RATIONAL USE OF THE BATH.
Admitting the importance of the bath to the health and well-being of
society, when properly employed, it becomes our duty to consider in
what the _propriety_ of its employment consists.
It consists in the selection of a _temperature_ which is suitable to
the constitution and idiosyncrasies of the individual; of a _time of
day_ most in accord with the constitution of the body; of a period of
_duration_ of the bath; of the _frequency_ of repeating it.
Then we have to consider certain points of detail which come before us
in the shape of objections to the bath: for example, the apprehension
of _taking cold_ after the bath; of causing disturbance of the
nutritive functions; of inducing weakness. And, again, we may view it
as a remedy against certain affections of a spasmodic type, in which
its mode of action is so clear as to be intelligible to the unmedical
understanding; and further, we have to regard it in its applicability
to our fellow-creatures of the four-footed class, and especially to the
horse.
PROPER TEMPERATURE OF THE BATH.
The history of the Bath, together with its practice, so far as I have
been able to comprehend it, both point to the Turkish Bath, as it at
present exists in the East, as representing the proper standard of
temperature. The Turkish Bath is a mixed bath of vapour and heat; and
although we have no information of its precise thermometric grade, yet
we have sufficient data before us to be assured that the temperature
cannot be high; for we know, on the one hand, that watery vapour above
120° of Fahrenheit is scalding; and, on the other hand, that the
Turkish Bath is constantly taken by travellers and strangers; and that
inconvenience resulting from its temperature is an accident of the
rarest kind; so rare, in fact, as to be scarcely possible. Whereas, in
the high temperatures at present in use in London, 170° and 180° of dry
air, disagreeable and even dangerous symptoms are extremely common.
The great purpose to be arrived at, as far as temperature is concerned,
is to obtain one which shall be agreeable to the sensations; which
shall slowly expand the pores of the skin; which _shall produce gently
and slowly and without effort; so that it may be continued for an
indefinite length of time_. The temperature of 135° or 140° is very
agreeable to the sensations; but in me it excites a perspiration which
is too profuse; the energy of perspiration occasions a feeling of
exhaustion; and the exhaustion is succeeded by quickened action of the
heart, throbbing pulse, a sensation of faintness, of oppression, which
makes it necessary that I should quit the Calidarium for a few minutes.
It is true that these unpleasant sensations quickly pass off; but they
are again renewed after a time, as often as I return to the Calidarium.
It is easy to see why these disagreeable sensations occur; it is easy
to understand, that the blood, suddenly robbed of a considerable
proportion of its watery fluid, must, for the moment, occasion a
physiological change in the whole economy. But we must do more than
explain them to our own mental satisfaction, we must stop them; and the
way to stop them is, I believe, to use lower temperatures.
Again, high temperatures clearly frustrate the purpose of the bath;
by producing excessive perspiration, they shorten the period passed
in the bath; they bring it to a too sudden and too rapid conclusion.
Profuse perspiration is an excess of function, and excess of function
cannot exist without fatigue and consequent injury to the organ so
excited; together with more or less disturbance of the whole economy.
I have had many complaints of the bath made to me, which have been
clearly referrible to the use of high temperatures at the beginning
of treatment; and the abuse is so plain, that I wonder, having once
occurred, it could again be repeated.
These remarks point to the importance of a Tepidarium when a Tepidarium
can be obtained; the time passed in the Tepidarium may be considerable,
the body undergoing a gradual process of warming, of softening, of
perspiration; and at the end of this process, being transferred for a
few minutes only to the Calidarium.
TIME OF TAKING THE BATH.
The best time for taking the Turkish Bath, and, indeed, every form
of bath, is that which is least likely to interfere with the process
of digestion; for example, _before a meal_. But at this point it is
necessary to draw a line of distinction between the Turkish Bath and
all other kinds of bath: the Turkish Bath abstracts from the system a
proportion of its solid constituents, more or less considerable, while
it makes only a gasiform return in the form of oxygen. All other baths
abstract little or nothing; and therefore, in this particular, there
is a wide and important difference between them. It is as needful to
take the sea bath before a meal as it is the Turkish Bath; but the sea
bath may be taken before breakfast, which I should in nowise advocate
in the case of the Turkish Bath. I do not mean that, to those who can
bear it and who approve of it, the Turkish Bath might not be suitable
on first rising in the morning; but the generality of mankind will find
the most advantageous time for taking it from three or four, to five or
six hours after meal. At that time there will be that in the economy
which nature can spare, and often with benefit to the health, the waste
of the digestive process, the detrita of nutrition; whereas, before
breakfast, there is or ought to be scant matter for giving off from the
blood by way of perspiration. Invalids may take the Turkish Bath three
hours after breakfast; or three hours after the midday meal or lunch;
while the man of occupation may advantageously devote to its rites the
hour and a half or two hours which immediately precede dinner; and
the more engaged may probably, with equal advantage, take it in the
evening, after the dust and toil of the day are at an end, and shortly
before bedtime.
