Another phenomenon of the bath shows the power of increased firmness and solidity and strength which the texture of the skin acquires by its use. A person unaccustomed to the bath bruises without any great force, and the discoloration of the bruise, occasioned by the escape of blood from its vessels and the dispersion of the blood in the texture of the skin, lasts for a considerable time. Indeed, we know of some skins that bruise upon the most moderate pressure, even without a blow. But the practised bather does not bruise, excepting from serious injury; and, when he does bruise, the discoloration is rapidly dissipated.
The power of influencing the skin by education is also shown in the degree of facility with which perspiration is induced in the bather. In the practised bather the perspiration comes almost at call; it comes soon, freely, abundantly: but in the neophyte, the perspiratory fluid is slow to emerge from its pores; it comes unwillingly and in insufficient quantity. Each succeeding bath, however, exhibits an improvement; and, in time, the perspiration obeys the word of command in the pupil as well as in the master.
I have assumed for the skin the possession of a power of nutrition, and have in this way brought it into the category of the digestive organs; let me explain:—Nutrition, in its essence, is that interchange of material, by the influence of which the old material is removed and new material is deposited in its place. Now, the emunctory function of the skin obviously results in the removal of the old material from the body, and in proportion to the energy and completeness of its removal, will be the eagerness of the tissues to take up new material from the blood. If the skin be in the torpid and atrophied state I have already described as the consequence of our present habits of life, this source of interchange, of nutrition, will be valueless: but if, by improving the health of the skin through the agency of the bath, or by any other method that can be devised, we render its function more active and energetic, we necessarily make nutrition also more active and complete.
The accomplishment of this object is the basis of that process known by the name of training, by which animals are brought into the highest state of condition and strength. It is for this that the racehorse is galloped, and sweated, and often purged; for this, also, the prize-fighter, the prize-rower, and the prize-cricketer are made to go through a similar ordeal. It requires little argument to show how admirably the bath is suited to this purpose; the sweating, the cleansing, the strengthening of the blood, are obtained in the bath, without effort and without exhaustion; and the system is brought into that state which, above all, is most favourable for the absorption of new and nutritious material. The bath has been already applied to the training of horses, and before long will be used in the training of men. The Romans kept their army in health and strength by means of the bath; and the bath might, on the same principle, be adopted with advantage under all those circumstances in which bodies of men are assembled together, temporarily or permanently, as in barracks, prisons, schools, factories, &c.
In the gas factories and metal-smelting houses, and probably in other trades where men are exposed to great heat, a plan is adopted which has considerable physiological interest, and is specially illustrative of the nutritive capabilities of the bath. In the retort-house, the stokers are kept for many hours in a deluge of perspiration; the drain is consequently very active, and it is necessary to supply the loss occasioned by that drain by means of drink. With this object, each man is allowed a certain quantity of oatmeal daily: the oatmeal is served out by the foreman, and is scalded with hot water and made into thin gruel; this is the drink with which the men supply the place of the perspired fluid. They give forth, in the shape of perspiration, water holding in solution the used and useless materials of the frame, and they receive in return a wholesome nutritive material. Can we wonder that these men are perfect Athletæ in form, that they are in the finest possible condition for labour; and that, although working in buildings open to every draught of cold wind, and bathed in perspiration, they never, indeed they cannot, take cold.
Let us apply this lesson of the retort-house to the ill-nourished, weakly invalid; or, better still, to weakly, ill-conditioned children. Let us suppose that we have the power, by an easy, pleasant process, of extracting the old, the bad, the useless, even the decayed and diseased, stuff from the blood and from the system by means of the bath; how simple the operation by which we could give back in its place wholesome and nutritious material.—Where would be atrophy and scrofula, if we had this power?—and this power is, I believe, fast approaching, fast coming within our reach, by means of the Eastern Bath. We squeeze the sponge as we will; we replenish it as we will.
The faculty of preventing disease, as exercised by the skin, besides being indirect and operating on the general health of the body, is also direct. The skin repels the depressing effects of cold, of alternations of temperature, of extreme dryness or moisture, by virtue of its own healthy structure; by its intrinsic power of generating heat; and it also repels other causes of disease, such as animal and miasmatic poisons, by its emunctory power, which enables it to convey them directly out of the body. In unwholesome states of the atmosphere, in an atmosphere of malaria, which must necessarily pass into the body with the inhaled air, and being in the lungs must be absorbed by the blood, we naturally inquire by what means we escape the morbid effects of such malaria? The answer is:—the malaria is conducted out of the body as rapidly as it is introduced, by the emunctory organs—by the liver, kidneys, and notably by the skin. If the powers of the skin be weak, then the poisons are detained in the blood, and disease is the result; but if the skin be healthy and active, then they can do no evil; and ultimately they become innocuous. Thus the bath, by conducing to the health of the skin, becomes a direct means of preventing disease.
Reasoning, on the same premisses, shows us how the bath may be employed in the cure of disease. We can, at our will, so far excite the emunctory power of the skin as to make it the means of carrying off the elements together with the seeds of disease. If we wish to comprehend the operation better, we have only to watch Nature's own processes. A morbid poison is in the blood, it produces a shock to the whole system, that shock is represented by a chill; next to the chill succeeds a fierce fever, which marks the furious battle waged between the poison and the blood; then follows the perspiration, which hurries the contending poison out of the system; the perspiration, for the time being, is the cure. The observation of this well known series of symptoms suggested to the inventive mind of Mr. Urquhart the notion, that by raising artificially, as by the bath, the temperature of the body above fever-heat, the proper stages of fever might be stepped over; the chill fit would pass at once into the hot fit, and the hot fit be resolved by perspiration. The suggestion is worthy of mature thought.
Let me conclude with a brief summary of the sanitary views which it is my aim to inculcate in this essay.—I have endeavoured to show the importance of the skin as an independent organ endowed with sensation, circulation, powers of nutrition, and powers of elimination. I have viewed it in its relations to the rest of the animal economy—the digestive organs, the heart, the lungs, and the brain—with the purpose of showing its influence on these organs. I have regarded it in its natural state, as full of vigour, and possessing the properties of healthy colour, texture, sensation, and secretion; and in the unnatural state to which it has been brought by the perpetual use of clothing, wherein its colour, texture, sensation, and secretion are unhealthy, and its power of generating heat lost. I have explained the manner of operation of the bath on the skin, both in its healthy and unhealthy state; how, in the former case, it is a direct preservative of the health of the skin, and, through the skin, of the entire organism; and, in the latter, that it possesses the power of restoring the skin to a state of health: further, that the bath may be made the means of preventing disease, and an adjuvant in its removal when already established.