The appliances and arrangements by means of which heat and cold are brought to bear on the economy are—(a) Packings, hot and cold, general and local, sweating and cooling; (b) hot air and steam baths; (c) general baths, of hot water and cold; (d) sitz, spinal, head and foot baths; (e) bandages (or compresses), wet and dry; also (f) fomentations and poultices, hot and cold, sinapisms, stupes, rubbings and water potations, hot and cold.
(a) Packings.—The full pack consists of a wet sheet enveloping the body, with a number of dry blankets packed tightly over it, including a macintosh covering or not. In an hour or less these are removed and a general bath administered. The pack is a derivative, sedative, sudorific and stimulator of cutaneous excretion. There are numerous modifications of it, notably the cooling pack, where the wrappings are loose and scanty, permitting evaporation, and the application of indefinite duration, the sheet being rewetted as it dries; this is of great value in protracted febrile conditions. There are also local packs, to trunk, limbs or head separately, which are derivative, soothing or stimulating, according to circumstance and detail.
(b) Hot air baths, the chief of which is the Turkish (properly, the Roman) bath, consisting of two or more chambers ranging in temperature from 120° to 212° or higher, but mainly used at 150° for curative purposes. Exposure is from twenty minutes up to two hours according to the effect sought, and is followed by a general bath, and occasionally by soaping and shampooing. It is stimulating, derivative, depurative, sudorific and alterative, powerfully promoting tissue change by increase of the natural waste and repair. It determines the blood to the surface, reducing internal congestions, is a potent diaphoretic, and, through the extremes of heat and cold, is an effective nervous and vascular stimulant and tonic. Morbid growths and secretions, as also the uraemic, gouty and rheumatic diathesis, are beneficially influenced by it. The full pack and Turkish bath have between them usurped the place and bettered the function of the once familiar hot bath. The Russian or steam bath and the lamp bath are primitive and inferior varieties of the modern Turkish bath, the atmosphere of which cannot be too dry and pure.
(c) General baths comprise the rain (or needle), spray (or rose), shower, shallow, plunge, douche, wave and common morning sponge baths, with the dripping sheet, and hot and cold spongings, and are combinations, as a rule, of hot and cold water. They are stimulating, tonic, derivative and detergent.
(d) Local baths comprise the sitz (or sitting), douche (or spouting), spinal, foot and head baths, of hot or cold water, singly or in combination, successive or alternate. The sitz, head and foot baths are used “flowing” on occasion. The application of cold by “Leiter’s tubes” is effective for reducing inflammation (e.g. in meningitis and in sunstroke); in these a network of metal or indiarubber tubing is fitted to the part affected, and cold water kept continuously flowing through them. Rapid alternations of hot and cold water have a powerful effect in vascular stasis and lethargy of the nervous system and absorbents, yielding valuable results in local congestions and chronic inflammations.
(e) Bandages (or compresses) are of two kinds,—cooling, of wet material left exposed for evaporation, used in local inflammations and fevers; and heating, of the same, covered with waterproof material, used in congestion, external or internal, for short or long periods. Poultices, warm, of bread, linseed, bran, &c., changed but twice in twenty-four hours, are identical in action with the heating bandage, and superior only in the greater warmth and consequent vital activity their closer application to the skin ensures.
(f) Fomentations and poultices, hot or cold, sinapisms, stupes, rubefacients, irritants, frictions, kneadings, calisthenics, gymnastics, electricity, &c., are adjuncts largely employed.
Bibliography.—Among the numerous earlier works on hydropathy, the following are worth mention: Balbirnie, Water Cure in Consumption (1847), Hydropathic Aphorisms (1856) and A Plea for the Turkish Bath (1862); Beni-Barde, Traité d’hydrothérapie (1874); Claridge, Cold Water Cure, or Hydropathy (1841), Facts and Evidence in Support of Hydropathy (1843) and Cold Water, Tepid Water and Friction Cure (1849); Dunlop, Philosophy of the Bath (1873); Floyer, Psychrolousia, or the History of Cold-Bathing, &c. (1702); J. S. Hahn (Schweidnitz), Observations on the Healing Virtues of Cold Water (1738); Hunter, Hydropathy for Home Use (1879); E. W. Lane, Hydropathy, or the Natural System of Medical Treatment (1857); R. J. Lane, Life at the Water Cure (1851); Shew, Hydropathic Family Physician (1857); Smedley, Practical Hydropathy (1879); Smethurst, Hydrotherapia, or the Water Cure (1843); Wainwright, Inquiry into the Nature and Use of Baths (1737); Weiss, Handbook of Hydropathy (1844); Wilson Principles and Practice of the Cold Water Cure (1854) and The Water Cure (1859). A useful recent work dealing comprehensively with the subject is Richard Metcalfe’s Rise and Progress of Hydropathy (1906).