Part 6

=Modern Bathing Customs.=—Three centuries ago, public vapor baths were very numerous in Paris, being connected with barber shops, as are many baths in this country at the present time. According to Dr. Bell, Paris can still boast of a great number of bathing establishments. He states that in the baths connected with the city hospitals nearly 130,000 thousand baths were administered in a single year to out-door patients. Doubtless those treated in the hospitals were duly washed and steamed as well. This is certainly a very marked contrast with what we see in the hospitals in this country at the present day. Notwithstanding the advances in many other particulars of hospital management, the cuticles of patients are sadly neglected. In some of our largest hospitals, the filthiness of many patients is so great that close proximity to them is absolutely intolerable. Half a dozen of them, placed in a warm room, speedily impart to the air a fetor unequaled by anything but the effluvia arising from a neglected pig-sty. Such neglect is inexcusable.

The Germans of olden time were very fond of bathing, according to their historical records, and during the Middle Ages, when plagued by the leprosy, the national faith in the virtues of the bath was manifested by making it a religious duty. It is related of Charlemagne that he used to hold his court in a huge warm bath. Modern Teutons seem less partial to the bath, having transferred their fondness from aqua pura to lager beer.

Although the bath was very freely used in England while the island was occupied by the Romans, who erected commodious baths like those in Rome, the wholesome practice is now sadly neglected by the English people, if we may credit their own writers.

It is a curious fact that the bath seems to be quite generally neglected by the most civilized races, while it is almost universally employed by those less advanced nations, the Russians, Turks, Finlanders, and the inhabitants of Persia, Egypt, Barbary, and Hindostan. The Finlanders make great use of the sweating bath. To nearly every house is attached a small sweat-house, where they subject themselves to a temperature of more than 160° F., often emerging at once into an atmosphere much below freezing, with apparent impunity. The Turkish and Russian baths, similar to which are those in use in Egypt and India, are elsewhere described.

The North American Indians employ the bath for many diseases. They have original and peculiar ways of administering both water and vapor baths. The most common bath among them is the vapor, followed by a plunge into a neighboring stream. They generate the steam by pouring water upon hot stones while they are inclosed in a small, close hut made of mud or skins. The native Mexicans secure a hot-air bath by confining themselves in a brick sweat-house which is heated by a furnace outside. These savages seem to have the most implicit confidence in the efficacy of the bath, always employing it when ill, and with excellent success.

=Modern Medical Use of Water.=—In the early part of the eighteenth century, a Sicilian named Fra Bernado acquired the title of “coldwater doctor” from his exclusive use of cold water in treating the sick.

At the very beginning of the eighteenth century, Floyer published a history of bathing which contains accounts of many remarkable cures effected by means of the bath, which he recommended as a most efficient cure for numerous diseases.

A Mr. Hancock, a clergyman, published, in 1722, a tract entitled, “Common Water the Best Cure of Fevers.” Another writer, in a work entitled, “The Curiosities of Common Water,” published in 1723, speaks of water as an “excellent remedy which will perform cures with very little trouble, and without any charge,” and “may be truly styled, an universal remedy.” Both French and German writers were zealously advocating the use of water as a remedy for many diseases at this same period. Many of the French surgeons had also discovered the immense utility of water in surgery, receiving their first lessons of instruction from an ignorant and superstitious miller, who used water in conjunction with charms.

In the latter part of the last century, Drs. Jackson and Currie each published reports of cases of fever in which they had found the use of the bath a remedy of remarkable efficacy. Dr. Currie obtained many followers for a time, but no very deep impression was made upon the public mind, though his cases were authentic, and were very ably reported.

About the end of the first quarter of the present century, a native of Græfenberg, Prussia, by the name of Priessnitz, met with an accident by which three of his ribs were broken. He treated himself by applications of cold water, and then tried the same remedy upon others in similar cases. His success encouraged him to make further experiments, and though an ignorant peasant, his natural acuteness enabled him to devise various means for applying water to the body, and to suit the application to different diseases. His increasing success attracted numerous patients, and his fame became, in a few years, worldwide. Many of his methods were very rude, and his ignorance of medical science often led him into errors; but he succeeded in restoring to health hundreds of patients whose maladies had been pronounced incurable.

The interest in the new method became so great that numerous other individuals, equally ignorant and possessing less shrewdness, undertook to imitate the German innovator. Some of them were successful, many of them were not; all were alike in committing numerous blunders through ignorance of scientific medicine. But the public attention was called to the utility of water as a remedial agent so forcibly that a powerful impression was produced in its favor. From that time until the present, the use of water has been largely in the hands of unscientific empirics who have advocated it as a specific, and employed it to the exclusion of other remedies in a great degree. This course, together with many other gross errors connected with the practice, has deterred scientific physicians from employing it sufficiently to test its merits, only in a few exceptional instances.

The friends of Priessnitz claimed for him a great discovery; but as we have seen, he discovered nothing which was not known a century before, if not, indeed, some thousands of years previous. It is doing Priessnitz no injustice to say that he did little or nothing toward establishing principles, but followed, chiefly, a routine method of practice.

