A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 2 : $b General diseases (continued) and diseases of the digestive system
Science
A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 2 : $b General diseases (continued) and diseases of the digestive system
Medicine -- Practice
The time for a resort to hot baths in rheumatoid arthritis is when the
very violent pains have subsided sufficiently to allow of their
employment; and while they may be hopefully used in the most chronic
and advanced cases, the earlier they are employed the more curative
they are. The temperature of these hot baths need not, as a rule,
exceed 95 to 100° F., although some authorities approve of raising the
temperature to 110° or 112° while the patient is in the water. A series
of twenty to thirty such baths, taken every second day for ten to
twenty minutes, is sufficient for one trial, and often effects very
great improvement in the disease. The aggravation or return of pain in
the joints which often follows the employment of warm baths will cease
after the fifth or sixth bath. Garrod's experience of the Turkish bath
is not favorable; it very often does much mischief by causing debility,
and its excessive use has induced rheumatoid arthritis in persons
previously free from the disease.
Now, while it may be true that simple hot-water baths employed at home
are as good as mineral thermal baths taken at their source, it is
generally admitted that it is best to send persons who can afford the
expense to the springs themselves, where they may drink the waters as
well as employ them externally, and at the same time secure all the
advantages arising from change of habits, scene, and climate, from
restriction to a proper diet, and from the systematic employment of the
waters and baths under the direction of persons experienced in their
administration, etc. No reliable rules can be laid down for the
selection of the mineral waters best adapted to each case: the stronger
alkaline waters perhaps had better be used with great care, such as
those of Carlsbad, Vichy, Mont Doré, Weisbaden, and after a course of
thermal mineral baths at such places as Aix-les-Bains, Wildbad, Bath,
Aix-la-Chapelle, etc., Garrod advises resort to some place where the
air is bracing and the waters tonic or chalybeate, as Buxton, Spa,
Schwalbach, or St. Moritz. In this country good results are often
obtained at the Hot Springs of Arkansas and the Hot Sulphur and the
Lithia Springs of Virginia. The use internally and in the form of hot
baths of the mineral springs of Saratoga, of Michigan, of the Licks of
Kentucky, and of California, of St. Leon and St. Catherine's (Canada),
is frequently very beneficial. In the selection of the mineral waters
to be drunk, and of the temperature and other qualities of the baths to
be employed, careful attention must be paid to the condition of the
functions of the skin, liver, kidneys, and nervous system; but space
cannot be afforded here for the consideration of this extensive topic.
Moreover, it occasionally happens that after failure of {100} sulphur
or alkaline baths some other form may succeed, as the vapor or hot-air,
or tepid or very hot-water bath. If decided benefit follow the first
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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