It always amazes me how many people today actually think that baths may actually be detrimental to your health. Apparently, this misconception has some early roots. The New York Evening Mail published a completely erroneous “history of the bath” in 1917 by the journalist HL Mencken. The article went on to state that after the bathtub was “invented” in 1842 in Cincinnati, the medical community came down hard on it stating it was the reason for a host of illneses.