APPLICATION OF THE BATH TO HORSES AND CATTLE, FOR TRAINING, AND THE
CURE OF DISEASE.
The Turkish Bath is not only applicable to man, but is suitable also to
animals, to the horse and the dog, those faithful and useful friends
and companions of man; and also to his oxen, his cows, and his sheep.
In the instance of the horse and dog, it is capable of preserving
health and condition, and preparing them by training for those feats of
strength and speed which are peculiar to those animals. And it becomes
an important and valuable medicine in treating their diseases.
In employing the bath as a means of training, we must have clearly
before us the powers of the bath, on the one hand, and the precise
objects which we wish to attain, on the other. The bath will abstract
the old material from the system, and will thereby render the system
more ready to take up and more capable of appropriating new and
strengthening nutritious matter which may be given to supply its
place. In other words, it will do the sweating part of the process
excellently, without fatigue, without wear and tear to the economy.
But this, although a necessary part of the process of training, is
only a part of the process. Other means are required to direct the
new nutritive matter to the organs which especially require it--the
organs of locomotion; and the principal of these means is exercise.
The racehorse must still have his muscles trained by exercise; the
prize-fighter, prize-runner, or prize-rower, must still pursue a
systematic course of exercise; but the exercise in both instances
is only that which is required to educate the muscles, to give them
power, precision, facility of action, and to strengthen the breathing
function; the exercise for the abstraction of unnecessary matter, for
the removal of fat, is no longer requisite; for that the bath will
amply and sufficiently provide.
My friend Mr. Goodwin, of Hampton Court, who has had much and the best
kind of experience in the management of horses, tells me that for more
than twenty-five years he has been in the habit of having his horses
washed whenever they returned to the stable in a state of perspiration,
and with the result that his stable was remarkable for the health and
condition of the animals. His process was as follows:--the horses were
thoroughly sponged over with warm water; then with tepid water; and,
lastly, with cold; the water was then scraped out of their coats with a
scraper (_strigillum_), and they were well wiped down with a leather.
After this they were covered with a cotton sheet, and their legs were
bandaged with cotton rollers. In fifteen or twenty minutes the sheet
was raised gradually, first at one corner, then at another, until it
was completely removed; the uncovered portion being thoroughly wiped
before the next was proceeded with, and the process being continued
until the animal was completely dry. After this treatment, there was no
fear of any subsequent _breaking out_, and however sharply the horses
had been worked, frequently after a run at the rate of twenty miles an
hour, they were ready and willing for a double feed of oats.
How different this picture from that of the common condition of horses
under similar circumstances; breaking out into a profuse, and often a
succession of profuse perspirations after being put into the stable,
and unable to eat their corn from faintness and exhaustion. But how
curious the parallel with the stages of the Turkish Bath: the exercise
is the _sudatorium_; then the operations of the _lavatorium_; firstly,
the warm affusion, then the cold douche and the _strigil_; and, lastly,
the _frigidarium_ and the sheet. Nay, the parallel permits of being
pushed even one stage further. My friend W. says:--"I have no objection
to see a friend in the bath, or invite him to dinner; but not both on
the same day, for the bath makes him so hungry, that my cook threatens
to give me warning."
Mr. Urquhart, in a note to "The Pillars of Hercules" observes:--"A plan
has recently been successfully adopted for drying horses after hunting.
Two men, one on each side, throw over him buckets of water as hot as
he can bear it; he is then scraped, and rubbed with chamois leather,
the head and ears carefully dried with a rubber, and his clothing put
on. In twenty minutes he is perfectly dry, and there is no fear of his
breaking out again: the old plan of rubbing him dry took from one to
two hours of very hard work, and he generally broke out once or twice,
and would often be found in a profuse sweat at twelve or one o'clock at
night. The bath might be adopted for horses." "At present we shampoo
our horses and clear off the epidermis, while we bestow no such care on
our own bodies."
On the application of the Turkish Bath to the management and training
of horses, the following letter, addressed by Mr. Goodwin to the Editor
of _Bell's Life_, is especially important and interesting:--
"MR. EDITOR,--I hope your insertion of Mr. Erasmus Wilson's
observations upon the advantages to be derived from the Turkish Bath
may be the means of inducing owners of horses and their trainers
to try its effects. It is obvious that in the racing stables such
an adjunct must be found of great use to horses whose limbs are
defective, and not capable of sustaining the exercise necessary
to reduce their superfluous flesh, and also in cases where the
constitutional powers of the animals in preparation will not admit of
their doing the strong work required of them.
