Sulphur Baths.--Bleaching Old Faces.--Experiments in
Bathing.--Cautions.--Need of Public Baths.--Their Proper
Prices.--Method of Giving Sulphur Vapor-baths.--Hot Baths for
Hot Weather.--Russian Baths at Home.--Improvements Needed in
Public Baths.--What they Should be.--What they Are.--The Russian
Vapor-bath.---After-Sensations.--Brightness and Lightness of
Health.--Reverence for the Physical.--Influence of Bathing on the
Nerves and Passions.--Necessity of Public Baths.
It is not a little amusing to receive requests for a way to give
sulphur vapor-baths to the face alone. Somebody wants a fair
complexion, and fancies it may be gained by bleaching the face like
an old Leghorn bonnet in a barrel. Aside from the certainty of being
choked to death by this method, there is no way of whitening and
refining the face by applications to it alone, when the conditions
of health are not regarded in other things. Carbolic acid may heal
pimples, and glycerine masks soften the skin; but lovely red and white,
with lips like currants, and skin like the flesh of young cranberries,
can not be had unless the blood is pure. For this it is indispensable
that food should be regulated, plenty of exercise and sunshine taken,
and all the bodily functions kept in the best order.
The woman who thought she could take the sulphur vapor-bath at home in
her own bath-room finds that her experience reads like a chapter from
the Danbury _News_ man. A bouquet of burning matches would furnish
the perfume inhaled in the process, and the vapor reaching her face,
left it pale and brown in spots, as if she had moth patches. That she
escaped with hair only partially tinged, and any eyebrows to speak of,
is due to Nature’s guardian care, which prompted the struggle for life
half a minute sooner than pride was inclined to give up. The fumes
lingering about the premises have induced the gravest suspicions on
the part of her neighbors. She is inclined to think that, if her face
would only turn brown again all over, she would forego her dreams of
Parian brow and cheeks like peaches.
A sulphur vapor-bath is a matter of caution, when given by the best of
hands. It is not well to take it in the damp, “breaking-up” weather of
March, for the bath opens the pores, and catching cold with several
grains of sulphur in one’s body is the next thing to salivation by
mercury. The consequence is that one feels heavy and aching, the eyes
grow weak, and teeth grumble, while latent rheumatic pains wake up
to sharp reminder of one’s imprudence. When the weather is warm and
settled, these baths are a luxury and medicine combined. They are most
effectual purifiers of the system, searching out and removing all waste
particles, to leave the skin as new and fair as a baby’s. I have seen
old and darkened complexions restored by them in a way that was little
short of miraculous. These baths are also of benefit in neuralgia, and
deal powerfully with scrofulous affections.
The time is not far distant when every town that owns a public hall
will also have its public baths. Before that time comes, physicians
ought to moderate the charges for these remedial agents. Outside of
our large cities, the cost of taking sulphur vapor-baths is $5 each,
and they are given only in series, as prescribed by the judgment or
humor of the physician. When will people learn the laws and habits
of their own bodies, so that they need not be at the mercy of every
specialist who chooses to make money out of their emergencies? For the
benefit of outsiders it ought to be said that the charge in the best
establishments of New York is not higher than $2 50 for the single
bath, and a great reduction from this is common.
The essential difficulty of the sulphur vapor treatment is to keep from
the face the powerful fumes, which are dangerous to breathe. For this
object the bather enters a wooden box, with a cover that fits the
neck. She takes a seat in the box undressed, and the cover is adjusted
so that only the head is left out. Cloths or a rubber collar are
closely drawn about the neck to prevent the least escape of gas, and a
wet sponge is laid on the top of the head, or, what is better, a very
wet towel folded turbanwise round the back of it, and over the top,
thus cooling the base of the brain, the side arteries, and sensitive
upper part. This compress must be frequently wet with cold water during
the bath--a precaution which removes the danger of apoplectic seizures
by the intense heating of the blood. Steam charged with sulphur is then
let into the box by pipes, and in three minutes the perspiration flows
as if the luckless victim were melting away. In the best establishments
an attendant fans the bather all the time the steam is let on, to cool
the head, into which the heated blood rushes in a way that makes the
wet towel smoke directly. And this is an attention the patient must
insist upon, for faintness or apoplexy may be the alternative.
