Our Notes & References

A groundbreaking approach to a Russian cultural institution: the first significant medical – and positive – analysis of the Russian bania.

Very rare: WorldCat locates the New York Public Library copy only, to which we could add a copy in both Moscow (RGB) and St. Petersburg (RNB). At auction, we could trace only two copies sold a few years ago in Russia; nothing in the West.

This is the second edition in Russian, after the first from 1779, of similar rarity (3 copies in WorldCat -Library of Congress, Indiana, National Library of Medicine- and also a copy in both the RGB and RNB).

Apparently no edition of this work in any language in the Wellcome Collection.

Sanches (1699-1783) was a rather fascinating and unusual figure of 18^th-c. Europe. Originally from Portugal, he studied in Spain and in the Netherlands, travelled to England, became a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris – and spent most of his career as a court physician attached to the Russian tsarinas Anna, Elizabeth and Catherine. Interestingly, he suddenly fell into disgrace under Elisabeth because of his Jewish origins – before being reinstated by Catherine, whom Sanches had cured from a dangerous illness when she was 15 and fiancée to the future tsar Peter III.

Sanches wrote his treaty in the late 1760s, and communicated a manuscript in French to the influential Betskoi, close to Catherine the Great, in 1771. Some years later, in 1779, he published it in Russian, but also read a reworked version of it, in French, at the French Medical Society in Paris, where it was positively received. Published only in 1782, this French version differs a bit from the Russian “translation”. In particular, Sanches highlights several times in Russian that he addresses primarily those who have no access to medical care or scientific knowledge. He also comments in more details the Russian peasant life and culture and includes chapters on injuries and diseases caused by the Russian climate, giving practical advice on ways to cure them using local food and drinks.

Sanches’ work is ground-breaking thanks to its medical, practical and informed approach, and its positive comments on the Russian baths. It compares Roman, Turkish, German and Russian traditions, and explains in detail the chemical aspects and salubrious effects of hot water, steam, and the use of soap, setting out the rules for the right use of banias.

Doing so, Sanches was arguing against a more traditional European approach of scepticism and criticism, especially represented at the time by Chappe d’Auteroche. “In contrast, Sanches was a medical doctor attuned to new opinions about bathing emerging at the time in Western Europe. Beginning in the 1760s Sanches avoided the scintillating details of mixed-sex bathing in favor of a learned, medical argument for the health benefits of the banya. […] the publication of his book Treatise on the Russian Steam Baths introduced a new level of serious study of the Russian tradition and placed it at the center of ongoing debates in the West about the benefits of bathing more generally. Catherine cited Sanches in an attempt to further systematize the use of the banya in Russia. She saw the banya, at least in principle, less as a means to increase state revenues than as an institution that could keep the population, and in turn the state, healthy. To Chappe the banya and Russia were barbarous and crude; to Sanches they were progressive and vital. […]

“In the book’s introduction, Sanches expressed the hope that he could convince his readers of the “benefits of the banya.” Aware of the broader debates about Russia’s standing as an enlightened nation he saw his book as an oppor­tunity to defend the reputation of the empire he had long served. In private letters Sanches had brought the medical value of the banya to Catherine’s attention. Now, with the publication of his book, he hoped to bring the word to his fellow medical experts throughout Europe. For the first time, an esteemed medical doctor made a sustained argument for the health benefits of the Russian banya” (Pollock, pp. 32, 33–4, 43)

Well received by French and Russian audiences in the 1780s, the work was also translated in German and kept being influential in the following decades, being mentioned even in 1839 in Frenk’s medical work Pathologie interne.

Various sources (especially digital) mention a 1779 latin version, De Cura Variolarum Vaporarii Ope apud Russos ; but we could not find any trace of a printed edition under this title.

Provenance

Vasilii Klochkov (bibliophile bookseller, 1861–1915; label to rear pastedown); Private British collection of Russian descent.

Bibliography

Bitovt 1938 (this edition, but under the 1779 date); Smirdin 4899 (both editions); Sopikov 2110; Svodnyi katalog 6314.

Mémoire sur les Bains de vapeurs de Russie, considérés pour la conservation de la santé & pour la guérison de plusieurs maladies, “lu le 5 octobre 1779” in Histoire de la Société royale de médecine année MDCCLXXIX avec les Mémoires de médecine et de physique médicale. Volume 3. Paris, 1782, pp. 233-280.

“Extrait du Mémoire: sur les Bains de vapeurs de Russie, considérés pour la conservation de la santé & pour la guérison de plusieurs maladies” in Memoire: Observations sur la physique, sur l’histoire naturelle et sur les arts. Vol. XXV. Paris, 1784, pp. 141-153.

Contemporary review: Affiches, annonces, et avis divers: 1783. France, n.p., 1783, pp. 45-46 (“excellent Memoire“).

For an informed and extensive Eloge de M. Sanchez after his death: Histoire de la Société Royale de Médecine; avec les Mémoires de médecine & de physique médicale. France, Philippe-Denys Pierres, 1785, pp. 209-237.

Pollock E., Without the Banya we would perish: a History of the Russian Bathhouse. OUP, 2019.

Willemse, David. António Nunes Ribeiro Sanches, élève de Boerhaave – et son importance pour la Russie. Belgium, E.J.Brill, 1966.