Of the remedy for colds something may now be said. As with other evils, the remedy may exist either in the shape of prevention or of cure, and of course should be most sought after, by prudent people, in the former. Much ancestral wisdom has descended to us in maxims and apothegms on the prevention and management of colds. Like other venerable and traditional lore which we are in the habit of receiving without questioning, it contains a large admixture of error with what is really good and true; and of the good and true much occasionally meets with undeserved disparagement and contempt. Our grandmothers are right when they inculcate an active avoidance of draughts of air, when they enjoin warm clothing, and especially woolen stockings and dry feet. Their recommendation of bed and slops is generally good, and their "sentence of water-gruel" in most cases is very just, and better than any other for which it could be commuted; but when they lay down the well-known and authoritative dogma, stuff a cold and starve a fever, they are no longer to be trusted. This is a pernicious saying, and has caused much misery and illness. Certain lovers of antiquity, in their anxiety to justify this precept, would have us to take it in an ironical sense. They say, stuff a cold and starve a fever: that is, if you commit the absurdity of employing too generous a diet in the earlier stages of a cold, you will infallibly bring on a fever, which you will be compelled to reduce by the opposite treatment of starvation. This, however, may be rejected as mere casuistry, however well it may be intended by zealous friends of the past. Our British oracles were not delivered in such terms of Delphic mystery, but spoke out plain and straightforward; and even this one permits of some justification with out doing violence to the obvious meaning of the words. For every cold is accompanied with some fever, the symptoms of which are more or less obvious, and it indicates the presence in the system of something which ought not to be there, and which is seeking its escape. Every facility should be given to this escape which is consistent with the general safety of the system. We may reasonably leave a window open, or a door upon the latch, to favor the retreat of a disagreeable intruder, but we should not be willing to break a hole in the wall of the house. All the remedies of hot water for the feet, warming the bed, exciting gentle perspiration, are directed to this object. Occasionally, the excitement of an evening passed in society, especially if there is dancing, and in a room of somewhat elevated temperature, is sufficient to carry off an incipient cold. So a cold may be stopped, in limine, by the use of a few drops of laudanum; and so, perhaps, the stimulus of some slight excess in eating or drinking may operate to eject the advancing cold before it has completely lodged itself in the system. But this is dangerous practice, and the same object may be effected far more safely and surely by the common nursing and stay-at-home remedies.
Of all prophylactic or precautionary measures (in addition, of course, to prudent attention to dress and diet), the best is the constant use of the cold bath. It is only necessary to glance at the ironmongers' shops to see that of late years the demand for all kinds of washing and bathing apparatus has much increased, and that many persons are aware of the importance of this practice. The exact method of applying the cold element must depend on the constitution of the patient. For the very vigorous and robust, the actual plunge-bath may not be too much; but few are able to stand this, for the great abstraction of animal heat by the surrounding cold fluid taxes the calorific powers of the system severely; nor is a convenient swimming or plunge-bath generally attainable. A late lamented and eminent legal functionary, who lived near the banks of the Thames, bathed in the river regularly every morning, summer and winter, and, it is said, used to have the ice broken, when necessary, in the latter season. He continued this practice to a good old age, and might have sat for the very picture of health. The shower-bath has the merit of being attainable by most persons, at any rate when at home, and is now made in various portable shapes. The shock communicated by it is not always safe; but it is powerful in its action, and the first disagreeable sensation after pulling the fatal string is succeeded by a delicious feeling of renewed health and vitality. The dose of water is generally made too large; and by diminishing this, and wearing one of the high peaked or extinguisher caps now in use, to break the fall of the descending torrent upon the head, the terrors of the shower-bath may be abated, while all the beneficial effects are retained. It has, however, the disadvantage of not being easily carried about during absence from home, and the want of it is a great inconvenience to those who are accustomed to use it. None of the forms which are really portable are satisfactory, and all occupy some time and trouble in setting up and taking down again, unless, indeed, you are reckless of how and where you fix your hooks, and of the state of the floor of the room after the flood has taken place, and perhaps benevolently wish that the occupants of the room beneath should participate in the luxury you have been enjoying. For nearly all purposes the sponge is sufficient, used