While taking exercise, the clothing ought to be as loose as possible, in order to permit of the full play of the muscles, and avoid dangerous contractions of the internal vital organs.
Note 1. See, “Tea, the Drink of Pleasure and of Health,” by same author, published by Messrs Field and Tuer, Leadenhall Street.
Chapter Three.
The Luxury of the Turkish Bath—Its Uses and Physiological Action—The Ailments it Tends to Cure.
Next to the pleasure of enjoying an Anglo-Turkish bath oneself, in propria persona, is that of hearing some one dilate on its merits.
And few who have ever tried it, will be found unwilling to expatiate freely on the topic of Turkish bathing; of its great and manifold advantages over all other systems of bathing, of the delights they experienced while in the bath, and of the feelings of lightness and comfort, calmness of mind and positive happiness induced thereby. This prince of baths would, we verily believe, change the dullest clodhopper to a wit for a time, and convert the prosiest old antiquarian into a poet.
If it has such a transforming power on the brains of the by-no-means brilliant, is it any wonder that men of bright intellect like Sir Erasmus Wilson and David Urquhart, should write or talk so prettily about this, their favourite mode of bathing. As a rule there is not much room for poetry in the medical profession, albeit Dr Jenner, carried away by a pardonable enthusiasm, described the vaccination pustule of the ninth day, with its crimson areola as “the pearl upon the rose.” Yet we cannot read the glowing and graphic description given by the great dermatologist, concerning his visit to the bath at Riverside, without wishing that he had marshalled his thoughts, for once in a way, in the splendid hexameters of a Longfellow. A bath like that of Mr Urquhart’s, from which one emerged with “the body shining like alabaster, fragrant as the cistus, sleek as satin and soft as velvet,” is surely worthy of the high honours of blank verse. And this thermal paradise is sketched by Sir Erasmus in language as brilliant and beautiful, as any that ever the other professor Wilson puts into the month of the bard of Ettrick, in his inimitable Noctes Ambrosianae.