"Mr. Wilson's remarks upon the system of washing horses after their
work allude to a practice which was introduced, and successfully
carried out, under my direction for many years in the Royal stables.
The following narrative in relation to it may be some testimony in
its favour:--When the late Earl of Jersey became Master of the Horse
his lordship sent for me on one occasion hastily, to express his
horror at seeing the stablemen wash a set of horses which had just
come in from a sharp run on the Windsor road; and so great was his
lordship's prejudice to the innovation that I was afraid I should
not be able to persuade him to permit its continuance, to give him
an opportunity of observing its effects. His lordship, however, at
my earnest request, came back to the mews in two hours' time to look
at those horses, and not only found them quite dry and well dressed,
but all of them eating their corn with good appetites. This induced
his lordship to pay particular attention, whenever the opportunity
occurred, to the horses so treated, and he became such a convert to
this method, so new to him, that he often brought his friends to
witness the beneficial effects of it; and, amongst others, the late
Mr. Assheton Smith came, and immediately adopted it in his hunting
stables, and, I have heard, with great success.
"I know not whether jockeys have ever tried the hot-air bath for
reducing themselves; but as they are compelled often to undergo
such killing fatigue and privation as to impair their strength and
endanger their health, they may, I hope, now that it is brought to
their notice, be persuaded to make early trial of that which seems to
offer them so much comfort. And as Mr. Wilson remarks that the skin
of the accustomed bather perspires more readily and freely than in
those whose pores have not been trained to its operation, jockeys may
anticipate the acquisition of some very acceptable information.
"The expense of converting a loose box into a hot-air bath is so
trifling that the experiment may be made at no great cost. London
has already many Turkish Baths for bipeds, and I hope Newmarket will
not be without one for quadrupeds. Col. Knox has testified to its
beneficial results upon horses in Ireland; and Col. Towneley has one
at his training stables at Middleham, which, I believe, has answered
every expectation.
"In the treatment of disease I have often experienced the benefit
of hot air; for in former days, when maladies in the horse were
more rapid and acute than we now usually meet with them, and were
generally ushered in by a cold shivering fit, it was my constant
practice at Carlton House stables, when such a case occurred, to
take the horse at once into the men's kitchen, and put him before
the large fire which always kept it at a high temperature. By the
heat, with the help of constant friction, I generally succeeded in
cutting short the duration of the cold, clammy sweat, which is always
indicative of mischief more or less serious. Were it for the treating
of disease only, if I had a stable of valuable horses under my care,
I would soon have also a hot-air bath.
"Yours, &c., W. J. GOODWIN.
"Hampton Court, Nov. 28th, 1860."
I have assumed for the skin the rank of a respiratory, of a breathing
organ; and have endeavoured to show that the cooling and drying
operations of the Frigidarium are an important part of the bath, as
their performance is associated with the exposure of the skin to the
atmosphere. Mr. Witt urges the prolongation of this period of the bath
to as lengthened a degree as possible; and he delights to tell his
auditors, dispersed around him like Roman senators in the Forum, and
with no other garment than a cotton scarf, variously and negligently
twined around their bodies--that this was the period when Pliny betook
himself to his garden, and in the full light of the sun, and refreshed
by the sweet breath of the unfettered winds of Heaven, walked in
pleasant contemplation on a terrace carpeted with a beautiful little
moss of velvet softness. We read that Sir Walter Scott indulged in this
kind of atmospheric bath; we recognise in it the special charm and
much of the value of the river bath and the sea-shore bath; and we are
not startled when we hear from the mouth of an advocate of the Turkish
Bath, Dr. John Le Gay Brereton, in a lecture delivered in Sheffield
in 1858, that--"After leaving the hot room in Bradford bath, bathers
were in the habit, last winter, of jumping into a bed of snow which had
been collected for the purpose. I have myself spent the whole night
in the woods at Blarney, without any clothing save the bath-sheet,
after coming out of Dr. Barter's bath at that place. This was after a
ball, when, with several other gentlemen, we had retreated to the bath
for the sake of refreshment from fatigue. So delightful was the cool
air, that when far away from any dwelling, we threw aside even our
sheets, to enjoy the morning breeze at daybreak. You need not then fear
exposure to the air, after the bath; it is not so much for the sake
of _cooling_ that this process is necessary, as to keep up the action
of the bath by exposing the skin to air; it is to compel the skin to
_breathe_."
