"This illustrates our Apparatus as used under the chair, for giving a
hot-air bath only, or hot-air and vapour combined, also for either a
Medicated or Mercurial bath.
"At the back of the top rail of chair is fixed a socket, with a set
screw, a square rod slides up and down this socket, and a folding ring
fits into the top of the rod.
"By this arrangement the hoop for keeping the cloak extended, can be
raised or lowered to be either level with the shoulders leaving the head
exposed, or, if preferred, raised sufficient to cover the head.
"The person about to take the bath puts the apparatus ready for use
under the chair, and placing the cloak lightly over the hoop, sits down,
slips the two ends of the hoop together, draws the cloak round, tying it
down the front with the strings provided, and adjusting it round the
neck, may take the bath comfortably from fifteen to forty minutes,
according to inclination."
But it is possible that the bather may prefer to recline while enjoying
this calming and luxuriant bath. This is easily done, and if the reader
will glance at Plate Two, he will see the modus operandi. Nothing could
be more simple, nothing more effective.
We are not, however, the first to have discovered the merits of Messrs.
Allen's luxurious invention. It is in general use now all over the
country, and medical men are constantly in the habit of recommending the
bath to their patients. So also is the professional press, and among
these such well-known Journals as "The London Medical Record"; "The
Medical Times and Gazette"; "The Medical Examiner"; "The Medical Press
and Circular"; "The Lancet"; and "The British Medical Journal" are loud
in their praises of the apparatus.
It will be especially observed by the intelligent reader that Allen's
bath may be used entirely as a dry hot air bath, or as a mixed hot air
and vapour bath. Well, this in our opinion is a capital idea, because
one can use it as either. We, ourselves, perspire freely, and therefore
use only the hot air, but as Sir Erasmus says: "The great purpose to be
arrived at, so far as temperature is concerned, is to obtain one which
shall be agreeable to the sensations."
The following is what Messrs. Allen and Sons write me themselves
concerning their bath:--
"Our idea is, that the hot air and vapour bath combined is the truest
approach to the Eastern Turkish bath, in which, after the bather has
been in the heated room some little time, and begins to feel somewhat
oppressed, they (the attendants) come round, sprinkle the heated floor
with water; this produces a vapour, and it is almost immediately after
this that the body begins to perspire freely, the vapour also relieves
the breathing very much with some. There are those who will not
perspire in the hot-air bath at all, but do with the hot-air and vapour
bath, which, mingling with the hot-air, produces a moist heat, softens
the skin, and produces perspiration much more quickly."
There is one advantage which the portable bath possesses over the
regular sanatorium Turkish:--the head is not covered, it is not in the
heated atmosphere, and therefore purer air can be breathed, although
both face and scalp perspire as freely as any other part of the body.
The head, however, may be covered if this is thought more pleasant.
Dr L.E. Turner, it would seem believes in having the head exposed
during the bath.
"By the use of your bath," he says "the patients can breathe pure air
uncontaminated by the foetid humours pouring forth from the seven
millions of pores in your neighbour's skin as he sits by your side in
the ordinary Turkish or Russian bath. Besides there is no risk from
over expansion of the pulmonary tissues of the lungs; as when people are
compelled to breathe a heated atmosphere; nor risk from rupture of the
delicate blood vessels of the brain. There are many other advantages
which tend to make me, and not only myself but all other professional
men who have tried them, strong advocates for their use, in place of all
other kinds of Turkish, Russian, or herbal baths."