"Would it be no comfort, no pleasure, no benefit to an English lady, on
returning from a ball, and before going to bed, to be able, divested
of whalebone and crinoline, and robed as an Atalanta, to enter marble
chambers with mosaic floors, and be refreshed and purified from the
toil she has undergone, and prepared for the soft enjoyment of the rest
she seeks?"[16]
[16] "The Pillars of Hercules."
DURATION AND FREQUENCY OF THE BATH.
The length of time spent in the bath must be regulated: partly by
the object to be obtained; partly by the habits of the individual as
regards the use of the bath; partly by his strength and powers of
constitution; and partly by the temperature of the bath. The _object_
of the bather may be a moderate perspiration, or a thorough sweat; he
may desire simply to evaporate from his skin the waste particles that
occasion fatigue; or he may wish to distil from his blood the morbid
atomies of rheumatism, neuralgia, or gout; he may seek for the after
enjoyment which follows upon a day's hunting or shooting; or he may
strive to gain the health-giving results of active exercise, for a
body that has been immured in committee or in office all the day long.
I have shown, in an illustration at p. 78, how the bath may be used
for the removal of fatigue, of hunger, the cobwebs of the brain; and
how it may be made to fortify the powers of the muscular system and of
digestion.
The practised bather will know when to cease the bath, without
reference to other authority than his own sensations and experience.
The weak and the strong must be equally guided by their powers of
endurance, and all must be influenced to a greater or less extent by
the thermometer. A bath at 180° cannot be borne for the same length of
time as a bath at 130°; and it is clear that if a protracted bath be
the object sought to be attained, the temperature must be moderate and
agreeable to the sensations. In the baths of very high temperature the
bather is forced to retreat before a full perspiration is accomplished,
and he is therefore rendered liable to a secondary perspiration, which
chills the skin and endangers catarrh and other local congestions,
while he is deprived of the refreshing and exhilarating sensation which
follows a properly-accomplished bath. For him, there is no jumping over
a lamp-post, much less "the moon."
I have often passed an hour in the bath. Mr. Urquhart, Mr. Holland,
and Mr. Witt have spent several consecutive hours in the bath. Mr.
Rolland lived in the bath for three days, quitting it only for a short
period at a time. To some, a quarter of an hour in the Calidarium would
be enough; while others would prefer half or three-quarters of an
hour. The Romans indulged in the bath to so great an excess, that it
became necessary to pass a law to restrict its use to two hours. Dr.
Millingen, Physician to the Sultan, in a letter from Constantinople,
addressed to Mr. George Witt, observes:--"If a Moslem enters the bath
for the object of a legal ablution, half an hour is amply sufficient;
if, however, a person wishes to go through all the stages of a complete
bath, an hour, at least, or one hour and a half, is the usual time."
The frequency of taking the bath must, like other points of balneal
economy, be regulated by the purpose sought to be attained. Where
maintenance of existing health is the object, once or twice a week may
be sufficient. I can conceive the bath to be made a part of the process
known as "dressing for dinner," and then it may be taken as often as
we dine. Medically, its frequency of repetition must be left to the
medical man; and in every case the amount of effect produced must
regulate its repetition. "Little and often," I would suggest as a maxim
applicable to the bath as to some others of the enjoyments of life; and
much to be preferred to the opposite position, "seldom and much." The
Romans took the bath daily; the Mussulmans take it once a week.