The importance of _ventilating the skin_ is illustrated in the process
of clipping and singeing, as applied to the horse. The thickening and
lengthening of the coat of the horse in the autumn season is a change
obviously adapted to prepare the animal for the coming severity of the
winter; and however natural in his wild state, is ill suited to his
condition as a useful and obedient servant of man. As autumn advances,
and after a few cold days, the coat of the horse appears as if "broken
up" into plots, and the individual hairs stand out roughly, or, in
technical language, the coat "stares." Accompanying this change in the
appearance of the skin, the animal becomes weak and languid, loses his
spirit, breaks out into sudden and abundant perspirations upon slight
exercise, and shows himself unequal to his work. Now, the ready remedy
for this state of things is the removal of the excess of hair, and
the exposure of the skin to the action of the atmosphere. If the coat
be clipped close to the skin or singed, or, better still, be shaven,
the animal preserves his strength and vigour, and is equal to all the
labour that may reasonably be imposed upon him. Of the three processes,
shaving is the best, then clipping, and lastly singeing. As to the
latter, it is not quite clear whether its inferior position in rank
to the others is due to the less complete exposure of the skin to the
action of the air, or to the sealing of the ends of the hairs by the
act of burning. It is not improbable that the cut ends of the hair in
shaving and clipping may serve as breathing pores for the inhalation of
air, an advantage to the oxygenization of the circulation in the skin
that is lost in the contraction and obliteration of the cells of the
hair which ensues after singeing.
Another curious concomitant of clipping is the change in the colour of
the coat, a change which seems to indicate that the colour of the hair
produced in the winter time is different from that of the summer.
Dr. Barter, who has done so much to advance the popularity of the bath
in Ireland, and has given much attention to farming operations, has
applied the bath to the treatment of animals suffering under disease.
The following extracts from a "Report of the Committee appointed to
inquire into the Utility of the Turkish Bath erected by Dr. Barter,
at St. Ann's, Blarney, for the Cure of Distemper in Cattle," have an
interest peculiarly their own. Referring to one of the patients, the
reporters observe: "We were informed she had been about an hour and
a half in, had been eight days under treatment, and, as we were able
subsequently to satisfy ourselves, had scarcely a trace of disease
about her, and the next day was to be returned to the herd cured. She
seemed quite to enjoy her position, the perspiration was rolling off
her freely, and her breathing was slightly quickened. She carried her
head erect, her eyes clear and healthy, and when she was removed to the
outer room to get her douche-bath, no one could mistake the feeling of
refreshment and pleasure that the dashing of each successive bucket of
water over her seemed to give, and when she had been slightly rubbed
down she was turned out to graze, the day being fine and warm; but when
otherwise, there is a shed close by into which the animals are turned
after leaving the bath, to let them further cool and dry before being
allowed out.
"One circumstance is worthy of remark, which applies to all the animals
treated in the bath, and testified to by the men in charge of the
four different baths we were shown--namely, the evident pleasurable
recollection the bath seems to leave with them; all the different
animals--horses, dogs, cattle, and pigs--going of their own accord to
the door of the bath, and dogs particularly indicating their anxiety by
waiting at the door, whining till it is opened, and then running in.
"This finished our inspection, and we now beg to submit to your council
the conclusions at which we have arrived from the above facts, and the
information we were able to obtain in the course of our inquiries.
"First, the proportion of deaths to recoveries in the treatment of
cattle distemper with the Turkish Bath does not appear to exceed one
in ten, while the proportion that has been hitherto usual under other
forms of treatment has varied from one death in three to one in four of
the cattle attacked.
"Secondly, that the constitution is not impaired by the treatment with
the bath as it is by any of the other systems with which we are at
present acquainted; and that this fact is particularly illustrated by
the rapidity with which, in every case, the milk almost immediately
returns on the animal being relieved from the disease.
"Thirdly, that in the treatment of several of the well-known serious
diseases of the inferior animals, its use has been attended with the
most favourable results, and particularly in all inflammatory diseases
of the internal organs.
"In conclusion, while we are far from thinking that a subject of such
vast importance could be satisfactorily investigated in the very
limited time we were able to devote to it, we nevertheless feel that
we have seen and heard quite enough to warrant us in recommending the
subject to the calm and serious investigation of those most vitally
interested in the subject."