In the sultry and oppressive weather of summer the hot bath is of all
others most cooling. No matter how heated the system, water as hot
as possible is the safest and most efficient relief. One wants to
remain in it long enough to give every part of the body a thorough
scrubbing with soap and a mohair wash-cloth, which cleanses the skin
more thoroughly than a brush. The hot water dissolves every particle
of matter that clogs the pores, the rough cloth and soap remove it
searchingly, and the towel is hardly laid aside before a delicious
coolness and freshness passes upon one, like that of a dewy summer
morning. The dangers resulting from a sudden check of perspiration by
plunging into cold water when overheated, or by sitting in a draught
to cool, are avoided, and a greater sense of coolness follows. People
who suffer much in warm weather should reckon this a daily solace. All
enervating effects are warded off by an instant’s plunge into cool
water of, say, seventy degrees. I say cool, for it certainly will feel
as if iced after a bath of nearly a hundred and fifty degrees. In a
common bath-room, by this means, one may experience much of the real
benefit of a Russian vapor-bath.
The bath lasts fifteen minutes, when the vapor is turned off. When the
steam in the box has had time to condense, the cover is unjointed,
and the bather treated to a scrubbing with soap and warm water, which
gradually cools and cleanses the body. Then cooler water is poured over
the body, and, after wiping, one is wrapped in a fresh sheet and lies
down to pleasant dreams.
It is hard that such a necessary requisite to the highest vigor should
rank, as it does, among luxuries. One can hardly imagine an addition
to a fine house more desirable than a bathing-hall, such as Roman
patricians added to their palaces, where any form of vapor or hot bath
was at command.
Many improvements are needed in our public baths. There should be small
dressing-closets, as there are at swimming-baths, where one’s clothes
may be kept from contact with beds on which a thousand people rest in
the course of a year. The reposing-hall should be well lighted, and
paved with tiles, instead of being spread with bits of carpet to be
tossed about; and there should be ample space between the couches.
Every thing should convey the impression of space and repose--of
sunshine, for the sake of its reviving power, and of refinement, for
the soothing it always brings the nerves.
Usually the bath-house is built in a court-yard, where high walls on
every side shut out the sunlight. The basement dressing-room is filled
with narrow couches covered with light rubber sheets, suggestive of
nothing more pleasant than cast-off clothing, and rest measured by the
bath clock, when one’s pillow must be given up to a new-comer.
From this huddled room the bather steps into one beyond summer heat,
dark and dripping with moisture, with a plunge bath in the centre.
Passing through it, one finds next what seems like a wide marble
staircase running the length of each side almost to the low roof, with
gratings let in the face of the steps. The bather ascends one of these
stony couches, and lies down with head on the stony pillow carved every
six feet or so for the purpose. Wrapped in a sheet, already wet with
moisture since leaving the dressing-room, a large sponge dipped in cold
water at the back of one’s head, and another at the mouth and nose,
one feels as if there were perspiration enough already for sanitary
purposes; but when, with a hiss and a roar, the steam is let on through
the gratings, one finds the difference. Rolling vapor fills the room,
so dense that every outline is shut out as completely as in the darkest
night. The heat rises to suffocation, the new bather thinks, and rushes
again and again to the douche against the wall to wet her throbbing
head, or into the next room, which seems cool as a waterfall, for
a gasp of air that she can breathe. Old and experienced bathers lie
still, declaring that, with head down and the wet sponge pressed to
the nose, they breathe without difficulty. What was perspiration is
literally a flowing away in rills and sheets of water that drip from
the bather’s reeking sides. One seems to have turned to jelly, and
submits helplessly to the scrubbing-brush and final shower-bath of
water at eighty degrees, which causes a shiver by contrast.