To the natives of a country possessing a damp, cold, and variable
climate, like that of Britain, wherein catarrhs are the scourge of the
population (such catarrhs being attributable in most cases to checked
perspiration and extreme cooling of the surface of the body), the
apprehension of cold and catarrh from the use of the bath is a natural
expectation. But the practice of the bath proves such an apprehension
to be unfounded, and our reason helps us to see that there is in
reality no such danger. The ordinary process of taking a cold is as
follows: we are warmed by exercise, perhaps somewhat exhausted at the
same time; the skin is bedewed with perspiration; the perspired fluid
evaporates, producing chill; and the chill occasions a shock to the
nervous system and to the whole economy, that results in the reaction
known as "_a cold_." But if we contrast these conditions with those of
the bath, we find that there is no parallel between them. In the bath
we perspire; in a warm and genial temperature we abstract from the
system all the watery fluid that Nature has, at the time, to spare; we
rinse off the perspiration with warm water; we shut up the pores by
means of cold water; we warm the body anew; we then rest tranquilly
until every particle of moisture is removed from the skin; and when we
are thoroughly dry, we put on dry and warm clothes. In this process it
is clear that there is not even a chink by which a cold can approach
us. If we hear of people taking cold after the bath, we may be assured
that they have broken its laws somehow or somewhere. The bath, properly
conducted,--and improperly conducted it is not the bath--THE BATH
CANNOT GIVE COLD.
That which is most needful to impress upon nations unaccustomed to
the bath, is a _respect for its ordinances_. People are apt, on their
first introduction to the bath as a new idea, either to take alarm
at the apparent severity of its processes, or to go to the opposite
extreme of treating it inconsiderately. People require training to the
bath, as they do to other processes which are calculated to affect
the well-being of their constitution. If they were bred to the bath
from their infancy, no training would be requisite; but as they are
not, there are very few who can go through the London Turkish Bath in
all its entirety, and as it is at present conducted, without risk of
accident of some kind--that is, before they are properly seasoned. I
call to mind a gentleman of susceptible constitution, whom I myself
introduced to the bath: the temperature did not exceed 135°; he felt
very little uneasiness during the process; but his liver took offence
at the inordinate and unusual industry of its coadjutor, the skin,
and was many days before its anger was appeased, the possessor being
much troubled in the meantime by the intestine feud of his interior.
But this affords no ground of argument against the bath; it only
corroborates the views of moderation which I am endeavouring to
inculcate. Had my friend taken the bath at a lower temperature, or
reduced its duration to a shorter period, he would have suffered no
inconvenience; and, after all, it was but the inconvenience attendant
upon the initiation of a new physiological process.
A similar event occurred in the instance of another friend, a literary
man, of sedentary habits, but thin, and not overcharged with waste
humours. The temperature of the bath was the same, but my friend was
not equal to the demand made upon his vaporizable fluids, and the use
of the bath tended to derange his nutritive functions and lower his
powers. Here, again, it was clear that a more moderate temperature,
a slower transpiration, and a shorter period of duration, were the
natural agents of cure. With these conditions there would have been no
strain on the circulating or nervous system, and the bather would have
enjoyed relatively the same advantages as another abounding in humours.
If we had a choice, if we had the opportunity of selecting subjects for
the bath, we should take them from the latter class; and these are the
persons who would derive the greatest benefits from its use. Another
example of the abuse of the bath was a lady who had taken twelve baths
with enjoyment and advantage: on entering the bath the thirteenth time,
the temperature was 190°, she felt uncomfortable, and remained unwell
for several days. On the other hand, I have had the pleasure of seeing
many with whom the bath had disagreed at first, become accustomed to
it, and derive great benefit from its regular use.
Non-bathers often express an alarm lest the bath may be weakening. But
the bath strengthens, it never weakens, except, as in the instances
above narrated, it be used improperly. The idea of weakening is
suggested by the loss of fluids by perspiration; but this loss is,
as I have endeavoured to show, a gain and not a loss. The expulsion
of watery fluids from the economy is a natural process, necessary to
our very existence, and without it we should die. It would be very
unreasonable to regard the watery fluids expelled by the lungs, by the
skin, and by other emunctory organs, as a loss of material necessary to
the economy, or a loss which could in any way affect the nervous and
muscular powers of the individual otherwise than beneficially--unless,
indeed, the loss be inordinate and excessive. Is it not one of the
conditions of our healthful existence, that we should earn our bread
with the sweat of our brow? and, writhe as we may under the verdict,
we must do so, or suffer the evil consequences of a breach of Heaven's
law. Mr. Urquhart has the following observations on this subject:--
"There is an impression that the bath is weakening. We can test this
in three ways; its effects on those debilitated by disease, on those
exhausted by fatigue, and on those who are long exposed to it.
