Part 8

Having now dwelt on the numerous advantages of the Turkish bath, its beneficial effects in preserving health and curing disease, we cannot refrain from expressing our astonishment that the year 1857 should find our noble city destitute of so valuable an institution. Shall we any longer allow this state of things to continue, and permit barbarians to enjoy a source of comfort and of health which we deny to ourselves? Shall we any longer practise this self-denial, and any longer be content to lag behind the civilization of the East? Is it not astonishing that our medical practitioners should have hitherto overlooked the wonderful curative agency of this Turkish bath? and through its want have permitted cholera, and other diseases equally fatal, to roam unchecked through our city, carrying off thousands of our countrymen. Shall the sufferer from sciatica longer submit to the cupping, blistering, and mercurial dosing of the Allopathic physician, undermining his constitution and ruining his health, when he might obtain certain relief from the delightful and health-restoring bath?

We will not fatigue our readers by following Mr. Urquhart into his calculation regarding the probable cost of erecting a Turkish bath in this country, but we believe that an expenditure of about £800 would prove sufficient for the purpose; and dull indeed must we be in perceiving our own interests if we hesitate, for this trifling outlay, to secure to ourselves so great a blessing—at once a luxurious indulgence, a purifier of the blood, a preservative of health, and a remedy against disease.

It must not be supposed that we seek here to advocate the Turkish bath as a better means of maintaining health than that of exercise to perspiration, the means ordained by nature for promoting a healthy activity of all the functions of life: no—we can never improve on the laws of nature, which have been pre-eminently adapted by a beneficent Providence, for the accomplishment of their specific ends: it is only when those laws have been outraged and neglected by the “over-working-brain and under-working-body” habits of a 19th century, that art steps in, in the shape of the Turkish bath, and proposes to produce those beneficial effects on the system, without injury to it, which nature had meant to be produced by active exercise. The Turkish bath is, in short, an antidote for the unwholesome lives we live, —a peace-offering to outraged nature for our non-compliance with her laws. To ladies, to invalids, and men of business, whose sedentary occupations preclude the possibility of healthful exercise, the Turkish bath presents an inestimable boon.

We strongly recommend the perusal of Dr. Barter’s lecture at Bradford to our readers, as a masterly exposition of a subject by the only physician in the kingdom who has practically studied it.

NOTES

1. The Water Cure in Chronic Disease. By James M. Gully, M.D. London: Churchill.

2. The Water Cure. By James Wilson, M.D. London: Trubner and Co.

3. Hydropathy. By Ed. Wm. Lane, M.D. London: Churchill.

4. Confessions of a Water Patient. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Bart, M.P. London: H. Baillière.

5. An Address to the Public on the Prevention and Treatment of Cholera on rational principles. Cork: Geo. Purcell and Co.

6. A few Facts forgotten by the Faculty. By S. B. Birch, M.D. London: H. Baillière.

Because either they disapprove of whatever is not practiced by themselves, or they are ashamed to follow new opinions, and to acknowledge when old, the errors they had imbibed in youth.

The ganglionic nerves are those which cover the stomach, and regulate the digestive organs: they are also called the “Solar Plexus.”

The late melancholy case of Mr. Stafford O’Brien is an instance of this injurious practice; that gentleman was copiously bled, doubtless that he might be the better enabled, in his so enfeebled condition, to resist the action of a powerful poison (opium) afterwards administered with deadly effect. We cast no imputation whatever on the attendant physician in this case, as we believe the treatment pursued by him was strictly that enjoined by the orthodox school. Yet, if one wished to destroy life, could they take a surer means of doing it?

“The generality of men are not so much accustomed to pursue this or that course, in consequence of their previous conviction that it is right, as to believe that it is right, because they have been accustomed to pursue it.”—Archbishop Whately.

We do not pretend to assert, that consumption is curable when ORGANIC disease of the lungs has actually been established, but we maintain that the disease is perfectly curable in its incipient stages, though not by drugs nor banishment to a foreign clime. The latter may somewhat prolong the disease, but will not cure it, unless by accident, when of a very mild form.

The temperature and vitality of our bodies depend upon the continued and rapid combination of oxygen with the oxidizable products of the blood; if the necessary supply of oxygen be interfered with, the vitality of the system flags, and disease results.

The very name of scrofula points to the origin of the disease, it being derived from the Latin Scrofa, a pig (quod sues præcipue hoc morbo vexantur. Cels. 5, 38), in allusion to the condition of the skin in those persons in whom a scrofulous habit has been engendered. It has been proved beyond contradiction that the partial closure of the pores, which every one suffers from in some degree, is the chief source of scrofula in all its hideous forms.

When blood is overloaded with carbon, and deprived of its necessary supply of oxygen, the term “veinous” is applied to it.

Where consumption has been relieved by residence abroad, the benefit derived must be attributed to the action on the skin produced by the hot climates to which the patient is usually ordered, but recovery in this way has been confined to very mild forms of the disease, and cannot be looked upon as a scientific mode of treatment; the improved action of the skin deserving to be considered rather as induced accidentally than by design; as otherwise more attention would have been paid to so important a matter, and there would have been no necessity for ordering the patient abroad, as similar results could have been obtained much more easily and effectually by keeping him at home; the use of the Turkish bath conferring all the benefits of increased temperature, followed by the tonic effects of cool air and water, by which the debilitating effects of continual residence in a warm climate are obviated.

Dr. Hufeland remarks—“The more active and open the skin is the more secure will the people be against obstructions and diseases of the lungs, intestines, and lower stomach; and the less tendency will they have to gastric (bilious) fevers, hypochondriasis, gout, asthma, catarrh, and varicose veins.”

The wearing of flannel close to the skin has a two-fold injurious effect:—First, by driving the blood from the surface, whereby the activity of the skin is seriously impaired; and secondly, by shutting out the air, and so preventing it from having access to the blood, to aerate and purify it.

By healthy waste, we mean waste accompanied by corresponding renewal.

We have seen consumptive patients arrive at Blarney shivering with cold though swathed in flannels, who before leaving it were able to wear clothing in winter, under which they previously would have shivered in the hottest day of summer.

The great mortality which has attended the Allopathic treatment of cholera, ought to make us have little compunction in trying something new. There is no fear, in this case, of our “jumping from the frying-pan into the fire;” we are already in it—let us quench it.

Dr. Russell, a well-known Homœopathic author, appears to give the palm to Hydropathy in some rheumatic cases. He thus writes: “In regard to rheumatism, I am inclined to think that there are some varieties of this complaint which utterly defy all Homœopathic medicines, from the deeply morbid condition of the blood; and that in these cases a thorough water course, by effecting a rapid and total renovation of this fluid, might enable our remedies to act more beneficially.” Contrast this liberality with that of the Allopathic physician.

We were told by our physician that the water system would kill us, as we had “not sufficient reaction to stand it.” Had he, however, understood anything of its working, he could not have made this observation, as Hydropathy implies cold water only in those cases to which cold water is suited; and if he had asked Dr. Barter, he would have told him that the chief thing he had to guard against in practice, was excessive reaction, instead of the want of it. We ran the gauntlet, however, and can truly say we never knew what real health was until we did so, and forswore the use of drugs.

The administering of poison to cure disease, is nothing short of a contradiction of terms; for the word poison, if it means anything, means something injurious to bodily health, and therefore incompatible with its welfare. We might as well try to strengthen a man by bleeding him.