WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT.
It is not our intention to speak in any special manner about prescribed
remedies for different ailments, since our concern is with the general
standard of health and fitness rather than with temporary ailments, for
which in many cases some special treatment is the most convenient
remedy. But our object being to show how by a proper mode of life the
body may be put into a state of health in which it is the least likely
to need any help from drugs or special treatment, it would be clearly
out of place, and imply a want of faith on our part in our present
system if we thought it in the least necessary to talk much about
remedial treatments. But there are certain simple applications of water
and heat, which though they may be adopted remedially, are yet part of a
rational and healthy mode of life--that is to say, they can both be used
by anyone suffering from some definite complaint, and at the same time
belong to the daily and regular _régime_ of the thoroughly healthy man.
The different sorts of baths, for instance, are, if rightly and
scientifically used, both remedial, and will form part of the daily
treatment of the healthy body.
As far as concerns the upper classes, at any rate, there is probably no
race in the world which nowadays[10] uses so much water as the
Anglo-Saxon; but our manner of using it is, to a large extent,
luxurious rather than practical, sensuous rather than sensible. The
morning cold bath, for instance, which some Frenchman the other day
wittily called the “Englishman’s castle,” is, though eminently healthy
and invigorating for some people, neither healthy nor invigorating for
all, and cleansing for none except in a slight degree. The cold bath,
indeed, is a sort of fetish; it is regarded as a piece of ritual
belonging to the scheme of things which “makes us Englishmen what we
are,” and to criticise the use of cold baths is something like “taking
the breeks off a Hielander.” But for the sake of those thousands who
have cold baths because it is their habit, and feel rather chilled and
dispirited than otherwise by the process, it is perhaps worth while to
say a few words about cold and other baths.
Water hot or cold, externally applied, has three main functions: (i.) to
cleanse, (ii.) to promote or equalise circulation, (iii.) to invigorate
and harden. It is mainly to its excellent effects with regard to the
third of these functions that the complete cold plunge owes its
popularity; for nothing--_given that the heart is strong, and the liver
not prone to sluggishness_--is more delightfully exhilarating than the
sudden thrill of cold water when one is either warm from hours in bed,
or hot from violent exercise. But it must be remembered that it is
distinctly not given to everyone to be sufficiently robust to be able to
indulge in it. There are some people who are clearly benefited--as far
as we can see--by it; there are many who are not injured by it, and can
continue to take it for the sake of the pleasurable sensation it
produces; but there are also many who are injured by it, who run a risk
anyhow in its use. For the shock and contrast of it is a shock: a sudden
drag is put on the racing heart, a sudden check is given to the hot
open-pored skin. It is exactly that which is pleasant: it is that also
which may be dangerous. Luckily the test of its desirability, or at any
rate, harmlessness in any special case, is easy to apply, and if anyone
feels chilled after cold bathing, or finds that after it the feet and
hands are a little numb and cold, with perhaps a loss of colour under
the nails, it is fairly certain that he or she has not the circulation
which can be benefited by a cold bath; but may be hurt by it. Or if
anyone finds it necessary to make a very vigorous use of the rough
towel afterwards in order to get warm again, the cold bath probably does
not suit him. Again, in some it produces a certain torpidity of the
liver, equally easily indicated; here, also, we have one of Nature’s
clear danger-flags waving us off.
The cold bath suits and probably benefits most of those who do not feel
these dispiriting after-effects, and the reason for it is obvious. The
cold water checks the circulation momentarily; it is literally a cold
sponge on the heart, and it momentarily drives away the blood from the
skin. But then, if the bather has good natural reaction, this momentary
chill will be succeeded by a fresh assertion of his vigour; the heart
momentarily checked will, combatively, reassert itself, the blood will
rush back to the skin vessels from which it has been momentarily driven,
and the exhilaration of the cold shock will be succeeded by a fresh
exhilaration of tingling vigour. But in any case a cold bath should not
be taken by anyone already cold or chilled; it is because the body is
warm, the heart beating fully, and the circulation vigorous that the
subsequent reaction is vigorous. But to take a cold bath when one is
cold is to demand an effort from something which should be not checked
but encouraged.