"1. In affections of the lungs and intermittent fever, the bath
is invariably had recourse to against the debilitating nightly
perspirations. The temperature is kept low, not to increase the action
of the heart or the secretions; this danger avoided, its effect is to
subdue, by a healthy perspiration in a waking state, the unhealthy one
in sleep. No one ever heard of any injury from the bath. The moment a
person is ailing he is hurried off to it.
"2. After long and severe fatigue,--that fatigue such as we never know,
successive days and nights on horseback--the bath affords the most
astonishing relief. Having performed long journeys on horseback, even
to the extent of ninety-four hours, without taking rest, I know by
experience its effects in the extremest cases.
"A Tartar having an hour to rest, prefers a bath to sleep. He enters
as if drugged with opium, and leaves it, his senses cleared, and his
strength restored as much as if he had slept for several hours. This
is not to be attributed to the heat or moisture alone, but to the
shampooing, which in such cases is of an extraordinary nature. The
Tartar sits down and doubles himself up; the shampooer (and he selects
the most powerful man) then springs with his feet on his shoulders,
cracking his vertebræ; with all his force and weight he pummels the
whole back, and then turning him on his back and face, aided by a
second shampooer, tramples on his body and limbs; the Tartar then
lays himself down for half an hour; and perhaps, though that is not
necessary, sleeps. Well can I recal the hamâm doors which I have
entered scarcely able to drag one limb after the other, and from which
I have sprung into my saddle again elastic as a sinew and light as a
feather."
Sir Alexander Burnes, in his "Travels in Bokhara," on the same topic
observes:--"You are laid out at full length, rubbed with a hair brush,
scrubbed, buffeted, and kicked; but it is all very refreshing." And
Anquetil gives the following account of shampooing;--"One of the
attendants on the bath extends you upon a bench, sprinkles you with
warm water, and presses the whole body in an admirable manner. He
cracks the joints of the fingers and of all the extremities. He then
places you upon the stomach, pinches you over the kidneys, seizes you
by the shoulders, and cracks the spine by agitating all the vertebræ,
strikes some powerful blows over the fleshy and muscular parts, then
rubs the body with a hair-glove until he perspires, grinds down the
thick and hard skin of the feet with pumice-stone, anoints you with
soap, and lastly, shaves you and plucks out the superfluous hairs. This
process continues for three-quarters of an hour, after which a man
scarcely knows himself; he feels like a new being.
"You will see a hammal (porter), a man living only on rice, go out of
one of those baths where he has been pouring with that perspiration
which we think must prostrate and weaken, and take up his load of five
hundredweight, placing it unaided on his back.
3. "The shampooers spend eight hours daily in the steam; they undergo
great labour there, shampooing, perhaps, a dozen persons, and are
remarkably healthy. They enter the bath at eight years of age: the
duties of the younger portion are light, and chiefly outside in the
hall to which the bathers retire after the bath; still, there they are
from that tender age exposed to the steam and heat, so as to have their
strength broken, if the bath were debilitating. The best shampooer
under whose hands I have ever been, was a man whose age was given me as
ninety, and who, from eight years of age, had been daily eight hours in
the bath. This was at the natural baths of Sophia. I might adduce in
like manner the sugar-bakers of London, who, in a temperature not less
than that of the bath, undergo great fatigue, and are also remarkably
healthy."
THE MEDICAL PROPERTIES of the bath are based upon its powers of
altering the chemical and electrical conditions of the organic
structures of the body and abstracting its fluids. The whole of these
changes take place simultaneously, and no doubt harmoniously; but
in certain instances we may rely upon a greater activity of one of
these processes over the other two: for example, in neuralgia, the
electrical power should preponderate; in the destruction of miasma and
poisonous ferments, the chemical power; and in the slow removal of
accumulated morbid deposits, as in chronic gout and rheumatism, the
fluid abstracting power. The required greater activity of one or other
of these powers would also be our guide to those physical conditions
of the bath which are calculated to effect these objects--for example,
temperature and moisture. The temperature and degree of moisture
for the treatment of disease must be different from that which is
suitable to health. It may be necessary to have recourse to very
high temperatures; or it may be requisite to fall below the healthy
standard. Moreover, the healthy standard itself may require variation
for different individuals and different constitutions. The physician is
perfectly conversant with this necessity of adapting his means to the
special constitution or idiosyncrasy of his patient.
