For purposes of cleanliness a bath without soap and friction is perfectly useless, and warm water is more effectual than cold. The shock of a cold plunge or sponge bath, however, has a powerful invigorating influence on the nervous system, and helps it guard against the risks of catching cold. The purpose of health and cleanliness alike will be best served by the daily bath with cold water and once a week with warm.
Speaking of cold baths, we may take note of a popular error as to what this means. The temperature of the body is always a little under one hundred degrees F. If, then, in summer, a bath at sixty degrees F., or forty degrees below that of the body, is considered cold and gives the desired amount of shock, it will do the same in winter, and to insist on plunging into water still colder than that is, to say the least unreasonable. The cold bath, then, is one at forty degrees below the temperature of the blood, and is the same in January as in July. To bathe in water from which the ice is broken, as some do, is a result of misunderstanding or folly, and may be followed by dangerous consequences.
It is dangerous to bathe after a full meal, and also when fasting. An hour or two after breakfast is a good time, but if one wishes to bathe earlier, a bit of food should be taken first. Again it is dangerous to bathe when exhausted by fatigue, but the glow of moderate exercise is a decided advantage. A light refreshment and a short run or brisk walk are the best preparations for a swim, which should not be prolonged until fatigue and chill are felt, and should be followed by a rub-down, speedy dressing and a quick walk home.
When the resisting and rallying power and the circulation generally are weak, as shown by shivering, coldness of the extremities, and sense of exhaustion, river or sea bathing should be given up. So, too, persons whose lungs and hearts are weak, and above all those who have any actual diseases of those organs, should not attempt it. There is a general tendency among those who enjoy outdoor bathing to stay in the water too long. Boys in summer remain for hours at lake or river side, most of the time in the water. This is an exceedingly weakening practice. Half an hour is ample for all the benefit that can be derived from such a swim, and a longer time in the water is apt to be distinctly injurious.
HOT WEATHER BATH SUGGESTIONS
A good health preservative, especially in summer and in warm climates, is to sponge the body with water which contains a small amount of ammonia or other alkali. The ammonia combines with the oil or grease thrown out by the perspiration, forming a soap which is easily removed from the skin with warm water, leaving the pores open and thus promoting health and comfort.
SLEEP AND ITS VALUE
No general rule can be laid down as to the number of hours which should be passed in sleep, since the need of sleep varies with age, temperament, and the way in which the waking hours have been employed. The infant slumbers away the greater part of its time. Young children should sleep from six to seven in the evening, until morning, and for the first three or four years of their life should also rest in the middle of the day. Up to their fourteenth or fifteenth year the hour of retiring should not be later than nine o’clock, while adults require from seven to nine hours. Some can do with two or three hours less than this, but they are so few that they offer no examples for us to follow.
Insufficient sleep is one of the crying evils of the day. The want of proper rest of the nervous system produces a lamentable condition, a deterioration in both body and mind. This sleepless habit is begun even in childhood, when the boy or girl goes to school at six or seven years of age. Sleep is persistently put off up to manhood and womanhood.
Persons who are not engaged in any severe work, whether bodily or mental, require less sleep than those who are working hard. Muscular fatigue of itself induces sleep, and the man who labors thus awakes refreshed. But brain work too often causes wakefulness, although sleep is even more necessary for the repair of brain than of muscular tissue. In such cases the attention should be forcibly withdrawn from study for some time before retiring to rest, and turned to some light reading, conversation or rest before going to bed. A short brisk walk out of doors just before bed time may aid the student in inducing sleep. Drugs should be avoided.