CHAPTER II.[14]
REVIVAL AND SANITARY PURPOSES OF THE EASTERN BATH.
The Eastern Bath in its essential nature is a well ventilated apartment, in which the air is heated to an average temperature of 130 degrees of Fahrenheit. The bather sits, or reclines, or stands, in this apartment, moving about at his pleasure; while the heat, by its stimulant action on the skin, causes the perspiration to issue from its seven millions of pores, and to flow over the surface in greater or less abundance. While the perspiration is spreading in a sheet over the skin, trickling downwards in lively rills, and falling in continuous drops from all the salient points of the frame, the bather gently rubs his body and limbs with his hands; the softened cuticle is raised in thin flakes, and if the bath be taken but seldom, the cuticle is rubbed up in such quantity as to form little elliptical rolls, more or less begrimed with dirt. After the lapse of a certain number of minutes, varying from twenty to sixty or more, the bather soaps himself thoroughly; he then receives a shower of warm water, which washes the soap and impurity from the surface, and is most agreeable to the sensations. He next has a shower or douche of cold water, which effects the closure of the gaping pores, and is extremely refreshing. He then envelopes his body in a cotton mantle or sheet, and retiring to a cool room, to which the external air is freely admitted, he sits or reclines, remaining as impassive as possible, until the skin is thoroughly dried, and feels smooth and satiny in every part. The bather then resumes his usual dress, and the process is complete.
The sanitary purposes which the bath is calculated to fulfil are three in number, namely:—
1. Preservation of Health.
2. Prevention of Disease.
3. Cure of Disease.
The bath is preservative of health, by maintaining a vigorous condition of the body; a state the best suited for the happiness of the individual, as rendering him in the highest degree susceptible of the enjoyment of life; and a state the most advantageous to social interests, as ensuring the highest working condition.
The bath is preventive of disease, by hardening the individual against the effects of variations and vicissitudes of temperature, by giving him power to resist miasmatic and zymotic affections, and by strengthening his system against aberrations of nutrition and the fecund train of ills that follow disturbance of the nutritive functions—namely, scrofula, consumption, gout, rheumatism; diseases of the digestive organs; cutaneous system; muscular system, including the heart; nervous system, including the brain; and reproductive system.