In a sitz or three-quarters bath the bather should, immediately upon entering the water, lave it over the face, neck, and chest. After being in the bath five minutes, two more should be devoted to the application of the douche, first to the spine and then to the joints and other parts particularly affected, with the exception of those inflamed and painful, which should not be douched but gently rubbed with the hands beneath the surface of the water, in order to promote free cutaneous circulation and absorption of the nitrogen gas through the skin.
After leaving a full hot bath the body should
at once be enveloped in a warm sheet and friction applied over the whole surface. Dressing should be accomplished as rapidly as possible in order that a chill may be avoided, and then the bather, if able to walk (if not, in a bath chair), should go to the drinking fountain at the west-end of the Crescent, where either a large or small tumbler of the thermal water (as prescribed) should be drunk, and then return home, where rest upon a sofa or bed should be taken for at least an hour, the body being well covered with rugs, &c., so as to promote, as much as possible, an action upon the skin and consequent elimination of the gouty and rheumatic poison through its pores by free perspiration.
Frequently, after taking one of the hot medicinal baths, a feeling of drowsiness steals over the bather, and it has been thought by some medical men that sleep should not be indulged in. During a long experience in prescribing the medicinal baths of Buxton 1 have never observed any ill effects ensue from giving way to sleep, and therefore allow my patients to
follow their own inclination in the matter. When the bather has been covered up for a quarter of an hour, and the skin acts freely, he or she may begin to throw off some of the wraps, thus permitting the surface of the body to cool by degrees. When a full hour has been accomplished, the ordinary occupations and duties of the day may be resumed. It is not advisable, however, to risk exposure in an open conveyance for at least three hours after taking a hot bath, as might be done after using a natural one.
The massage bath may be used with most advantage between ten-thirty and twelve a.m., and three and five p.m. It is not advisable to take the massage bath within two hours after a meal, or less than one before. Massage, or kneading of the whole body, is carried out in this bath after which a steam douche or a warm spray is turned upon the affected parts, according to the nature of the case.
Chronic rheumatic arthrites, with painful and contracted muscles, obstinate lumbago, diaphragmatic, intercostal, periosteal, and synovial
rheumatism, and sprains and injuries to joints, are greatly benefited by the application of massage, followed by the hot steam douche or warm spray. Much relief is obtained from the application of the douche (first hot and then reduced to tepid or cold, according to the nature of the case) in subacute rheumatic arthritis, long-standing sciatica, facial neuralgia or tic douloureux, intermittent headache, spinal irritation, chorea or St. Vitus’ dance, wrist drop (from lead poison), writers’ cramp, where there is the rheumatic diathesis, and paralysis agitans, &c.
The Buxton medicinal baths, either at their natural temperature, or when the water is artificially heated, are, on account of their powerful action upon the human system, quite inadmissible in all cases where there is acute inflamation of any organ. In extensive valvular disease of the heart, especially when accompanied with regurgitation, or advanced degeneracy of that organ, atheromatous degeneration or aneurism of the larger arteries, lung disease, in an advanced stage, especially when
connected with the phthisical diathesis, asthma, or amphipneuma, complicated with fatty degeneration or dilatation of the heart, giddiness, vertigo, or sudden faintness consequent upon organic disease, the baths should not be taken, except locally, and even then with the greatest caution. When so used the affected parts may be sponged with the thermal water heated to the prescribed degree. An ordinary compress soaked in the heated water may often be advantageously worn continuously over an inflamed joint, congested liver, inactive kidneys, or irritable stomach.