But what I want you, reader, specially to remember, and I’ll be fearfully cross and grumpy if you do not remember it, is this: don’t take your sunshine bath in a window or even a verandah. This is altogether too one-sided an affair. The light or the sun-rays must be all around you. All around you too must circle the fresh air.
Reverting to the Romish bath: I must say that if we had at sunny seaside places institutions where we could enjoy such a thing nearly or quite unclothed, with the sky alone above us, it would be a really good thing, but following the example of the less endowed animals we see in fields and woods we shall benefit by being out in the sunshine simply lightly dressed. The sun can penetrate like Röntgen rays through and through our garments and bodies if we but expose ourselves thereto.
Mere animals, as we are all too fond of calling them, appear oftentimes to know what is good for them better than we do.
“Reason raise o’er instinct if we can,
In this ’tis God directs,—in that ’tis man.”
When a favourite animal belonging to our domestic circle, such as a dog or cat, is weak because well-stricken in years, you may always notice that he courts the sunshine whenever he has a chance, and with it the fresh air.
A question which naturally enough often recurs to one is this: What is the difference between indoor heat and that obtained from the sunshine? Well, apart from the fact that sunshine, whether clearitically or otherwise, exerts a very powerful influence for good on the animal and vegetable creation, it has a hundred times more of penetrating force than that which comes from a fire or that which we find in a room heated by steam or hot water pipes. Moreover, the heat which is artificial is all too often decidedly one-sided, and many a most disagreeable cold has been caught on a chilly night from hugging the fire, by which one portion of the body is heated at the expense of the other. There is less oxygen to be breathed indoors, and a dangerous amount of carbonic acid and other deleterious gases.
Again, all nature shows us that sunshine and light permeate every tissue of the animal or vegetable structure, so that they may be considered synonymous with the term life itself.
And the purer the air we breathe when out of doors the greater the effect for good sunshine will have.
But if we are to benefit thoroughly by summer sunshine, we must be out every day and, if possible, at the self-same hours of the day.