Baths (познавательный текст на английском языке)

Этот познавательный текст на английском языке из цикла «История Великобритании» расскажет вам о том, как зародился обычай принимать ванну и вообще содержать свое тело в чистоте. Сейчас трудно представить, но во времена наших предков даже короли и королевы мылись довольно редко. Обычай принимать ванну был привнесен в Англию римлянами. Римские бани были произведением искусства. Это были сооружения с стеклянным потолком и зеркалами на стенах. Ниша для воды была сделана из мрамора, а на полу была мозаика. Римляне построили бани во всех городах, а один город так и назвали — Bath. На рисунке схема римской бани.

Схема римской бани (из текста на английском языке "Baths")

A Roman Bath in Chester


Baths (text in English, intermediate)

 (познавательный текст на английском языке)

Words for the text:
bagnio [‘bænjəu] – баня
stew [stjuː] – паровая баня
hangouts – места сборищ
filth – грязь
sewer [‘s(j)uə] — сточная труба
steambath – паровая баня

The fall of the Roman Empire also meant the fall of the daily bath. The process of taking a bath stopped being common and comfortable again until modern times. While the people of the Middle Ages were not as clean as the Romans, it is not true that they went for years without a bath. King John of England, who was something of a dandy, took a bath every three weeks whether he needed to or not. Monks were required to bathe as often as four times a year, shave and wash their hair every three weeks, and scrub their feet on Saturdays. Ordinary folk generally took some sort of bath every few months, even if it was only pouring a bucket of cold water over themselves.

During the twelfth century Crusaders to Holy Land discovered the wonders of the Turkish bath, a descendent of the Roman bath, and brought it back with them to Europe. Stews and bagnios, as the Turkish baths were called, could soon be found in London, Paris, and all major cities. But somehow the idea never really caught on. People were suspicious of so much comfort, cleanliness, and hot water. Because no respectable person would go there, the baths soon became hangouts for disreputable characters and were finally closed in the thirteenth century as breeding spots for the plague. Even today the word bagnio implies a filthy, evil den though originally it was simply the Old French word for «bath».

Слова stew and bagnio имеют второе значение «публичный дом, бордель»

The Age of Dirt really began when the Middle Age (Средние века) merged into the Renaissance (Эпоха Ренессанса) around the fourteenth century. Civilization flourished, but so did the filth of the rapidly growing cities. There were few sewers, no public bathing facilities, and no running water. Thousands of Europeans died every year from the plague and other diseases.

At the same time, the Finns and Russians sat in their steambaths getting perfectly clean. These steambaths were wooden huts in which a pile of rock was heated by burning coals. Water was poured over the hot stones until the clouds of steam billowed up around the bathers. The temperature
inside the hut could rise as high as 150 degrees Fahrenheit. People sat and sweated for as long as they could stand it, then ran outside and jumped into the nearest lake or stream or rolled around in the snow. The hardiest bathers would beat themselves with bunches or birch twigs to stimulate their blood circulation.

Много интересных познавательных текстов на английском языке для разных уровней в рубрике «Тексты на английском языке»

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