In advising cold baths, I speak, of course, for persons in the enjoyment of ordinary health. The bath should be begun in the summer and continued every morning throughout the year. In the winter, if the room is cold, light the gas and close the window. If your hair is not injuriously affected by cold water—and in many cases, I believe, cold water will be found to strengthen it—begin, as you stand over the bath, by splashing the water five and twenty times over your head. In any case, if you are averse to wetting the hair, be careful to begin by sponging the temples and nape of the neck. Next, whilst still standing over the bath, splash the water fifteen times against the chest and ten times against the heart. Then jump into the bath, going right down under the water. In the summer you may remain in the water from ten to fifteen seconds, but in the winter let it be just a jump in and out again.
The subsequent rub down with towels is popularly supposed to produce half the benefits that result from a cold bath. I have no hesitation in saying that this is a great mistake. Let me explain the reason: As you get out of the bath you rub down first one part of the body and then the other, and thus, whilst the one part is being warmed by the friction, the other is getting cold. Many people who take cold baths in this way complain of touches of rheumatism, and the whole trouble arises, I believe, from different parts of the body being alternately warmed and chilled.
In order to overcome the risk of this ill-effect my advice is this: Do not spend any time over rubbing yourself down. If you do not like the idea of getting into your clothes wet, just take the water off the body as quickly as you possibly can with a dry towel, jump into your clothes, and let Nature restore your circulation in her own way. You will get quite as warm by this method as by vigorously rubbing down, with the added advantage that the heat of the body will be more evenly distributed. If, owing to poor health or other exceptional causes, the circulation is not fully and promptly restored, walk briskly up and down the room. If you should still feel cold in any part of the body probably the bath is not suited to your constitution, and in that case it is not advised. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, however, the cold bath, taken as I have described, will have nothing but the most beneficial effects; and, if taken every morning throughout the year, it is the surest preventive that I know against catching cold. On the other hand, irregularity is liable to produce cold. In short, having once begun the cold bath, make a rule, summer and winter, never to leave it off.
Personally, I find the very best form of the cold bath is to get into your clothes after it without drying the body at all. For the first moment or two the sensation may not be perfectly agreeable, but afterwards you feel better and warmer for adopting this method. The damp is carried away through the clothes and no particle of wet is left.
For pupils who have not the convenience of a bathroom a cold sponging down may be recommended as a substitute. In this case let two towels be taken and soaked with water. Rub the front of the body down with one, and the back with the other. This method prevents the towel from absorbing the heat from the body, and the cold sponging is thus distributed evenly over its surface. Afterwards dry the body quickly as before, letting no time be lost in getting into your clothes.
I have often been asked whether in the event of exercising at night it is advisable to take a cold bath afterwards. My reply is:—“certainly.” Always have a cold bath or sponge down after exercising. It will make you feel “as fresh as paint,” improve your appetite, and make the skin clean and firm, and be generally conducive to happiness and good health. Some people tell me that a cold bath immediately before retiring keeps them awake; if that be so, I should advise them to exercise earlier in the day. But the exercise and the cold bath ought to be regarded as inseparable.
CHAPTER VII.
PHYSICAL CULTURE FOR THE MIDDLE-AGED.
It is scarcely necessary for me to say that the benefits to be obtained by conscientiously working upon my system are by no means confined to the young and vigorous. On the contrary, it is particularly suitable for the middle-aged, who are all too apt to suffer from the effects of the period of physical indolence which has succeeded their youthful activity. To such, the system should prove invaluable. It is quite a false notion to suppose that when once youth is passed exercise is no longer necessary. So long as life lasts, if an individual wants to keep healthy, exercise is just as necessary as food. It is through neglecting to recognise this that so many men become aged before their time. When a man begins to get into middle life he has a natural tendency to “take things easy.” He lives more luxuriously, devotes more time to the pleasures, of the table, and exerts himself as little as possible. Is it anything to wonder at that his health suffers, that he grows fat and flabby, and that his digestive apparatus quickly gets out of gear? If in his youth he has been an athlete the more will his changed mode of life tell upon him; it is indeed better never to have exercised at all than to exercise for a few years and then drop it entirely. It is for this reason we hear of the health of so many athletes failing them at a comparatively early age. And this failure is, as a rule, erroneously ascribed to the effects upon their constitution of their early efforts. Once and again errors in “training” may be responsible for poor health in middle-age, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the complete cessation from active bodily work, combined with the greater indulgence which naturally follows, is alone responsible.
Of course, while it is advisable that the middle-aged man should exercise regularly, I must warn him not to do too much. He must remember that what is perfectly safe and prudent at five-and-twenty may be rash and hazardous at fifty; in short, that he, while exercising consistently and steadily, must be careful not to over-tax his powers. If he bears this in mind he will find that the discomforts and ailments which he has perhaps got to regard as natural to his time of life are quickly banished, and that, in spite of his grey beard and thinning hair, it is still “good to be alive.”
