Daily Training

by E. F. Benson; Eustace Miles

The hot bath, then, will supply the invigorating functions of the cold, if it is really hot and is not too long. In the same way both it and warm baths supply the cleansing functions which are wanting in the cold bath, and the combination of the two—i.e., a hot or warm bath for purposes of cleansing followed by a cold douche or cold sponging, is perhaps the most perfect application of water in all its uses that we know, and contains the same principles as the Turkish bath. Those who have bathrooms will, of course, find this method easy enough to manage, but those who have not can get a perfectly adequate substitute in a large basin of cold water with which they will sponge themselves after the ordinary hip-bath or sponging-tin in their rooms and while still standing in it. Those, however, whom the cold bath does not suit, would be wise to use only cool, not cold water, after the hot bath. A further benefit of this combination of hot and cold water lies in the hardening effect which the change of temperature produces on the skin, for it accustoms it to sudden changes of temperature, and renders it far less liable to catch cold. This, in view of the number of colds that people certainly catch by getting chilled after being hot, is a great advantage.

The best, as also far the pleasantest water to wash in is soft water, approaching as nearly as possible to pure or distilled water, which from its purity and freedom from suspended mineral matter is more eager, so to speak, to take dirt, etc., into solution—that is to say, to wash it off. But distilled water is expensive; rain water, which comes nearest to it, not always to be had; while in chalky districts the water is hard. This hardness may, however, be taken off by the addition of a little oatmeal, or soda, or bath salts, which it will be found give the water the advantages of soft water; soap, for instance, lathers much more readily in it, and thus its efficiency as a cleanser is increased. Hard water also, if continually used, certainly has a sort of drying and unpleasant effect on delicate skins, making them less supple and elastic, and diminishing their power of natural healthy action. The remedy mentioned above largely alleviates this.

With regard to the third of the main functions of water—namely, to promote and equalise circulation, this effect, though obtained from a complete bath (as, for instance, a hot bath when one is chilled) is more particularly to be got from partial baths. Many people, for instance, suffer from cold feet and hands, and such know how unsatisfactory is the effect, when working, for instance, on a cold day, of warming the hands at the fire; for this relief is hardly more than momentary, and as soon as the, mere surface heat obtained is exhausted, the hands are just exactly as cold as they were before. But a remedy far more satisfactory in its effects and just as simple lies at the nearest hot and cold-water taps, and anyone who tries the effect of letting the hot water run over his hands for a few moments followed by the cold water (combining the two in exactly the same way as suggested for the complete bath, but repeating the process a few times) and then drying them thoroughly with a little friction, will quite certainly find the need of constant excursions to the fire much curtailed. For this is a warming on sound principles—the faulty circulation in the hands is remedied, the blood is stimulated to flow there naturally, and in consequence the effect is far more lasting than the momentary relief of the external heat from the blaze.

In the same way with cold feet, though it would be extravagant and foolish to recommend any busy man to put in his office a hot and a cold foot-bath, into which in the presence of his admiring clerks he should in the middle of the morning dip his feet, yet many will find the habit of cold feet greatly reduced if at the morning bath (whether they have a hot bath or a cold) they apply first hot then cold water to their feet. Again, at night cold feet are a definite and common cause of insomnia, which many unwisely remedy by heaping the bedclothes over them till they restore heat to the feet by immoderate clothing over the whole body. We have suggested in the chapter on sleep the expedient of an extra coverlet over the feet, and the hot bottle is another remedy. But there are many to whom the hot bottle is of a gruesome nature; if it is of earthenware there is the collision with the toe sometime during the night, while if it is of india-rubber there is something clammy and snail-like about it when it has grown cold. The far more thorough and satisfactory system for any confirmed sufferer, because it tends directly to improve the circulation in the feet, and to harden them by the change of temperature, is the hot foot-bath, succeeded by cold sponging and rubbing before going to bed, or after going to bed if there is insomnia. This is particularly efficacious if repeated a time or two. The tingling warmth, due to the restoration of circulation, is far more beneficial and pleasant than the unwilling haling down of the blood to the feet, as it were, by means of a hot water bottle.

