“By the use of your bath,” he says “the patients can breathe pure air uncontaminated by the foetid humours pouring forth from the seven millions of pores in your neighbour’s skin as he sits by your side in the ordinary Turkish or Russian bath. Besides there is no risk from over expansion of the pulmonary tissues of the lungs; as when people are compelled to breathe a heated atmosphere; nor risk from rupture of the delicate blood vessels of the brain. There are many other advantages which tend to make me, and not only myself but all other professional men who have tried them, strong advocates for their use, in place of all other kinds of Turkish, Russian, or herbal baths.”
Chapter Five.
The Turkish Bath—Continued. The Traveller’s Bath.
In chapter third we enumerated briefly a few of the ailments likely to be either entirely removed, or, at all events, alleviated, by the use of the Turkish Bath.
We think that Sir Erasmus Wilson mentions that terribly distressing ailment eczema among those which yield to the emollient and cleansing effects of the bath.
Kidney ailments, and even dropsy itself, have succumbed to its power.
“I have just,” writes a medical man, “retired from the post of medical officer of H.M. Convict Prison at Portland, and my late Assistant Surgeon has kindly informed me how admirably it acts in kidney affections, and I am anxious to have one as soon as possible.”