As a cleanser, however, the cold bath is, we regret to say, hopelessly
incompetent. For to clean the skin properly it is not sufficient to
clean the mere surface of the skin. The pores have to be opened and the
dirt and waste products, ordinarily invisible to the eye, taken from
them. Now cold water cannot do this, since one of its main effects is to
close the pores. But if anyone wants to see what happens when the pores
are thoroughly opened and cleaned, let him take a Turkish bath and be
well rubbed afterwards. What was ordinarily invisible becomes
offensively visible, and though much of what comes away is skin itself,
it is skin anyhow of a certain colour, and that colour is neither white
nor pink, nor brown, but black. And the colouring matter of that
is--dirt.
Now very hot water has in one respect the same immediate function as
very cold water; it tightens and closes the skin, and a short very hot
bath is as invigorating and bracing as a cold one, and may be used with
pleasure and effect by those who are not naturally suited to the cold.
But after a very short time, if one remains in a hot bath, the opposite
effect begins. The heat will now open the pores of the skin, and, as the
water soaks in, the skin is again relaxed, and the hot bath becomes the
cleanser. For the first few moments, however, the opposite effect takes
place; the skin is braced and tightened, and thus we find that many of
the Japanese, for instance, and some athletes in America, use a short
hot bath as we naturally use a cold bath, for an invigorator and
hardener, and to close the pores of the skin. It is this use of it that
we recommend to those who cannot stand a cold bath.
The hot bath, then, will supply the invigorating functions of the cold,
if it is really hot and is not too long. In the same way both it and
warm baths supply the cleansing functions which are wanting in the cold
bath, and the combination of the two--_i.e._, a hot or warm bath for
purposes of cleansing followed by a cold douche or cold sponging, is
perhaps the most perfect application of water in all its uses that we
know, and contains the same principles as the Turkish bath. Those who
have bathrooms will, of course, find this method easy enough to manage,
but those who have not can get a perfectly adequate substitute in a
large basin of cold water with which they will sponge themselves after
the ordinary hip-bath or sponging-tin in their rooms and while still
standing in it. Those, however, whom the cold bath does not suit, would
be wise to use only cool, not cold water, after the hot bath. A further
benefit of this combination of hot and cold water lies in the hardening
effect which the change of temperature produces on the skin, for it
accustoms it to sudden changes of temperature, and renders it far less
liable to catch cold. This, in view of the number of colds that people
certainly catch by getting chilled after being hot, is a great
advantage.
The best, as also far the pleasantest water to wash in is soft water,
approaching as nearly as possible to pure or distilled water, which
from its purity and freedom from suspended mineral matter is more eager,
so to speak, to take dirt, etc., into solution--that is to say, to wash
it off. But distilled water is expensive; rain water, which comes
nearest to it, not always to be had; while in chalky districts the water
is hard. This hardness may, however, be taken off by the addition of a
little oatmeal, or soda, or bath salts, which it will be found give the
water the advantages of soft water; soap, for instance, lathers much
more readily in it, and thus its efficiency as a cleanser is increased.
Hard water also, if continually used, certainly has a sort of drying and
unpleasant effect on delicate skins, making them less supple and
elastic, and diminishing their power of natural healthy action. The
remedy mentioned above largely alleviates this.
With regard to the third of the main functions of water--namely, to
promote and equalise circulation, this effect, though obtained from a
complete bath (as, for instance, a hot bath when one is chilled) is more
particularly to be got from partial baths. Many people, for instance,
suffer from cold feet and hands, and such know how unsatisfactory is the
effect, when working, for instance, on a cold day, of warming the hands
at the fire; for this relief is hardly more than momentary, and as soon
as the, mere surface heat obtained is exhausted, the hands are just
exactly as cold as they were before. But a remedy far more satisfactory
in its effects and just as simple lies at the nearest hot and cold-water
taps, and anyone who tries the effect of letting the hot water run over
his hands for a few moments followed by the cold water (combining the
two in exactly the same way as suggested for the complete bath, but
repeating the process a few times) and then drying them thoroughly with
a little friction, will quite certainly find the need of constant
excursions to the fire much curtailed. For this is a warming on sound
principles--the faulty circulation in the hands is remedied, the blood
is stimulated to flow there naturally, and in consequence the effect is
far more lasting than the momentary relief of the external heat from the
blaze.
