CHAPTER III.
RATIONAL USE OF THE BATH.
Admitting the importance of the bath to the health and well-being of society, when properly employed, it becomes our duty to consider in what the propriety of its employment consists.
It consists in the selection of a temperature which is suitable to the constitution and idiosyncrasies of the individual; of a time of day most in accord with the constitution of the body; of a period of duration of the bath; of the frequency of repeating it.
Then we have to consider certain points of detail which come before us in the shape of objections to the bath: for example, the apprehension of taking cold after the bath; of causing disturbance of the nutritive functions; of inducing weakness. And, again, we may view it as a remedy against certain affections of a spasmodic type, in which its mode of action is so clear as to be intelligible to the unmedical understanding; and further, we have to regard it in its applicability to our fellow-creatures of the four-footed class, and especially to the horse.
PROPER TEMPERATURE OF THE BATH.
The history of the Bath, together with its practice, so far as I have been able to comprehend it, both point to the Turkish Bath, as it at present exists in the East, as representing the proper standard of temperature. The Turkish Bath is a mixed bath of vapour and heat; and although we have no information of its precise thermometric grade, yet we have sufficient data before us to be assured that the temperature cannot be high; for we know, on the one hand, that watery vapour above 120° of Fahrenheit is scalding; and, on the other hand, that the Turkish Bath is constantly taken by travellers and strangers; and that inconvenience resulting from its temperature is an accident of the rarest kind; so rare, in fact, as to be scarcely possible. Whereas, in the high temperatures at present in use in London, 170° and 180° of dry air, disagreeable and even dangerous symptoms are extremely common.
The great purpose to be arrived at, as far as temperature is concerned, is to obtain one which shall be agreeable to the sensations; which shall slowly expand the pores of the skin; which shall produce gently and slowly and without effort; so that it may be continued for an indefinite length of time. The temperature of 135° or 140° is very agreeable to the sensations; but in me it excites a perspiration which is too profuse; the energy of perspiration occasions a feeling of exhaustion; and the exhaustion is succeeded by quickened action of the heart, throbbing pulse, a sensation of faintness, of oppression, which makes it necessary that I should quit the Calidarium for a few minutes. It is true that these unpleasant sensations quickly pass off; but they are again renewed after a time, as often as I return to the Calidarium. It is easy to see why these disagreeable sensations occur; it is easy to understand, that the blood, suddenly robbed of a considerable proportion of its watery fluid, must, for the moment, occasion a physiological change in the whole economy. But we must do more than explain them to our own mental satisfaction, we must stop them; and the way to stop them is, I believe, to use lower temperatures.