In addition to the experiments on vegetation, at Cornell University in America, and by Professor Siemens in England, recent experiments have shown the value of electric light in general, and of certain colour-rays in particular, in the treatment of various diseases such as gout and its sisters and cousins, nervousness, lupus, and so on. There are already several establishments in London where electric light cures are to be obtained. Dr. Forbes Winslow in his treatise on Light speaks even more emphatically than Dr. Cheadle does about the bad effects of the absence of light. He says:—
“It is a well-established fact that, as the effect of isolation from the stimulus of light, the fibrine, albumen and red blood-cells become diminished in quantity, and the serum, or watery portion of the vital fluid, augmented in volume, thus inducing a disease known as lukaemia, in which white instead of red blood-cells are developed. This exclusion from the sun produces the sickly, flabby, pale, anæmic condition of the face, or ex-sanguined ghost-like forms so often seen amongst those not freely exposed to air and light. The absence of these essential elements of health deteriorates by materially altering the physical composition of the blood, thus seriously prostrating the vital strength, enfeebling the nervous energy, and ultimately inducing organic changes in the structure of the heart, brain and muscular tissue.”
The use of water as a means of curing disease and of preserving health was revived early in this century by Priessnitz and his many followers. In 1896 the oldest of German doctors, Professor and Privy Councillor Adolf Kussmaul, of Heidelberg, refused to sign the programme of the commissioners for medical examinations, because “of hydropathy our young doctor, when he leaves the schools, knows nothing at all.” In the same year Sir Lauder Brunton, in his Summer Lectures at St. Bartholomew’s, testified to the wonderful effects of the wet-sheet-pack; and the late Dr. Carpenter, Professor of Physiology in the Royal Institution, as well as Dr. Wilson and Lord Lytton, have spoken in praise of this very cheap and simple and pleasant remedy which we heartily recommend for the reader’s trial. The late Sir John Forbes wrote most enthusiastically about this and other easy water treatments, which Dr. John Goodman contrasted with the treatments by drugs, stimulants, overfeeding, and so on. As a striking example we may quote his words about Diuretics (which have been among the various means recommended for reducing weight):—
“Allopathic Diuretics.—Squills, digitalis, nitric ether, acetate of potash, broom-tops, dandelion, mercury.
“Hydropathic Diuretics.—Copious water-drinking, hot-air baths, sitz-baths, wet packing, &c. No remedies act more powerfully on the kidneys without injury. Copious drinking of barley-water is good.”
CHAPTER VI.
AIR AND BREATHING.
Among all the millions of outside agencies that go to build up and strengthen, or if improperly used to undermine, the health of the human body, there is none so constant in our environment as air. At intervals it is necessary to eat and to sleep. At intervals it is equally essential for us to have light; but the use of air goes on from birth to death; completely deprived of it only for a few minutes we die, and it is largely because breathing is so obviously and always essential, because except in definite ill-health it is completely automatic, that few people even give a thought to the question, and most would be disposed to laugh if they were told that there are different ways of breathing, some right and some wrong. Consequently, most people with the inherent perverseness of human nature use one of the wrong ways.
Observe, for instance, the way that the first hundred people you meet down any crowded thoroughfare are breathing, and you will find probably that (leaving out of the question those who are evidently out of breath) more than three quarters have their mouths open, and are breathing through them. That is the wrong way. Many of these may have a physical difficulty in getting sufficient air through the nostrils. Some have colds, perhaps, but more have over-large adenoids. Consequently if, when you have no cold at all, you find you cannot get enough air through the nostrils without effort, go straight to a doctor. But probably you can; therefore, breathe through the nostrils. For nature, who, take her all round, is a safe guide to follow, if she clearly indicates something, has provided three passages by which air may reach the lungs. One is the mouth, two are the nostrils. But the mouth (in addition to its sense of taste most conveniently placed there) has the duty of carrying food and drink to the stomach. The chances, therefore, are that the nostrils (in addition to their sense of smell, again most conveniently placed there, a sentinel to challenge the air, as it were, as the taste is a sentinel to challenge the food) were designed to give air to the lungs. And they are not ill-contrived. Witness, to take a horrible but convincing instance, the amount of soot and smuts that are prevented from reaching the lungs if we breathe through the nose during a London fog. The nostrils are a sort of filter, tortuous, averting impurities. On the other hand, many advocates of a sensible idea (as in vegetarianism and total abstinence) are their own foes when they say that only the air warmed by the longer passage is good for the lungs and makes them less liable to catch cold. The reverse is probably the case, since people with delicate lungs are cured of their delicacy or disease in the coldest possible air, if it be dry.
Anyhow, the air gets to the lungs, otherwise we die; but the lungs, which are the largest single organ in the human body and in many ways the most adaptable, have this defect, and at the same time this enormous advantage in case of disease, that a very small part of them need be used in order to supply sufficient air to the stove of combustion. We can at will (most of us do) employ the bottom part of them only, we can (with more difficulty) employ mainly the middle part, or we can with about the same difficulty employ the upper part. But since much of the health of any organ or part of the body lies in its use, for not to use an organ either passively or intentionally implies (with the only exception of those organs which are partly intended as storers of energy) its gradual atrophy, it is clearly the path of wisdom to give the lungs their proper work. For “proper work” means not exhaustion to a healthy organ but increase of strength and health. It is on the scabbarded sword that the rust grows.