One of the most important properties of the bath is its power of
preserving that balance of the nutritive functions of the body which
in its essence is health; in other words, preserving the _condition_
of the body. The healthy condition implies an exact equipoise of the
fluids and the solids, of the muscular and the fatty tissues, of the
waste and the supply. This state of the body is normally preserved by a
proportioned amount of air, exercise or labour, and food; but even the
air, the exercise, the labour, and the food must be apportioned, in its
kind and in its order, to the peculiar constitution of the individual.
Those who have ever had occasion to reflect on this subject, must
have felt the difficulties which surround it, and have been aware how
extremely difficult it is to say what may be faulty in our mode of
using these necessaries of our existence. If I were asked to select
an example, as a standard of the just equipoise of these conditions,
I should take the ploughman; intellect at the standard of day to day
existence, moderate food, vigorous but not over-strained labour,
plenty of air, and plentiful exposure. But who would care to accept
existence on such terms as these. Give us brain, give us mind, however
ungovernable, however preponderant its overweight to the physical
powers, however destructive to the powers of the body. In a word,
we select a morbid condition: our meals, our air, our exercise, our
indoor and outdoor habits are all unsound; we prefer that they should
be unsound; the necessities of our life, of our position, require
that they should be unsound. How grand, therefore, the boon that will
correct these evils without the necessity for making any inconvenient
alteration in our habits!
THAT BOON IS THE BATH. The bath promotes those changes in the blood for
which fresh air is otherwise needful. The bath gives us appetite, and
strengthens digestion. The bath serves us in lieu of exercise. "The
people who use it," writes Mr. Urquhart, "do not require exercise for
health, and can pass from the extreme of indolence to that of toil."
How glorious a panacea for those home-loving matrons whom no inducement
can draw forth from their _Lares_ and _Penates_, to enjoy a daily
wholesome exercise, and who, as a consequence, become large, and full,
and fat, and bilious, and wheezy; and who, in their breach of Heaven's
law, lay the foundation of heart disease. "A nation without the bath
is deprived of a large portion of the health and inoffensive enjoyment
within man's reach; it therefore increases the value of a people to
itself, and its power as a nation over other people."[17]
[17] "The Pillars of Hercules."
Dr. Millingen, in the letter to Mr. George Witt, previously referred
to, makes the following interesting remarks on the bath, and offers an
opinion of its importance, for which we were hardly prepared in a man
living in its midst, and having its operation constantly under his eye.
The prophet is clearly no less a prophet at home than abroad:--"As to
the application of the bath in the prevention and cure of diseases.
The working classes among the Turks, for such classes do exist, and
are as numerous and fully more hard-working than elsewhere, know of
no other means of prevention, on feeling indisposed, but the bath.
In the numerous cases arising from sudden changes in the temperature
of the body, a copious perspiration, which a stay of more or less
duration in the Calidarium is sure to occasion, does, in the great
majority of cases, restore the body to the equilibrium of health. After
over-exertion, again, the bath is had recourse to. In short, it is
looked upon so much in the light of a panacea by the lower orders, that
they hardly ever dream of consulting a physician when taken unwell. If
the bath fail to cure them, nothing else will succeed. This prevailing
conviction accounts, in a great measure, for the total absence of
dispensaries and civil hospitals, not only in this large city, but
throughout the empire. Yet I apprehend, from the tables of mortality
monthly published, that the mortality is not greater than it is in
countries blessed with those institutions. The higher classes, and
women especially, do not, as with us, know much about regular exercise,
so that I perfectly agree with you that, were it not for the ample
compensation afforded by the bath, they would not enjoy the excellent
health they generally possess.
"You speak of the temperance of the people as being pointed out as the
principal cause of gout being hardly known in this country. If this
is partly true, on the other hand I must remark that intemperance of
late years is much on the increase; and, moreover, that it is carried
on to an extent which, if stated, might be looked upon as fabulous.
