Turkish and Other Baths: A Guide to Good Health and LongevityStables, Gordon
Science
Turkish and Other Baths: A Guide to Good Health and Longevity
Stables, Gordon
Baths, Turkish
In chapter third we enumerated briefly a few of the ailments likely to
be either entirely removed, or, at all events, alleviated, by the use of
the Turkish Bath.
We think that Sir Erasmus Wilson mentions that terribly distressing
ailment eczema among those which yield to the emollient and cleansing
effects of the bath.
Kidney ailments, and even dropsy itself, have succumbed to its power.
"I have just," writes a medical man, "retired from the post of medical
officer of H.M. Convict Prison at Portland, and my late Assistant
Surgeon has kindly informed me how admirably it acts in kidney
affections, and I am anxious to have one as soon as possible."
The following are the words of Sir Erasmus Wilson himself:--
"The bath is a preventative of disease, by hardening the individual
against the effects of variations and vicissitudes of temperature, by
giving him power to resist miasmatic and zymotic affections, and by
strengthening his system against scrofula, consumption, gout,
rheumatism; diseases of the digestive organs, cutaneous system, muscular
system, including the heart; nervous system including the brain; and
reproductive system."
"The bath," he continues, "has the property of hardening and fortifying
the skin, so as to render it almost insusceptible to the influence of
the cold. A Doctor of Divinity told me, that during the winter time he
was scarcely ever free from cold, often so severe as to lay him up for
several weeks, and that he also suffered from attacks of neuralgia; but
that since he had adopted the use of the bath twice a week, all
disposition to colds and neuralgia had ceased; and for the first time in
sixteen years, he had passed the winter without a cold."
Dr Wood writes as follows:--
"Dr Wood had a severe trial case to use Messrs. Allen and Son's. It
was a case of heart disease and kidney affections where it was dangerous
to give the patient a bath, or anything that would excite the
circulation, and yet essential to have copious sweating. The patient
was delirious. He has got well."
A great sanitary authority, Dr Richardson, said the other evening at a
public meeting, that if it were possible to attain perfect cleanliness
of person and surroundings, disease would become an obsolete term.
These are not the exact words, but they convey the sense.
But independent of the use the bath may be put to, for the purpose of
curing or alleviating disease, for thoroughly cleansing the body and
sweetening the system, or simply as a luxury, there are at least two
other uses to which it can be put. It is a means of banishing fatigue,
and also of producing refreshing sleep. And this fact may be turned to
good account on many occasions. A person may have been out all day on
the hill, or hunting, or he may have been on the river or lake rowing,
or by its banks fishing. He returns tired and weary, and very probably,
wet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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