with one of the round flat baths which are now so common. Cold water, thus applied, gives sufficient stimulus to the skin, and the length of the bath, and the force with which the water is applied, are entirely under command. The sponging-bath, followed by friction with a rough towel, has cured thousands of that habitual tendency to catch cold which is so prevalent in this climate, and made them useful and happy members of society. The large tin sponging-bath is itself not sufficiently portable to be carried as railway luggage, but there are many substitutes. India-rubber has been for some time pressed into this service, either in the shape of a mere sheet to be laid on the floor, with a margin slightly raised to retain the water, or in a more expensive form, in which the bottom consists of a single sheet of the material, while the side is double, and can be inflated so as to become erect, in the same manner as the india-rubber air-cushions. Either form may be rolled up in a small compass. The latter give a tolerably deep bath, capable of holding two or three pails of water; but it is not very manageable when it has much water in it, and must be unpopular with the housemaids. As there is no stiff part about it, it is difficult, or rather impossible, for one person to lift it for the purpose of emptying the water; and the air must be driven out before it can be packed up again, which occasions a delay which is inconvenient in rapid traveling. Besides, on the Continent at least, where the essential element of water is not to be had, except in small quantity, the excellence of holding much is thrown away. Traveling-boxes have lately been made of that universal substance, gutta-percha, which serve the double duty of holding clothes or books on the roads, and of baths in the bed room. The top can be slipped off in a moment, and is at once available as a bath; and when ever the whole box is unpacked, both portions can be so employed. But the one disadvantage which prevents gutta-percha from being adopted for many other purposes tells against it here. It becomes soft and pliable at a very low temperature, which unfits it for hot climates, and for containing hot water in our own temperate regions. There is also the danger of burning or becoming injured by the heat, if left incautiously too near the fire. But for this drawback, it seems as if there was nothing to prevent every thing from being made of gutta-percha. It is almost indestructible, resists almost all chemical agents, and is easily moulded into any required form. But like glass, it has its one fault. Glass is brittle—gutta-percha can not resist moderate heat; and but for this, these two materials might divide the world between them. It is related that a certain inventor appeared before the Emperor Tiberius with a crystal vessel, which he dashed on the pavement, and picked up unhurt; in fact, he had discovered malleable glass, the philosopher's stone of the useful arts. His ingenuity did not meet with the success it deserved; for the emperor, whether alarmed at the novelty, and wishing to protect the interests of the established glass-trade or wishing to possess the wonderful vase, and to transmit it in the imperial treasure-chambers as an unique specimen of the manufacture, immediately ordered his head to be cut off, and the secret perished with him. Any one who rediscovered it, or could communicate to the rival vegetable product the quality of resisting heat, would make his fortune; and although he might find the patent-office slow and expensive, would nowadays be better rewarded by a discerning public than his unfortunate predecessor was by the Roman tyrant. But to return to our baths: a very good portable article may be made by having a wooden traveling-box, lined with thin sheet zinc. It may be of deal or elm, and painted outside. The lid may be arranged to slip on and off, like the rudder of a boat, on eyes and pintles, or on common sliding hinges; and there may be a movable tray, three or four inches deep, to be lined also with zinc, which serves for holding the immediate dressing-apparatus, and all that need be taken out for a single night's use. This tray, together with the lid laid side by side on the floor, makes a fair enough sponging-bath; and if the box itself is placed between them, and half-filled with water, a most luxurious bathing-apparatus is at once established. The zinc lining should be painted, or, what is still better, japanned; and the lock should open on the side of the box, and be fitted with a hinged hasp, which can be turned up, out of the way, upon the side of the lid, when it is detached and in use as a bath. The lock should not open upward in the edge of the box, or the water might enter it, and damage the wards; and the hasps sticking up from the edge of the lid would be in the way. A box on this plan has been made, and has been in use for some months with perfect success, and may possibly be exhibited for the instruction of foreigners in the Great Exposition of 1851. The only objection is the increased weight arising from the metallic lining; and this might be removed by employing sheet gutta-percha in its place, or by relying on good workmanship and paint alone to keep the box water-tight. The gutta-percha would, in this case, be supported by the wood of the box, and could not get out of shape; but it still would be liable to injury if used with warm water.