Yet the gout is not more prevalent, nor delirium tremens either. This
immunity I can attribute to nothing else but to the expulsion of the
alcohol circulating in the system, by the lungs and skin, during the
stay in the bath. You wish to know how long, on an average, does a
person remain in the bath. If a Moslem enters the bath for the object
of a legal ablution, half-an-hour is amply sufficient; if, however, a
person wishes to go through all the stages of a complete bath, an hour,
at least, or, one hour and a half, is the usual time.
"I consider that you are engaged in an attempt, which, if successful,
will confer in an hygienic point of view, a service on our countrymen
as eminent as the discovery that has immortalized the name of Jenner.
"We have not here the statistical returns indispensable to ascertain
whether the medium range of human life is above or below the average
in other countries. Instances of extraordinary longevity are far from
being uncommon. I have known, and know yet, several individuals among
the natives more than a hundred years old."
My friend B---- is a man of leisure, so far as the common necessities
of life are concerned; his worldly career has been successful; and,
in gratitude to the Giver of mercies, he has devoted the remainder
of his days to the service of God, to the doing of all the good he
can to his fellow man; he is largely concerned in the management of
public charities of all kinds; he is regular in his habits, active, and
moderate in his diet; but, in spite of moderation, he is fat, and as a
man who despises personal indulgence, his fat is an annoyance to him,
and an incumbrance. "What can I do to become less bulky?" said he to
me one day. "Go to the bath," said I; "and after the bath walk to your
home in Kensington." "Impossible," said he; "Kensington is three miles
away, and I cannot walk the length of a street without panting." "Have
faith," said I, "and do as I tell you." A week after I received a note
from B----: "I took the bath, as you desired me; after the bath I felt
that I could walk to Kensington, or to Richmond, if I had chosen; but
I had an appointment that obliged me to hurry home in a cab. Yesterday
I took a second bath; I did walk home to Kensington, no less to my own
amazement than that of my family; I ate my dinner with a relish that
I had not known for years; and after dinner, the power and the desire
to walk were so great that I could hardly repress them." B---- has
continued the bath regularly ever since; he looks fresh and well, and
more shapely; he knows no fatigue in walking; during the late severe
winter he has required no great coat; in the midst of the bitterest
frost he walked to the Serpentine in his shirt sleeves, with his coat
upon his arm, and his clothing is now his only incumbrance. "I want to
fit up a bath for the poor in my neighbourhood," was his remark to me
at a late interview. "What convenience have you for the purpose?" said
I. "A capital roomy cellar," was his answer. "Sell your wine, then,"
said I, "and make a bath." "Oh! I can give away my wine," was his
rejoinder; "those who take the bath need no wine." Heaven's blessing on
thy head, B----; thou art an honour to the name of MAN.
While on the subject of examples of benefit to the health resulting
from the use of the bath, I may mention the case of a neighbour,
by name Buckland, who has put up a bath in Westmoreland-street,
Marylebone. Buckland was an upholsterer, but being seized with
rheumatic gout, lost his business and fell into poverty. For fifteen,
years he was a cripple, and tried in vain, medical remedies, waters,
and baths, one while taking the baths of Buxton, and another, drinking
the healing waters of Wales. He then, by good luck, fell under the
influence of Mr. Urquhart: by his advice he visited Manchester, and
took several Turkish Baths there; he then returned to London and
followed a course of baths at Evans's in Bell Street, Edgeware Road;
and in 1859 he fitted his own bath, and has managed it ever since.
He is no longer a cripple, but able to earn own livelihood, and is
an object of astonishment to those who knew him in the days of his
suffering. The medical eye discovers that he is not thoroughly sound
yet; but the degree of recovery which has already taken place is
marvellous, and one instance among many of the triumph of the Turkish
Bath. He has also had the good sense to discover the evil of very
high temperatures; so that he is one among the very few to whom I can
conscientiously consign the invalid.
There is a painful tension of the muscles known by the name of spasm
or cramp: like other complaints, it may be represented by a scale or
ladder, of which the lower bars are slight enough, but the highest
bring us to a knowledge of locked jaw, the fistful spasms of Asiatic
cholera, of tetanus, of hydrophobia. Heat and moisture are the
well-known and popular remedies for this state, and the good woman of
the house is always prepared in such cases to recommend hot salt, the
tin of hot water, hot flannels, and flannels wrung out of hot water.