In the same way with cold feet, though it would be extravagant and
foolish to recommend any busy man to put in his office a hot and a cold
foot-bath, into which in the presence of his admiring clerks he should
in the middle of the morning dip his feet, yet many will find the habit
of cold feet greatly reduced if at the morning bath (whether they have a
hot bath or a cold) they apply first hot then cold water to their feet.
Again, at night cold feet are a definite and common cause of insomnia,
which many unwisely remedy by heaping the bedclothes over them till they
restore heat to the feet by immoderate clothing over the whole body. We
have suggested in the chapter on sleep the expedient of an extra
coverlet over the feet, and the hot bottle is another remedy. But there
are many to whom the hot bottle is of a gruesome nature; if it is of
earthenware there is the collision with the toe sometime during the
night, while if it is of india-rubber there is something clammy and
snail-like about it when it has grown cold. The far more thorough and
satisfactory system for any confirmed sufferer, because it tends
directly to improve the circulation in the feet, and to harden them by
the change of temperature, is the hot foot-bath, succeeded by cold
sponging and rubbing before going to bed, or after going to bed if there
is insomnia. This is particularly efficacious if repeated a time or
two. The tingling warmth, due to the restoration of circulation, is far
more beneficial and pleasant than the unwilling haling down of the blood
to the feet, as it were, by means of a hot water bottle.
In more directly remedial aspects, we may just allude to the value of
wet-packs for various parts of the body, a common and excellent instance
of which is a cold compress (covered with flannel) round the throat as a
cure for sore throat, or cold water bandages (also covered with flannel)
for local sprains or inflammations. Such things, however, border on
medical questions, and though excellent and simple remedies, are of too
specialised a character to be more than alluded to.
Lying half-way, as it were, between the agents of water and heat comes
the Turkish bath, that solacer in the life of many city men, who but
for it would undoubtedly, in the conditions under which they live,
become confirmed dyspeptics. By it, in a short time, the effects which
exercise has on the skin are produced; by it also, if it is followed, as
it should be, by rubbing and massage, actual (though passive) exercise
is obtained. Thus it counteracts to a great extent what we have before
called the “acidity” of city-life, due to its general lack of exercise,
and the tendency it often produces to over-eat in proportion to the
exercise taken. But frequent Turkish baths, though an excellent
substitute for exercise, an excellent corrective for that which
advertisements elegantly call “errors of diet,” and even an excellent
adjunct to exercise, should be taken as a _faute de mieux_, except in
the case perhaps of very corpulent people, who find it, rightly, almost
essential to keep down the excess of fat. For while the heat produces
about the same effect on the skin as would heat derived from physical
exertion, and while massage produces about the same effect on the
muscles as does physical exercise, yet the absence of fresh air in this
bath is a large defect; though, it is true, it is to a certain extent
compensated by the fact that the whole body is exposed to the air for a
considerable time. But considered as treatment, it is artificial rather
than natural; and though certainly the skin and general health of men
employed in a Turkish bath as _masseurs_ is in excellent condition, yet
the excessive heat (excessive, that is, in respect of the temperatures
that the human body seems naturally adapted to encounter) is probably in
the long run somewhat trying to the system, while the cold plunge
immediately after (to many the best part of the bath) is distinctly bad
for those for whom cold baths are bad. But as a substitute for
exercise, and a general means of health to sedentary and city-workers,
it is probably the best yet contrived. Everyone, however, should rest
well after it, and lie in the cooling-room for at least half an hour,
since the bath itself is violent, so to speak, and demands recuperative
measures, and also because after a long exposure in the hot room even
the cold douche will not at once restore firmness to the skin. But with
this precaution taken the bath is not only an excellent remedy for
colds, but also an excellent preventive against them, by reason mainly
of the hardening effect which the sudden change of the temperature
produces. As a cleanser, finally, the Turkish bath is quite unrivalled.
