A hot shower capped off with a cold rinse is often called a Scottish Shower.
The expression appears to be closely related to Ian Fleming who used it in his novels, but it is not clear whether he actually coined the expression:
It’s been called the “Scottish Shower.” Ian Fleming’s title character, the memorable James Bond, often took this shower, which began with hot water and ended with brisk and invigorating icy, cold water, not in the movies, but in the novels themselves.
Perhaps mention of this unique shower had something to do with Fleming’s Scottish background … or, perhaps not.
From Off The Grid News
When and where did the expression originate? Has it really something to do with a traditional Scottish custom or is it just a literary invention?
Answer
Note: This answer presents research relevant to the poster’s question “When and where did the expression originate?” It does not address the questions “Why is a cold shower called a ‘Scottish Shower’?” and “Has it really something to do with a traditional Scottish custom or is it just a literary invention?”—for the simple reason that I couldn’t find any reliable information on those issues. For compelling evidence on those points, I commend JEL’s excellent answer to your attention.
Evidently, alternating hot and cold streams of water during a shower or spa treatment has been known for at least 140 years as a “Scotch [or Scottish] shower bath.” From “Dubois on Treatment of Neuralgia by Hydrotherapy and Electricity Combined,” first published in the London Medical Record (April 15, 1879):
In sciatica the following treatment has proved most successful in a case where the patient had been suffering for two years, without being able to obtain any relief. In the morning the hot-air bath was given, and followed on alternate days by a cold shower bath, a Scotch shower bath being given on the other days. At night the continuous current was applied, applying the positive pole to the lumbar region, and the negative, first to the nates, then to the popliteal region.
From Jean Dardel, “The Thermal Treatment of Aix-les-Bains,” in International Clinics: A Quarterly of Clinical Lectures (1907):
The massage being terminated, the patient places himself in a corner of the cabin, and there receives the douche in full, or in a shower, or in a sprinkle, which is the most important of all. The last part is extremely important, and the doctors know how to obtain different results, from the use of a broken jet or from a full jet, the jet falling on the patient like a spout, throwing out in full force the water upon him, or coming gently upon him like a shower of rain, either in cold or in warm showers or in Scotch shower-baths or douches.
The earliest reference to a “Scotch shower bath” that I could find in a search of the British Newspaper Archive appears as a passing reference in the [London] Morning Post (September 6, 1861). The OCR rendition of this instance is very poor (and I don’t have a BNA subscription that would permit me to check the actual photocopy of the article), but it probably reads approximately as follows:
At the casino we find a gymnasium directed by a clever professor: hot sea-water baths, and fresh-water baths, with ordinary or Scotch shower baths: a breathing-hall for the sea pulverised water, a good treatment for laryngial sickness; a pistol aiming and billiard hall, with all sorts of games : reading-rooms, where all newspapers are to be found ; drawing-rooms for the pianoforte, with a distinguished professor specially engaged for the establishment; …
The exact meaning of “Scotch shower bath” may have changed through the years, but this description, from Robert Maigne & Walter L. Nieves, Diagnosis and Treatment of Common Pain of Vertebral Origin: A Manual Medicine Approach (1996) [combined snippets] suggests that it is still in therapeutic use:
The “Scotch” shower is good in sciatica, and it is performed as follows: full jet at 39°C for 6–8 minutes, followed by a cold shower at 1.1°C in broken jet for 30 seconds. The feet are always kept warm.
An instance from 1938 indicates that “Scotch shower-bath” was understood in similar terms at that date. From an unidentified article in The Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology (1938) [combined snippets]:
Moreover, some of these patients cannot endure a cold shower-bath, and may suffer collapse. However, this defective vasomotor function may, in a certain degree, be improved by cautious administration of alternate, warm and cold shower-baths (Scotch shower-bath), or by the patient’s standing with his feet in warm water. Besides, it is one of the most important rules that a Ménière patient must never feel cold, whether during treatment or otherwise.
Victor Cherbuliez, Meta Holdenis: A Novel (1887) briefly describes a Scotch shower-bath from the patient’s perspective:
Did you ever take a Scotch shower-bath, madame? Do you know how the unfortunate bather, who has just been plunged into hot water, feels, as the first ice-cold drops of the shower-bath above run down his shoulders?
The term appears figuratively in a press release from the Soviet Embassy in London on August 10, 1943, reprinted in Soviet War News (1943):
“The battle of Orel has no parallel,” Radio Breslau on August 6. “There was no battle whatever at Orel,” quoth Berlin radio on the same day. “Orel is the greatest defeat the Russionas have suffered” (Radio Berlin, August 6). “We do not intend to try to sweeten the bitterness of the situation” (Radio Donau, August 6).The Fritzes are welcome to make head or tail of it if they can. German comment on Orel is like a Scotch shower, scalding hot and ice-cold alternately. They kept mum about Byelgorod.
Evidently, figurative use of “Scotch shower” to indicate “hot and cold” political treatment has made the expression idiomatic in Italy (as doccia scozzese) and France ((“le regime de la douche ecossaise”). The instance from France, reported in Time magazine (1949) is interesting because it views the treatment as being prompted by a shortage of hot water, rather than as being a designed therapeutic process:
Lange’s Norway, they said, had followed just that procedure. And when a little country like Norway takes its stand clearly, they added, it should certainly not get from the U.S. what a Quai d’Orsay official colloquially called the Scotch shower treatment (“le regime de la douche ecossaise”—intermittent hot and cold water, to save fuel.
An article in The Critic (1972) [combined snippets] reports that Mussolini was a master of the figurative “Scotch shower”:
Benito Mussolini, fundamentally a believer in force, combined the stick with the carrot of conciliatory gestures, charm and flattery, or as they say in Italian, “the Scotch shower,” alternating applications of hot and cold. He had an excellent sense of timing and the gift of quickly summing up a political situation.
On a more literal—and far less relevant—note, Punch (November 1851) offers this joke (presumably) about the mistiness of Scottish showers:
A Conundrum Made by a Little Boy Only Seven Years Old.—Why is an umbrella like a Scottish shower? Because the moment it rains it’s missed.
Conclusions
The historical line form James Bond’s hot-and-cold shower extends, with a fair degree of continuity, back to at least 1861, although the phrase “Scottish [or more often, Scotch] shower[-bath]” is especially common in continental European accounts (from 1879 and later) of hydrotherapies involving exposure to spouts or jets of alternately hot and cold water. Accounts separated by more than 115 years endorse “Scotch showers” as treatment for sciatica.
As a figurative expression, “Scotch shower” seems to have gained some currency (in translation) in France, Italy, and the Soviet Union, where it referred (and may still refer) to behavior or policy that in U.S. English might more likely be referred to instead as “running hot and cold.” There is even a word in Esperanto for “a shower that alternately runs cold and scalds”: “Škoda duso—a ‘Scottish shower’,” according to a 2010 article in the Michigan Quarterly Review [the relevant snippet does not appear in the snippet window].
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : user 66974 , Answer Author : Sven Yargs