In more directly remedial aspects, we may just allude to the value of wet-packs for various parts of the body, a common and excellent instance of which is a cold compress (covered with flannel) round the throat as a cure for sore throat, or cold water bandages (also covered with flannel) for local sprains or inflammations. Such things, however, border on medical questions, and though excellent and simple remedies, are of too specialised a character to be more than alluded to.

Lying half-way, as it were, between the agents of water and heat comes the Turkish bath, that solacer in the life of many city men, who but for it would undoubtedly, in the conditions under which they live, become confirmed dyspeptics. By it, in a short time, the effects which exercise has on the skin are produced; by it also, if it is followed, as it should be, by rubbing and massage, actual (though passive) exercise is obtained. Thus it counteracts to a great extent what we have before called the “acidity” of city-life, due to its general lack of exercise, and the tendency it often produces to over-eat in proportion to the exercise taken. But frequent Turkish baths, though an excellent substitute for exercise, an excellent corrective for that which advertisements elegantly call “errors of diet,” and even an excellent adjunct to exercise, should be taken as a faute de mieux, except in the case perhaps of very corpulent people, who find it, rightly, almost essential to keep down the excess of fat. For while the heat produces about the same effect on the skin as would heat derived from physical exertion, and while massage produces about the same effect on the muscles as does physical exercise, yet the absence of fresh air in this bath is a large defect; though, it is true, it is to a certain extent compensated by the fact that the whole body is exposed to the air for a considerable time. But considered as treatment, it is artificial rather than natural; and though certainly the skin and general health of men employed in a Turkish bath as masseurs is in excellent condition, yet the excessive heat (excessive, that is, in respect of the temperatures that the human body seems naturally adapted to encounter) is probably in the long run somewhat trying to the system, while the cold plunge immediately after (to many the best part of the bath) is distinctly bad for those for whom cold baths are bad. But as a substitute for exercise, and a general means of health to sedentary and city-workers, it is probably the best yet contrived. Everyone, however, should rest well after it, and lie in the cooling-room for at least half an hour, since the bath itself is violent, so to speak, and demands recuperative measures, and also because after a long exposure in the hot room even the cold douche will not at once restore firmness to the skin. But with this precaution taken the bath is not only an excellent remedy for colds, but also an excellent preventive against them, by reason mainly of the hardening effect which the sudden change of the temperature produces. As a cleanser, finally, the Turkish bath is quite unrivalled.

Of late years physicians and others, both here and in other countries, notably Denmark, Germany, and America, have accepted and striven to bring within the range of practical therapeutics the incalculably health-giving and remedial power of heat and light. This subject will be touched on in another chapter in connection with the exposure of the body to the air, while part of it is too special (as, for instance, the treatment of lupus with the violet rays of the spectrum) to be more than alluded to. The principle of it all is that light is as tonic to the body of a man as it is to a plant, and that just as a plant is sickly and pale if given insufficient light, so the body if stinted in this becomes weakly and inefficient, a cellar-grown plant. Following this clue, experiment has established beyond doubt that for anæmia of certain kinds the best possible remedy is exposure to heat and light, and in Germany there is more than one sun-cure for this, the course of treatment being that patients pass hours in the sun every day with practically no clothes on. Here in England, and especially in London, such treatment is seldom possible, the two great drawbacks being lack of sun and lack of privacy[11], and in consequence artificial light has been resorted to, not as being better than sunlight, but as the best substitute for it. Here the body is exposed to a violent illumination of electric light (the eyes and head being protected), and is given a light-bath in the same way as a Turkish bath gives a purely heat bath. Incidentally, it is true, the bath of electric light is extremely hot (a temperature far above that of the ordinary Turkish bath being reached without inconvenience or danger), but the main object is to administer the tonic of light, and of that which light becomes when it has passed through the surface-skin. Of its extraordinary effects in cases of anæmia, for instance, it is outside our province to speak, but in a modified form, i.e., by exposure when possible of the body to sunlight, and the constant and unvarying desirability of living in light rooms, much of its beneficial effects can be enjoyed, and should be, by everyone. Indeed, to take the long continued effect of light, not on an individual but on a race, how much of the gaiety of the southern nations may perhaps be directly due to sunshine? Certainly “a gloomy house,” or “a gloomy room,” is gloomy in more senses than one, for instinctively light affects the spirits; it is tonic and invigorating to body and mind alike, and ten minutes of exposure of the whole body to the sun, fantastic as it may sound, is as great a dispeller of shadows as is the sun itself.