Of late years physicians and others, both here and in other countries,
notably Denmark, Germany, and America, have accepted and striven to
bring within the range of practical therapeutics the incalculably
health-giving and remedial power of heat and light. This subject will be
touched on in another chapter in connection with the exposure of the
body to the air, while part of it is too special (as, for instance, the
treatment of lupus with the violet rays of the spectrum) to be more than
alluded to. The principle of it all is that light is as tonic to the
body of a man as it is to a plant, and that just as a plant is sickly
and pale if given insufficient light, so the body if stinted in this
becomes weakly and inefficient, a cellar-grown plant. Following this
clue, experiment has established beyond doubt that for anæmia of certain
kinds the best possible remedy is exposure to heat and light, and in
Germany there is more than one sun-cure for this, the course of
treatment being that patients pass hours in the sun every day with
practically no clothes on. Here in England, and especially in London,
such treatment is seldom possible, the two great drawbacks being lack of
sun and lack of privacy[11], and in consequence artificial light has
been resorted to, not as being better than sunlight, but as the best
substitute for it. Here the body is exposed to a violent illumination of
electric light (the eyes and head being protected), and is given a
light-bath in the same way as a Turkish bath gives a purely heat bath.
Incidentally, it is true, the bath of electric light is extremely hot (a
temperature far above that of the ordinary Turkish bath being reached
without inconvenience or danger), but the main object is to administer
the tonic of light, and of that which light becomes when it has passed
through the surface-skin. Of its extraordinary effects in cases of
anæmia, for instance, it is outside our province to speak, but in a
modified form, _i.e._, by exposure when possible of the body to
sunlight, and the constant and unvarying desirability of living in light
rooms, much of its beneficial effects can be enjoyed, and should be, by
everyone. Indeed, to take the long continued effect of light, not on an
individual but on a race, how much of the gaiety of the southern nations
may perhaps be directly due to sunshine? Certainly “a gloomy house,” or
“a gloomy room,” is gloomy in more senses than one, for instinctively
light affects the spirits; it is tonic and invigorating to body and mind
alike, and ten minutes of exposure of the whole body to the sun,
fantastic as it may sound, is as great a dispeller of shadows as is the
sun itself.
It is with this modified form of sun-bath (not because the sun-bath, as
a treatment, is anything but admirable, but because it is in treatment
of disease that it is mainly used) that we have to deal. Everyone knows
how invigorating it is to have only the face and hands exposed to the
sun, a twentieth part of the body, that is to say, given the sun-bath,
not as a medicine, but as a sustainer of general health. Multiply this
by twenty then: instead of twenty minutes in the open air, expose the
whole body, if possible, when dressing, to direct sun-rays by an open
window; let the fresh air and the sun “have their sweet way.” Sunlight,
it is sadly true, is not always available, but light is better than no
light, and instead of hastening to dress after the bath in the morning,
throw the windows wide, and for as long as may be (though taking a
feeling of chilliness as a danger signal of Nature, indicating clothes)
let your body drink in light and air. If you are of imperfect
circulation, get warm first by a hot-bath and exercise, but remember
that as long as you are warm, there is no conceivable danger of catching
cold, and that on the first hint of cold you are almost certainly in
time to dress. Also the endurance of exposure increases rapidly, and
endurance of exposure is one of the first requisites of serene health,
of the health that no more bothers itself about danger of catching cold
than the enviable slumberer spoken of in the chapter on sleep bothers
himself about getting to sleep.
No wonder the sun in Greek times was the god Apollo, the young god of
health and beauty, of all that keeps men young and vigorous, of all that
keeps them sane and efficient. No wonder, also, that from time
immemorial the sun has been worshipped as the supreme god, for from
what else but his light comes growth and health? There he is every day
(or at any rate on some days) marching slowly for our behoof across a
beneficent heaven, and we are like children who clench their teeth when
the doctor comes, rather than show their tongue, if we strive by awnings
and parasols, and God knows what infamous devices, to shut out that
humane physician. Gentlemen, “The Sun.”