The outer room is refreshing in its coolness, and one wraps a dry sheet
and blanket round one and lies down on the India-rubber cloth in dreamy
indifference to all the rest of the world.
What follows is Elysium. Every ache and pain, every care, is dispelled
in a trance of rest.
All the descriptions by Eastern travelers of the luxury of the bath
are found true in this last stage of enjoyment. One is rejuvenated,
entranced, and sinks into a light sleep, whose approach seems a prelude
to paradise. The eyes close to keep out the sordid surroundings of the
bathing-room; and every idea, or rather sensation--for the brain is too
passive to think--is bliss. This is the _dolce far niente_ Italians
aspire to--the sum of all delight possible to sensation. Passion and
rapture have no charms that equal it. It is the death and extinction
of all pain. Quite as beautiful is the return to consciousness, sense
after sense regaining double brightness as softly and steadily as the
unfolding of a flower.
After a reluctant waking and going out into the sunlight again one
seems to have found a new self. The feather-like lightness and
elasticity of every limb amount almost to delirium, they are so
different from one’s usual dullness. It is freedom that feels like
flying. If this is simply health, in our common state we must be
farther toward extinction than we imagine.
In this state of purity and light one learns to reverence one’s
physical self. A body that at its best is so glorious and happy ought
not to be exposed to the disturbance of appetite and the contact of
gross things. We need to be very much more refined in our living,
eating, and breathing. We ought to be nicer about our clothes and our
food, choosing the best of meats, and fruit far better than we are now
content with, and should place our dwellings out of the reach of the
least impure air. In this altered and steadied frame evil dispositions
lose their sway. Irritable temper is soothed, despondency flees as by
magic, and fiercer passions lie asleep as at the stroking of their
manes. If any one should read this page who battles with unnatural
desires, which make life less blessed and lofty than it was meant to
be, let her have recourse to this efficient ally. It will restore one
from the horrible depression which craves alcohol or opium, it will
rescue from the perilous excitement of overwrought nerves or too much
brain-work, and banish those morbid feelings which consciously or
unconsciously incline to impurity of imagination if not of life. The
purity of the body and the soul are too closely interwoven for any one
to dare neglect them.
In the old time, saints used to subdue the body by prayer and fasting.
The modern way is by prayer and bathing.
It is hard enough to keep a peaceable, firm, and sweet habit of soul
without letting loose on it the humors and insanities of the body.
These are in no way so surely quelled as by warm baths, and this is why
they ought to be among the public buildings of every village, and made
as cheap as possible. There the drunkard might find a stimulus which
has no reaction, the emotionally insane a sedative that would clear his
brain and steady his nerves. There the exhausted watcher by the sick
might recruit, and the overwrought student, lawyer, or physician find
support without recourse to perilous stimulants. The doors of such a
place in a large city should stand open night and day, like those of
churches.
Women need the bath for all these purposes even more than men. The
feeble mother will find no soothing for her jarred nerves or lightener
of her burdens like the well-applied bath. Strange as it sounds, the
vapor-bath does not weaken. It washes away the worse particles of the
body that weigh it down, and leaves it as if winged. I have known an
invalid of years take it twice and thrice a week, gaining strength
every time. If harm came, it is because the head was not kept cool
by fanning, or because the final sponging was not gradual enough.
There is harm in every remedy used unskillfully. It is the doctor’s
province to direct in such matters, always premising that the best and
wisest physicians prefer to teach their clients the rules of health
and treatment for themselves, and seldom refuse to give the reason and
theory of their orders. It is safe to be shy of the perceptions and
methods of a doctor who doesn’t like to tell what medicines he gives,
and why he gives them. The keenest and best medical men are impatient
to have others see and understand the truth as well as themselves.