Every Man His Own Doctor / The Cold Water, Tepid Water, and Friction-Cure, as Applicable to Every Disease to Which the Human Frame Is Subject, and Also to the Cure of Disease in Horses and Cattle

by R. T. Claridge

IX.—Ablutions.

There can be no doubt, if the public were in the habit of using cold ablutions every morning, their health would be improved, and the number of consumptive cases much diminished.

There are many ways of using ablutions, according to the health and strength of the parties.

Strong people ought to go into a cold bath the moment they get out of bed; then rub themselves well for three or four minutes. If not in their usual health, the bath should be protracted, and more friction used.

Another or general mode is to have a washing tub, water only two or three inches deep, put a towel into the water, leave the bed quite warm, step into the tub, take up the towel with as much water as possible, and squeeze it over the head and shoulders several times, rub the body well with the towel, then sit down in the tub, and with wet hands rub the abdomen, etc., for a minute or two.

Delicate persons may be washed all over with wet towels; sometimes it is desirable to wash first with tepid water, then with cold.

Where there is a great whiteness of skin, which indicates a want of circulation, or parties feel themselves indisposed, dripping sheets are prescribed; the friction here used arouses the vital energies, and in general produces a most refreshing feeling throughout the system.

Priessnitz never prescribes cold immersion till the body be prepared for it. When patients have been desirous of bathing in a river, he has always opposed it; saying, “Bathing excites nervous sensibility; too much bathing excites the system to an injurious extent.” The various baths resorted to in hydropathy, are to effect an object, and as such are medically applied. Sea bathing for some constitutions is remarkably wholesome, but to others it is injurious.