It is with this modified form of sun-bath (not because the sun-bath, as a treatment, is anything but admirable, but because it is in treatment of disease that it is mainly used) that we have to deal. Everyone knows how invigorating it is to have only the face and hands exposed to the sun, a twentieth part of the body, that is to say, given the sun-bath, not as a medicine, but as a sustainer of general health. Multiply this by twenty then: instead of twenty minutes in the open air, expose the whole body, if possible, when dressing, to direct sun-rays by an open window; let the fresh air and the sun “have their sweet way.” Sunlight, it is sadly true, is not always available, but light is better than no light, and instead of hastening to dress after the bath in the morning, throw the windows wide, and for as long as may be (though taking a feeling of chilliness as a danger signal of Nature, indicating clothes) let your body drink in light and air. If you are of imperfect circulation, get warm first by a hot-bath and exercise, but remember that as long as you are warm, there is no conceivable danger of catching cold, and that on the first hint of cold you are almost certainly in time to dress. Also the endurance of exposure increases rapidly, and endurance of exposure is one of the first requisites of serene health, of the health that no more bothers itself about danger of catching cold than the enviable slumberer spoken of in the chapter on sleep bothers himself about getting to sleep.

No wonder the sun in Greek times was the god Apollo, the young god of health and beauty, of all that keeps men young and vigorous, of all that keeps them sane and efficient. No wonder, also, that from time immemorial the sun has been worshipped as the supreme god, for from what else but his light comes growth and health? There he is every day (or at any rate on some days) marching slowly for our behoof across a beneficent heaven, and we are like children who clench their teeth when the doctor comes, rather than show their tongue, if we strive by awnings and parasols, and God knows what infamous devices, to shut out that humane physician. Gentlemen, “The Sun.”

“Air and light are essential to the development of the higher forms of animal and vegetable life in full vigour and perfection. The lowest organisms—fungi and bacilli and bacteria whose office in nature appears to be to prey upon and hasten the decomposition of their superiors in the scale of life—love, like other evil things, darkness and close dwellings. Bright sunlight (the most potent and valuable of all light) and fresh air (by oxygen the portion of food used as fuel is burnt, and heat and all forms of energy evolved, and oxygen is required for the changing and removal of waste) are as inimical to them as they are beneficial to the more perfect forms above them. The action of light is known with less precision than that of oxygen. It appears, however, to be essential to the perfect formation of the red cells of the blood—its most vital constituents. Persons who are deprived of light grow pale and bloodless. Young women brought from the country as servants or shop girls, and kept in cellar kitchens or dark work-rooms, notoriously suffer in this way. Miners also are a pallid, anæmic class. The want of fresh air has something to do with the result no doubt; yet patients in a well-lighted hospital ward appear to recover more quickly, as a rule, than those in darker rooms equally well ventilated. [Compare the interesting statistics collected in St. Petersburg by Sir James Wylie.] Altogether common experience and observation confirm the conclusion which science has hardly yet formulated, that light has a powerful and favourable influence upon animal life. Human beings grow blanched just as plants do, for the want of it. And it is not a question of colour merely; vitality is seriously lowered also. This is largely felt in great towns shaded by fog and smoke-clouds. Some recent remarkable experiments have shown that the electric light exerts a favourable influence on vegetation, second only to sunlight. It is possible that it may in like manner foster animal life.” Dr. W. B. Cheadle in “The Book of Health.”