OBSERVATIONS ON THE USE OF THE BATH.[19]
[19] These observations and rules for the bath were drawn up by a
gentleman of much practical experience on the subject, and I have
thought that I should be doing a service to the reader to reprint them
in this place. They are peculiarly suggestive of self-management in the
bath.
A Bath is an aggregate of many parts, all more or less essential in
forming the whole. To single out, therefore, any particular chamber, or
any special contrivance used therein, and to call it _the_ bath, is the
same as singling out any room in a house, and calling it _the_ house.
Bathing is a process; and that process is an elaborate one. It comes
without thought to those accustomed to it, and no form of words can
convey it to those who are not. The bath being the practice of a
cleanly and polite people, habits of cleanliness and politeness must be
observed by those who frequent it. No code of rules and instructions
can teach the use of the bath: strangers must learn from the attendants
how they are to conduct themselves, and not speculate upon what they do
not understand. The following injunctions, however, may perhaps be of
some service:--
I. The bath should be taken (especially by the uninitiated) before
dinner: but if in the evening, a light repast may be taken in the
middle of the day.
II. Habits of cleanliness, decorum and repose are imperative. The
floors of the inner chambers of the bath must never be trodden with
shoes; these, and all other ordinary articles of dress, are to be left
in the outer room. The bathing dress is to be strictly worn throughout,
and never laid aside, except when the bather may be the sole occupant
of an apartment. To ensure the necessary quiet and repose, all noisy
and exciting conversation is prohibited.
III. Where there is a tepid-chamber, the bather is to remain therein
for a short time, or until a gentle moisture appears on the surface of
the skin.
IV. He is then to proceed to the hot-chamber (having first twisted
a piece of linen around the head, in the form of a turban), and if,
at any time, the heat be found oppressive, the head may be wetted
with warm, and the feet with cold water; and he should pass to and
from a cooler room, until the system becomes habituated to the heat.
When the skin shall hereafter acquire a more healthy condition, and
copious perspiration speedily results from every bath, the feeling of
oppression will cease.
V. Water may be drunk, if desired; but to drink without the desire
sometimes produces sickness.
VI. Shampooing (where attainable) necessarily precedes the processes
of ablution, for which object the bather returns for a time to the
tepid-chamber. In the absence of better means, rough linen or hair
gloves may be used to remove the softened cuticle.
VII. From the hot-chamber he proceeds to the washing-room, if this
should form a separate apartment. After the whole surface of the body
has been well soaped and rubbed, it is to be exposed to a shower of
warm water; and this soaping and cleansing is to be repeated as often
as may be required. In all washings care must be taken that the same
water shall never touch the body twice.
VIII. Immediately following the final ablution with warm water, the
whole body should be subjected for a few seconds to a stream of cold
water; or the bather may take a plunge into a pool of cold water, where
such convenience forms a part of the bath.
IX. If this application of cold be long continued, or if it take place
in too cool a room, the bather should return to the hot-chamber for a
few minutes, in order that the skin may regain its previous degree of
warmth; generally, however (after having thrown aside the wet bathing
garb), it will be sufficient to envelope the whole body quickly with a
dry sheet, and to proceed at once to the--
X. Cooling-room, where the recumbent posture and perfect quietude are
enjoined for a few minutes, until the accelerated action of the heart
shall have quite subsided: the sheet is to be cast off by degrees, and
its place supplied with a fresh bath garment.
XI. Plenty of time is to be devoted to this important department of
the bath; the skin is to be exposed, as much as possible, to the
vivifying action of the sun and air, and opportunity thus afforded to
the newly-opened pores to absorb oxygen from the atmosphere. Where the
cooling-room opens into a retired court, or garden, the open air is
preferable.
XII. Before dressing, the whole surface of the body must be dry to the
touch. If the cooling stage be hurried over, a secondary perspiration
may break out; this may give cold, and this alone; but this is the
result of mismanagement, not of the bath. Finally; the bather should
"Dress deliberately, walk away slowly, and reflect properly on the
blessing that he has enjoyed."
THE END.
LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious printer's errors corrected.
In general, every effort has been made to replicate this text as
faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings,
inconsistently hyphenated words, and other inconsistencies.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Eastern, or Turkish Bath, by Erasmus Wilson