26. It is equally important that the body should not be left in a state
of perspiration, for it will soon become chilly.
27. Patients who are able to do so should exercise a little both before
and immediately after a bath to insure thorough reaction.
28. An hour’s rest soon after a bath will add to its beneficial effects.
It is best to go to bed and cover warm.
29. If a bath is followed by headache and fever, there has been
something wrong, either in the kind of bath administered, or in the
manner of giving it.
30. Very cold and very hot baths are seldom required. The barbarous
practices of half a century ago are now obsolete, or should be, if they
are not quite discontinued as yet. No good resulted from them which
cannot be attained by milder means, and much harm was occasioned which
is avoided by the use of less extreme temperatures.
31. Patients should not be allowed to become dependent on any special
form of bath, as an after-dinner fomentation to aid digestion, the
abdominal bandage, or any other appliance. Destroy such a habit if it
has been formed.
32. Order, cleanliness, dispatch, and a delicate sense of propriety are
items which every bath attendant should keep constantly in mind, and
which will often contribute in no small degree to success in the use of
this agent.
33. Never employ a bath without a definite and legitimate purpose in
view. It is somewhat customary, in many institutions where water is
employed, to apply it in a routine way. Many baths are prescribed for
the sake of producing variety, or pleasing the patient. A faithful and
scientific physician will carefully adapt his remedies to the condition
of his patient, and will observe the results. It seems to be a prevalent
error that it makes little difference how water is applied, provided the
patient is only wet. Warm, hot, tepid, temperate, cool, and cold baths
are used indiscriminately.
So, also, the different modes of administering baths of the same
temperature are disregarded in many cases. In general, each particular
form of bath is especially adapted to the treatment of special
conditions, and it is the best test of the proficiency of a physician,
in the use of water, to observe whether he recognizes the distinctions
between the various kinds of baths, and is able to adapt them to the
appropriate conditions.
34. Giving too much treatment is likely to be the error into which the
inexperienced will fall, rather than the opposite extreme. Nature cannot
be forced to do more than she is capable of doing; and as nature must do
the healing, if a cure is accomplished, remedies should be of a helping
rather than a crowding or forcing nature. The vitality of patients may
be expended uselessly by treatment, for baths excite vital resistance,
as well as drugs, a fact which many overlook. The dangers of
over-treatment are not so great as some imagine, however, who take the
opposite extreme, and advocate _rest_ as the great cure-all. We have
seen patients who seemed to be quite monomaniacs on the subject of “rest
cure,” who needed a good thorough stirring up with useful exercise more
than any other kind of treatment.