in foreign parts. Sixteenth-century regulations made very specific provisions as to the tools with which a new bath master had to supply his shop. Among these were scissors, bloodletting devices, forceps, a chopping knife, toothdrawing irons, plasters, ointments, oils, powders, three pounds of wax, etc.

As evidenced by this list, the trade of bath masters included healing as well as bathing. In bathing houses hair was cut, veins were opened, wounds were healed, purgatives were administered, teeth were drawn, etc. Sixteenth-century regulations ruled that if a patient with such a severe wound happened to seek assistance that the bath master dared not proceed with the cure, he was obliged to call in another bath master. The bath master or journeyman who administered the wrong medicine was severely penalised.

As healing was part of their trade, ancient regulations treated bath masters under the same heading as that of barbers, surgeons and apothecaries who were also regarded as doctors at the time. [...]

Sewices offered in baths were fairly inexpensive in the 16th and 17th centuries. The 1605-35 Lőcse statutes set the price of a haircut at halfa garas and the use of a bathtub at 5-6 fillér in the town. In Sopron and at the Balf baths the cost of a bath was one garas, which was also the price to be paid for a bloodletting. The town of Kassa discharged its bath operator from his office because of his high prices and absenteeism due to his frequent infirmity.

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