Nothing is more soothing to the irritable impulses of the passions, than the peculiar serenity which the bath imparts. The Romans in their days of sensuality, invariably had recourse to the bath to relieve the effects of their dissipation, and of great fatigue from travelling, &c. Who is there, we would ask, that has not experienced, after a night’s debauch in the indulgence of luxuries, when the head and heart have been oppressed, and the nervous energies prostrated, the restorative and invigorating effects of the bath,—for what allays feverish irritability and perturbation of the nervous system so admirably as the cold, tepid, or hot bath, according as the offender may have been accustomed to use. Everywhere on the Continent, baths are to be had in the greatest state of perfection. The French perform entire personal ablution daily. In Italy, Holland, and Germany they patronise the bath to a great extent, and amongst the Turks and Persians, and throughout Asia, bathing is imperative as a part of their religion. They consider it an absolute necessary of life, whilst we, the most refined people in the world, are satisfied with a change of linen, and that too, very often over a not very clean under-garment, or body flannel!
The Hungarians and Russians bathe after the manner of the ancients; in Russia especially, where the bath makes so much a part of the system of living, it is used by persons of every age, and under all circumstances. A Russian considers that the bath is a remedy for all his ailments; he flies to it on all occasions; men, women at their lying-in, and children, in almost all sicknesses, and before and after a journey, &c., resort to the bath as their solatium—which, to use the words of the illustrious Cullen, “imparts a sense of youth, vigour, and self-complacency.” The Romans for five hundred years together were without physicians; it was by means of the bath they effected all their cures of disease, and to this day many nations cure their maladies by the use of baths,—in which there is nothing so very marvellous, as the simplicity of such means at first sight may lead persons to suppose, when we consider the importance of the skin in the animal economy, that it is not merely the organ of sensation, but that it is endowed with an extensive and complicated nervous apparatus, through which its sympathies with the entire organism are managed, and that it possesses extensive secretory, excretory, and absorbing powers, the normal condition of these functions being essential not only to health, but to life itself.
Considering our pretensions to all that is refined, there is perhaps no race of people more devoid of personal cleanliness than ourselves.[4] This is a fact (however unpleasant the reference to it may be) that admits of no contradiction, for the greater proportion, including even the higher and the middle classes of the population of this country, are never subjected to entire ablution during the whole period of their lives,—from their childhood to their death. Fancy an octogenarian sweltering in the accumulated impurities of three-fourths of a century!
“Buried in smoke, in filth, and poisonous damps.”
Can it be wondered at that he hands down to his offspring a corrupt, a tainted condition of fluids, which entails misery on them in the shape of scrofula, and every variety of skin disease?
Independent, however, of any hereditary predisposition to skin and other diseases, it is too much the custom for persons who merely splash with water their neck, face, and hands daily,—neglecting to wash their bodies from year to year, so that the effete matters of the system become condensed on the skin, thereby obstructing the exhalant pores, and causing various internal complaints, and very frequently universal itching,—to reconcile themselves with the idea that their sufferings have been caused by a scorbutic diathesis, which has been communicated to them by their progenitors, without any fault of their own, or any reference to their own filthy personal habits.
There is perhaps no greater absurdity than the common notion, that washing the face and hands, and occasionally the feet, constitutes personal cleanliness, or that such partial ablution can act hygienically. It is from all parts of the body’s surface (more so from some than from others, especially from those that are covered) that chemical compounds and effete elements are eliminated in the shape of the sensible and insensible perspiration—therefore, to escape the evils attendant on filthy personal habits, we must not be content with partial ablution, but extend it to the entire body.
To all those who may be ignorant of, or any way sceptical on, the point of the hygienic value of personal ablution, we would recommend the perusal of the writings of Drs. Andrew Combe, Southwood Smith, &c.—they will then become acquainted with the important uses and functions of their own covering,—they will find in the above-mentioned authorities the subject of cuticular economy ably investigated, and the intimate connexion of the outer and inner skins (the one being a continuation of the other) clearly set forth, showing that through the perspiratory system, consisting of openings in the skin called pores, the temperature of the body is not only managed to a certain extent, but also that a number of compounds, noxious to animal life, are removed from the system, by which means the blood and other fluids are kept in a state of purity. Perspiration, both as to matter or quality and its quantity, is absolutely necessary for the well-being of the human body: and in order to give some idea of the injurious effects of interference with the functions of the skin by the retention and the necessary accumulation of innumerable chemical agents, we may refer to Lavoisier and Seguin’s researches on the subject. It was estimated by them that eight grains of perspiration are exhaled by the skin in the course of a minute, a quantity which is equivalent to thirty-three ounces in the twenty-four hours. On the cuticular surface it has been computed by them that there are seven millions of pores, which being blocked up by impurities for want of personal cleanliness, must prevent the elimination of their contents, and these being again thrown into the system by the circulation, cannot but be highly detrimental to health. Again,
Irrespective of the importance of the skin to external life, it is no less so to the internal economy of the body in preserving the grand equilibrium of the different systems (the body being a system of systems) by which the human frame is supported.
To a want of personal purification by washing, therefore, the frequency of many of our most distressing and fatal diseases, such as those of the lungs and of the kidneys, termed consumption and Bright’s disease, may be traced, as also the affection so common in this country, and very justly termed ‘an Englishman’s inheritance,’ ‘dyspepsia,’ by our making the lungs, the kidneys, and bowels, which are depurating organs as well as the skin, act the part of scavengers to the entire system, in the elimination of the greater portion of its impurities, and thus perform the proper office of the skin.