Little need be said of sponges. The best fetch a high price, but are probably most economical in the end; for a good sponge, used only with cold water, will last a long time. There is an inferior kind of sponge, very coarse, ragged and porous, which formerly was not sold for toilet use, but which is now to be found in the shops, and is sold especially for use in the sponging-bath. It is much cheaper than the fine sponge; and readily takes up, and as readily gives out again, a large quantity of water; and on the whole, may be recommended. Our old friend, India-rubber, appears again as the best material of which the sponge-bag can be made. Oil-skin is efficient while it lasts, but it is very easily torn; and sponges are apt to be impatiently rammed into their bags in last moments of packing.
Armed with his sponge and his portable bath, a man may go through life, defying some of its worst evils. Self-dubbed a Knight of the Bath, he may look down with scorn upon the red ribbons and glittering baubles of Grand Crosses and Commanders, and may view with that calm philosophy to which nothing so much contributes as a state of high health the chances and changes of a surrounding world of indigestions and catarrhs. With his peptic faculties, in that state of efficiency in which the daily cold effusion will maintain them, he will enjoy his own dinners; he will not grudge his richer neighbor his longer and more varied succession of dishes, and he will do his best to put his poorer one in the way to improve his humbler and less certain repast. With his head and eyes clear and free from colds, he will think and see for himself; and will discern and act upon the truth and the right, disregarding the contemptuous sneezes of those who would put him down, and the noisy coughs of those who would drown his voice when lifted up in the name of humanity and justice.
SINNERS AND SUFFERERS; OR, THE VILLAINY OF HIGH LIFE.
"Then you believe in the justice of this world, after the fashion of our old nursery-tales, in which the good boy always got the plum-cake, and the bad one was invariably put in the closet?" said Charles Monroe, addressing at once Lady Annette Leveson and her temporary squire, old Judge Naresby, as they paused in a moral disquisition, on which her ladyship had employed the greater part of their afternoon's stroll through Leveson Park, interrupted only by an occasional remark from her niece Emma, a girl just returned from school, who hung on Charles's arm, and called the party's attention to every woodland prospect and grand old tree they passed.
Lady Annette had relations in the peerage, though they were not reckoned among the wealthiest of that body. Her husband had been similarly connected, but he was long dead; and his childless widow's jointure consisted of little more than a castellated mansion, a park, renowned for the antiquity of its oaks, on the borders of one of the midland counties, and an old-fashioned house in Park-lane, London. These possessions were to descend, on her death, to the orphan daughter of her husband's brother, who, having besides a dowery of some five thousand in the funds, was, by the unanimous vote of her family, placed under Lady Annette's guardianship. In speeding on that orphan girl's education from one boarding-school to another, in dipping a short way into all the popular philosophy of the age, and taking an easy interest in all its social improvements, Lady Annette had spent her limited income and quiet years, without the usual excitements of either working altar-cloths or setting up a Dissenting chapel. Lady Annette was, of course, a sort of positivist in her way. She had an almost material faith in virtue rewarded. Good for good, love for love, was the substance of her creed regarding time's returns; and being somewhat zealous in the doctrine, she had exerted all her eloquence to prove it to the satisfaction of the Judge. He was a man after her own faith and fortunes—well born, as it is called, and gifted with a cool, clear head, which, just fitting him for the study of law, and no more, had calmly raised him through the intervening steps of his profession to the bench; but his experience of life had been far wider, and he had seen certain occurrences in its course which made him doubt her ladyship's philosophy.
The Judge's opposition had ceased, nevertheless, and Lady Annette remained mistress of the field when Charles Monroe volunteered the above interpretation. Considering that, besides her title, the lady had full twenty years the start of him in life's journey, the attack was bold; but Charles was known at Leveson Park as her Scottish cousin, belonging to a poor but honorable family north of Tweed, and already named as a rising barrister, though comparatively young in the profession. He had been engaged for sundry cases on the circuit which the Judge had just completed—as concerned her ladyship's county, with a maiden assize, where, after white gloves and congratulations had been duly presented, the evening was devoted to a family dinner and chat with Lady Annette, preparatory to justice and he taking their way on the morrow to the neighboring shire.
Lady Annette and the Judge were old acquaintances, and he had come early enough to find the three among the old oaks, where it was pleasant to talk in that bright summer afternoon till the dinner-hour and the rest of the party arrived; so they found time for argument.