“Air and light are essential to the development of the higher forms
of animal and vegetable life in full vigour and perfection. The
lowest organisms--fungi and bacilli and bacteria whose office in
nature appears to be to prey upon and hasten the decomposition of
their superiors in the scale of life--love, like other evil things,
darkness and close dwellings. Bright sunlight (the most potent and
valuable of all light) and fresh air (by oxygen the portion of food
used as fuel is burnt, and heat and all forms of energy evolved,
and oxygen is required for the changing and removal of waste) are
as inimical to them as they are beneficial to the more perfect
forms above them. The action of light is known with less precision
than that of oxygen. It appears, however, to be essential to the
perfect formation of the red cells of the blood--its most vital
constituents. Persons who are deprived of light grow pale and
bloodless. Young women brought from the country as servants or shop
girls, and kept in cellar kitchens or dark work-rooms, notoriously
suffer in this way. Miners also are a pallid, anæmic class. The
want of fresh air has something to do with the result no doubt; yet
patients in a well-lighted hospital ward appear to recover more
quickly, as a rule, than those in darker rooms equally well
ventilated. [Compare the interesting statistics collected in St.
Petersburg by Sir James Wylie.] Altogether common experience and
observation confirm the conclusion which science has hardly yet
formulated, that light has a powerful and favourable influence upon
animal life. Human beings grow blanched just as plants do, for the
want of it. And it is not a question of colour merely; vitality is
seriously lowered also. This is largely felt in great towns shaded
by fog and smoke-clouds. Some recent remarkable experiments have
shown that the electric light exerts a favourable influence on
vegetation, second only to sunlight. It is possible that it may in
like manner foster animal life.” Dr. W. B. Cheadle in “The Book of
Health.”
* * * * *
In addition to the experiments on vegetation, at Cornell University
in America, and by Professor Siemens in England, recent experiments
have shown the value of electric light in general, and of certain
colour-rays in particular, in the treatment of various diseases
such as gout and its sisters and cousins, nervousness, lupus, and
so on. There are already several establishments in London where
electric light cures are to be obtained. Dr. Forbes Winslow in his
treatise on Light speaks even more emphatically than Dr. Cheadle
does about the bad effects of the absence of light. He says:--
* * * * *
“It is a well-established fact that, as the effect of isolation
from the stimulus of light, the fibrine, albumen and red
blood-cells become diminished in quantity, and the serum, or watery
portion of the vital fluid, augmented in volume, thus inducing a
disease known as _lukaemia_, in which white instead of red
blood-cells are developed. This exclusion from the sun produces the
sickly, flabby, pale, anæmic condition of the face, or ex-sanguined
ghost-like forms so often seen amongst those not freely exposed to
air and light. The absence of these essential elements of health
deteriorates by materially altering the physical composition of the
blood, thus seriously prostrating the vital strength, enfeebling
the nervous energy, and ultimately inducing organic changes in the
structure of the heart, brain and muscular tissue.”
* * * * *
The use of water as a means of curing disease and of preserving
health was revived early in this century by Priessnitz and his many
followers. In 1896 the oldest of German doctors, Professor and
Privy Councillor Adolf Kussmaul, of Heidelberg, refused to sign the
programme of the commissioners for medical examinations, because
“of hydropathy our young doctor, when he leaves the schools, knows
nothing at all.” In the same year Sir Lauder Brunton, in his Summer
Lectures at St. Bartholomew’s, testified to the wonderful effects
of the wet-sheet-pack; and the late Dr. Carpenter, Professor of
Physiology in the Royal Institution, as well as Dr. Wilson and Lord
Lytton, have spoken in praise of this very cheap and simple and
pleasant remedy which we heartily recommend for the reader’s trial.
The late Sir John Forbes wrote most enthusiastically about this and
other easy water treatments, which Dr. John Goodman contrasted with
the treatments by drugs, stimulants, overfeeding, and so on. As a
striking example we may quote his words about Diuretics (which have
been among the various means recommended for reducing weight):--
* * * * *
“_Allopathic Diuretics._--Squills, digitalis, nitric ether, acetate
of potash, broom-tops, dandelion, mercury.
“_Hydropathic Diuretics._--Copious water-drinking, hot-air baths,
sitz-baths, wet packing, &c. No remedies act more powerfully on the
kidneys without injury. Copious drinking of barley-water is good.”