Life in a tub; with a description of the Turkish bathDiogenes [pseudonym]
Science
Life in a tub; with a description of the Turkish bath
Diogenes [pseudonym]
Baths, Turkish; Hydrotherapy
[10] Where consumption has been relieved by residence abroad, the
benefit derived must be attributed to the action on the skin produced
by the hot climates to which the patient is usually ordered, but
recovery in this way has been confined to very mild forms of the
disease, and cannot be looked upon as a scientific mode of treatment;
the improved action of the skin deserving to be considered rather as
induced accidentally than by design; as otherwise more attention would
have been paid to so important a matter, and there would have been no
necessity for ordering the patient abroad, as similar results could
have been obtained much more easily and effectually by keeping him at
home; the use of the Turkish bath conferring all the benefits of
increased temperature, followed by the tonic effects of cool air and
water, by which the debilitating effects of continual residence in a
warm climate are obviated.
[11] Dr. Hufeland remarks—“The more active and open the skin is the
more secure will the people be against obstructions and diseases of the
lungs, intestines, and lower stomach; and the less tendency will they
have to gastric (bilious) fevers, hypochondriasis, gout, asthma,
catarrh, and varicose veins.”
[12] The wearing of flannel close to the skin has a two-fold injurious
effect:—First, by driving the blood from the surface, whereby the
activity of the skin is seriously impaired; and secondly, by shutting
out the air, and so preventing it from having access to the blood, to
aerate and purify it.
[13] By healthy waste, we mean waste accompanied by corresponding
renewal.
[14] We have seen consumptive patients arrive at Blarney shivering with
cold though swathed in flannels, who before leaving it were able to
wear clothing in winter, under which they previously would have
shivered in the hottest day of summer.
[15] The great mortality which has attended the Allopathic treatment of
cholera, ought to make us have little compunction in trying something
new. There is no fear, in this case, of our “jumping from the
frying-pan into the fire;” we are already in it—let us quench it.
[16] Dr. Russell, a well-known Homœopathic author, appears to give the
palm to Hydropathy in some rheumatic cases. He thus writes: “In regard
to rheumatism, I am inclined to think that there are some varieties of
this complaint which utterly defy all Homœopathic medicines, from the
deeply morbid condition of the blood; and that in these cases a
thorough water course, by effecting a rapid and total renovation of
this fluid, might enable our remedies to act more beneficially.”
Contrast this liberality with that of the Allopathic physician.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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