These remedies are found to be useful, and, being easy of access, are
universal: a step above these stands the hot bath, that _unready_
remedy, that, except in public establishments where it is in common
use, is scarcely attainable. For the relief of, spasm, the hot bath
stands first among our external and simpler remedies; but miserable and
wretched indeed is the hot bath by the side of the Turkish Bath. In the
hot bath it is a perpetual struggle to keep your balance in the water,
to keep the head from going down and the feet from coming up; the head
is kept above the water in a temperature different from that of the
body, the neck feels cold and damp; the water is constantly varying in
temperature; and last of all, you are lifted out of the half-cooled
water into the chilly air, to recover your heat in a blanket the best
way you can. Perspiration in the hot bath is no sign of the state of
the skin; the head seems to perspire, but it is probably nothing more
than the condensation of vapour on the skin; the perspiration of the
rest of the skin, if it occur at all, is lost in the water of the bath;
and in the very outset of the perspiration, perchance, the pores are
chilled and a dangerous shock is communicated to the whole frame. Well
may Mr. Urquhart exclaim:--"None but a Frank would call a miserable
trough of water a bath."
When, years ago, I prescribed for Mr. Urquhart, while he was labouring
under a frightful attack of consecutive spasm, a hot bath, he gave me
a practical lesson of the uses of heat and moisture, by subjecting
himself to a vapour bath of such a degree of intensity and duration
as astonished all who saw it. The bath attendant whispered me that
he had never seen such a thing before, and relieved himself from
responsibility by saying Mr. Urquhart "would have it so." In fact,
he had converted the bath-room, for the nonce, into a Turkish Bath.
But how miserable, how puny, how inefficient is the hot bath, or the
boxed-up vapour bath, to the free, the open, the well-ventilated
and well-heated Calidarium! The sufferer from spasm may live in the
Calidarium, he may sleep there the whole night and the whole day; he
may not only bring his muscular system down to any degree of relaxation
that he desire, but he may keep it in that condition for any length of
time, or until the disposition to spasmodic tension has entirely passed
away.
In a paper entitled "Thermotherapeia; the Heat Cure: or the Treatment
of Disease by Immersion of the Body in Heated Air,"[18] I appended the
following note as a convenient popular illustration of the action of
the Turkish Bath in the relief of muscular spasm. "How many are the
instances of spasm which come under the observation of medical men!
Spasm of the stomach, of the bowels, of the ducts of the liver and
kidneys, of the muscles. How needless to remind my brethren of their
infinite variety; of their fearful agony; of our poverty of means for
their relief. But here, again, the Turkish Bath cries out emphatically:
'Behold, we bring succour!' Without going more gravely into the matter,
let us smile over the paragraph which I have just cut out of the _Cork
Examiner_. As physiologists, we recognise the point and the value of
the illustration; as philosophers, we appreciate the lesson, and become
the wiser for its gift. 'One day last week, a boy, employed in Messrs.
Simpson and Baker's biscuit factory was ascending to a loft, when one
of the workmen below called him; and in turning his head quickly to
answer the call, he got a crick in the neck of such severity that the
head lay almost flat on the shoulder. The poor boy was going home in
great agony, when he was met by Mr. Hegarty, the proprietor of the City
View Turkish Bath, in the neighbourhood of Blarney, who, on learning
what was the matter with him, sent him to take a bath. When the boy was
inside about a quarter of an hour, and perspiration had set in, he was
placed under a tepid shower-bath, and as soon as the water commenced to
fall on him, the neck began to straighten, and in a short time the head
had recovered its natural position, to the great delight of the poor
lad, and rather to the astonishment of the other parties in the bath,
who did not expect so speedy a cure. The boy was still suffering from a
pain in the neck; but a second bath the next morning removed that, and
he returned to his work immediately.'
[18] This Paper was presented to the British Medical Association, at
its meeting in Torquay, in August, 1860, and was published in the
"British Medical Journal" of Oct. 13th, 1860.
"What remedy so potent for that dislocation and spasm of the fibres
of the sterno-mastoid as the relaxing warmth of the Calidarium. How
many who read this will call to mind hundreds of cases in which its
effects to the untaught mind would be equally amazing. We may dare to
balance its merits against those of chloroform. We may discover in
it a valuable aid in the reduction of dislocations; in the relief of
strangulated hernia; or in soothing the wasted pangs of parturition."