Some scientific members of the medical profession have investigated the subject in some degree, however, at various times, and the result has been that at the present day the utility of water is a well-recognized fact, and it is now often prescribed in the standard text-books as an excellent remedy for many diseased conditions. Yet, that there is still a want of appreciation of the remedy is fully attested by the infrequency of its use by the regular profession. This neglect may be due in part to a prejudice which the members of the regular profession have acquired, on account of the quackery which has too often been connected with the use of this remedy. Nevertheless, there is no good reason why an efficient remedial agent should be suffered to receive the stigma which properly attaches only to those who are responsible for its abuse.

REMEDIAL PROPERTIES.

The value of a drug is judged by its medicinal properties. The more properties it has, and the more powerful its “action,” the more valuable it is considered to be. We need not here enter into a discussion of the nature of medicinal properties, since there is no question among scientific physicians, that the medicinal properties—so-called—of drugs, or their effects upon the human system in diseases, are, in general, the result of vital resistance on the part of the system, an attempt to expel or remove the poison, or defend itself against it. Water also possesses remedial properties, some of which are due to vital resistance, while others grow out of the aid which it affords the vital organs by its physical properties. As its value as a curative agent depends upon these properties, it is important to know what they are.

Refrigerant.—Refrigerant or antiphlogistic medicines are used for the purpose of diminishing the heat of the body. The most they can do is to so depress and paralyze the vital forces as to diminish the production of animal heat. Water, when applied at a proper temperature—any temperature less than 98°—not only diminishes the production of heat, but removes the superfluous heat by conduction. There is not a drug in the whole materia medica that will diminish the temperature of the body so readily and so efficiently as water. How this is effected, has been previously explained in considering the physiological effects of water.

Sedative.—Drugs, the administration of which is followed by a diminished action of the heart, are termed sedatives. They comprise the most powerful poisons known. Their sedative effects are the result of their poisonous influence upon the heart or the nerve centers controlling it. Water is a much more efficient sedative, and its use is never followed by poisonous effects, as is the use of sedative drugs, the “action” of which is often very uncertain. By the cool or cold bath, the pulse may often be reduced twenty to forty beats in a few minutes.

Tonic.—Water may be used in such a way as to increase the rapidity of the circulation and the temperature very quickly and powerfully. The hot bath is a most efficient stimulant, in the true sense of the word. It will so excite the circulation as to increase the pulse from seventy to one hundred and fifty in fifteen minutes. The tonic effects of a cool bath are well appreciated by all who have ever enjoyed it.

Anodyne.—Certain drugs are called anodyne because they diminish nervous sensibility, thus relieving pain. Water applied in the form of a hot fomentation will not infrequently give relief when every drug has failed. Applied in various other ways, it is very effectual in allaying nervous irritability.

Antispasmodic.—No remedy is so certainly successful in hysterical convulsions as water. In infantile convulsions, its success is also unrivaled. In cramp, and even in puerperal convulsions, its utility has been well demonstrated.

Astringent.—The value of cold water in arresting hemorrhage is well attested by all physicians.

Laxative.—Used in various ways, water is very effectual in producing movement of the bowels, but never occasions those violent and unpleasant symptoms which accompany and succeed the use of purgatives.

Emetic.—In the great majority of cases, no other emetic is needed, and no better can be found.

Eliminative.—Water is a most perfect eliminative. It dissolves the excrementitious and other foreign elements of the blood, and thus materially aids in their elimination. Hence, it is a very useful diaphoretic, increasing the action of the skin, and is equally valuable as a diuretic, having the same effect upon the kidneys.

Alterative.—For a long period, mercury has been considered as the champion alterative of the materia medica. It must yield the place to water, however; for the most it can do is to destroy the elements of the blood, while water not only accelerates waste, but increases construction in the same proportion, according to the experiments of Prof. Liebig.

Derivative.—One of the most important properties of water applications is their powerful derivative effect. No other application, internal or external, can equal them in efficiency and certainty of action.

There are very few agents which possess so many remedial properties as water. There are none which effect so much with so little expense to the vital powers of the patient. Many drugs will produce results similar to those obtained by the use of water, and thus accomplish good, no doubt; but at the same time, they often work so much mischief in the system that the evil done is frequently much greater than the good accomplished. The aim of the faithful physician should be to accomplish for his patient the greatest amount of good at the least expense of vitality; and it is an indisputable fact that in a large number of cases water is just the agent with which this desirable end can be obtained.

=Testimony of Eminent Physicians.=—The testimonies of Currie, Jackson, and numerous other physicians of the last century have already been quoted in favor of water. There are numerous practitioners of the present day who are equally favorable to this remedial agent. Perhaps we cannot do better than to quote from the Health Reformer the following paragraphs of an abstract report of a paper read before the New York Academy of medicine, by Prof. Austin Flint, M. D., president of the society, the title of the paper being, “The Researches of Currie, and Recent Views Concerning the Use of Cold Water”:—