For the right training, so we believe, is that which shall enable a man—this is no fanciful idea, but one that has and is now being put into practice by both the writers—to be capable of hard brain-work during the whole time that he is putting his body into the best possible condition both for general health and also for a special event. The mens sana should not be left out of the corpore sano, and health consists in the efficiency not of one at the cost of the other, but of both to the benefit of each. Finally, with regard to special training, we believe that it cannot possibly fail to be injurious to a man to go out of severe training with the completeness and suddenness with which many do when the event is over. After a training of weeks, the desire for certain foods and stimulants, if they were in themselves unhealthy, should have ceased, the body in fact should have been brought into such a condition that it would feel by now a natural repugnance for them. If, then, this repugnance, or at any rate absence of desire is not felt, either they were not unhealthy, and might have been allowed in moderation, or the resumption of them with that extreme freedom—not to say excess—which marks the end of training, is only compassed with a certain effort. Is it worth while?
Finally, also, with regard to general training, the acquirement that is of really good health, which is within the reach of the majority, and incumbent upon all to attempt, a fair trial of simpler foods is recommended to all who habitually feel slightly indisposed when working hard, and who are cut off to a large extent from regular exercise, and is suggested, if only on the ground of expense, to many others. Similarly, a diminution in stimulants is recommended to all who habitually take them, in order that they may find for themselves what the effect (on themselves only) is. Similarly, also, with regard to smoking: for the concensus of professional trainers is dead against it, as a foe both to eye and endurance. Some, we believe, will not find it so, but anyone may, and very likely the majority will. In any case, it will hurt nobody to drop it for a week or two.
CHAPTER V.
WATER, HEAT AND LIGHT.
It is not our intention to speak in any special manner about prescribed remedies for different ailments, since our concern is with the general standard of health and fitness rather than with temporary ailments, for which in many cases some special treatment is the most convenient remedy. But our object being to show how by a proper mode of life the body may be put into a state of health in which it is the least likely to need any help from drugs or special treatment, it would be clearly out of place, and imply a want of faith on our part in our present system if we thought it in the least necessary to talk much about remedial treatments. But there are certain simple applications of water and heat, which though they may be adopted remedially, are yet part of a rational and healthy mode of life—that is to say, they can both be used by anyone suffering from some definite complaint, and at the same time belong to the daily and regular régime of the thoroughly healthy man. The different sorts of baths, for instance, are, if rightly and scientifically used, both remedial, and will form part of the daily treatment of the healthy body.
As far as concerns the upper classes, at any rate, there is probably no race in the world which nowadays[10] uses so much water as the Anglo-Saxon; but our manner of using it is, to a large extent, luxurious rather than practical, sensuous rather than sensible. The morning cold bath, for instance, which some Frenchman the other day wittily called the “Englishman’s castle,” is, though eminently healthy and invigorating for some people, neither healthy nor invigorating for all, and cleansing for none except in a slight degree. The cold bath, indeed, is a sort of fetish; it is regarded as a piece of ritual belonging to the scheme of things which “makes us Englishmen what we are,” and to criticise the use of cold baths is something like “taking the breeks off a Hielander.” But for the sake of those thousands who have cold baths because it is their habit, and feel rather chilled and dispirited than otherwise by the process, it is perhaps worth while to say a few words about cold and other baths.
Water hot or cold, externally applied, has three main functions: (i.) to cleanse, (ii.) to promote or equalise circulation, (iii.) to invigorate and harden. It is mainly to its excellent effects with regard to the third of these functions that the complete cold plunge owes its popularity; for nothing—given that the heart is strong, and the liver not prone to sluggishness—is more delightfully exhilarating than the sudden thrill of cold water when one is either warm from hours in bed, or hot from violent exercise. But it must be remembered that it is distinctly not given to everyone to be sufficiently robust to be able to indulge in it. There are some people who are clearly benefited—as far as we can see—by it; there are many who are not injured by it, and can continue to take it for the sake of the pleasurable sensation it produces; but there are also many who are injured by it, who run a risk anyhow in its use. For the shock and contrast of it is a shock: a sudden drag is put on the racing heart, a sudden check is given to the hot open-pored skin. It is exactly that which is pleasant: it is that also which may be dangerous. Luckily the test of its desirability, or at any rate, harmlessness in any special case, is easy to apply, and if anyone feels chilled after cold bathing, or finds that after it the feet and hands are a little numb and cold, with perhaps a loss of colour under the nails, it is fairly certain that he or she has not the circulation which can be benefited by a cold bath; but may be hurt by it. Or if anyone finds it necessary to make a very vigorous use of the rough towel afterwards in order to get warm again, the cold bath probably does not suit him. Again, in some it produces a certain torpidity of the liver, equally easily indicated; here, also, we have one of Nature’s clear danger-flags waving us off.
The cold bath suits and probably benefits most of those who do not feel these dispiriting after-effects, and the reason for it is obvious. The cold water checks the circulation momentarily; it is literally a cold sponge on the heart, and it momentarily drives away the blood from the skin. But then, if the bather has good natural reaction, this momentary chill will be succeeded by a fresh assertion of his vigour; the heart momentarily checked will, combatively, reassert itself, the blood will rush back to the skin vessels from which it has been momentarily driven, and the exhilaration of the cold shock will be succeeded by a fresh exhilaration of tingling vigour. But in any case a cold bath should not be taken by anyone already cold or chilled; it is because the body is warm, the heart beating fully, and the circulation vigorous that the subsequent reaction is vigorous. But to take a cold bath when one is cold is to demand an effort from something which should be not checked but encouraged.
As a cleanser, however, the cold bath is, we regret to say, hopelessly incompetent. For to clean the skin properly it is not sufficient to clean the mere surface of the skin. The pores have to be opened and the dirt and waste products, ordinarily invisible to the eye, taken from them. Now cold water cannot do this, since one of its main effects is to close the pores. But if anyone wants to see what happens when the pores are thoroughly opened and cleaned, let him take a Turkish bath and be well rubbed afterwards. What was ordinarily invisible becomes offensively visible, and though much of what comes away is skin itself, it is skin anyhow of a certain colour, and that colour is neither white nor pink, nor brown, but black. And the colouring matter of that is—dirt.
Now very hot water has in one respect the same immediate function as very cold water; it tightens and closes the skin, and a short very hot bath is as invigorating and bracing as a cold one, and may be used with pleasure and effect by those who are not naturally suited to the cold. But after a very short time, if one remains in a hot bath, the opposite effect begins. The heat will now open the pores of the skin, and, as the water soaks in, the skin is again relaxed, and the hot bath becomes the cleanser. For the first few moments, however, the opposite effect takes place; the skin is braced and tightened, and thus we find that many of the Japanese, for instance, and some athletes in America, use a short hot bath as we naturally use a cold bath, for an invigorator and hardener, and to close the pores of the skin. It is this use of it that we recommend to those who cannot stand a cold bath.