Part 5 (2/2)
A full meal should not be taken in less than half an hour after bathing. Nor should a bath be taken in less than an hour and a half after eating a full meal.
You can bathe with impunity in cold water when the body is perspiring freely, as long as the breathing is not disturbed, nor the body exhausted by over-exertion.
Never bathe in cool or cold water when the body is cold. First restore warmth by exercise.
Always wet the head before taking a plunge bath, and the chest also, if the lungs are weak.
In cases of sickness, where it becomes necessary to a.s.sist Nature in ridding the system of impurities through the medium of the sweat glands, the ”wet sheet pack” will be found invaluable. It is usually regarded by those imperfectly acquainted, with its action as simply the chief factor in a sweating process, but it is more than that. Not only does it open up the pores and soften the scales of the skin, but it ”draws” the morbid matter from the interior of the body, through the surface to the pores. It is of immense value in all cases of fever, especially bilious fever.
It should be borne in mind that ”flus.h.i.+ng the colon” should always precede the use of the ”pack.”
If any one doubts the purifying efficacy of this process he can have a ”demonstration strong” by the following experiment: Take any man in apparently fair health, who is not accustomed to daily bathing, who lives at a first-cla.s.s hotel, takes a bottle of wine at dinner, a gla.s.s of brandy and water occasionally, and smokes from three to six cigars per day. Put him in a pack and let him soak one or two hours.
On taking him out the intolerable stench will convince all persons present that his blood and secretions were exceedingly befouled and that a process of depuration is going on rapidly.
Full directions for the use of the pack will be found at the end of this work.
It will be necessary to take into consideration the vitality of the patient and regulate the temperature of the sheet accordingly. The best time to use it is about ten in the morning, or nine in the evening.
The Turkish bath (see last page) is another important factor in treating disease, also the hot foot bath, for all disturbances of the circulation, cramps, spasms and affections of the head and throat. Hot fomentations, which draw the blood to the seat of pain, thereby raising the local temperature and affording relief, and wet bandages for warming and cooling purposes will likewise be found valuable aids.
Humanity at large has never estimated water at its true value, yet all the gifts in Pandora's fabled box could never equal that one inestimable boon of the Creator to the human race. Apart from its practical value, there is nothing in all the wide domain of Nature more beautiful, for in all its myriad forms and conditions it appeals equally to the artistic sense. In the restless ocean, now sleeping tranquilly in opaline beauty beneath the summer sun, now rising in foam-crested mountainous waves beneath the winter's biting blast, its sublimity awes us, In the mighty river, rolling majestically on its tortuous course, impatient to unite itself with mother ocean, its resistless energy fascinates us. In the gigantic iceberg, with its translucent sides of s.h.i.+mmering green, its weird grandeur enthralls us. In the pearly dew drop, glittering on the trembling leaf, or the h.o.a.r frost, sparkling like a wreath of diamonds in the moon's silvery rays: in the brawling mountain torrent, or the gentle brook--meandering peacefully through verdant meadows, in the mighty cataract or the feathery cascade, in the downy snowflake, or the iridescent icicle--in each and all of its many witching forms it is beautiful beyond compare. But its claims to our admiration rest not alone upon its ever varying beauty. When consumed with thirst, what beverage can equal a draught of pure, cold water? In sickness its value is simply incalculable especially in fevers; in fact, the famous lines of Sir Walter Scott, in praise of woman, might be justly transposed in favor of water to read thus:
”When pain and sickness wring the brow, A health-restoring medium thou.”
And, if we admire it for its beauty and esteem it as a beverage, how inconceivably should these feelings be intensified by the knowledge that its remedial virtues are in nowise inferior to its other qualities!
The next in importance of the great health agencies is Fresh Air.
Perhaps we ought to cla.s.s it as the most important, for although people have been known to live for days without water, yet without air their hours would be quickly numbered. Air is a vital necessity to the human organism, and the fresher the better--it cannot be too fresh. The oxygen gas in the air is the vitalizing element. The blood corpuscles when they enter the lungs through the capillaries are charged with carbonic acid gas (which is a deadly poison), but when brought into contact with the oxygen, for which they have a wonderful affinity, they immediately absorb it, after ejecting the carbonic acid gas. The oxygen is at once carried to the heart, and by that marvelous pumping machine sent bounding through the arteries to contribute to the animal heat of the body.
When it is taken into account that the lungs of an average sized man contain upwards of six hundred millions of minute air cells, the surface area of which represents many thousands of square feet, the danger of exposing such a vast area of delicate tissue to the action of vitiated air can be readily estimated. No matter how nutritious the food may be that is taken into the stomach, no matter how perfect the processes of digestion and a.s.similation are, the blood cannot be vitalized without fresh air.
It is estimated that the blood is pumped through the lungs at the rate of eight hundred quarts per hour, and that during that period it rids itself of about thirty quarts of carbonic acid gas, and absorbs about the same amount of oxygen. Think for a moment of the madness of obstructing this interchange of elements which is perpetually going on and on which life depends!
It is more especially during the hours of sleep that fresh, pure air is needed, for that is when Nature is busiest, repairing and building up, and calls for larger supplies of oxygen to keep up the internal fires, but her efforts at repairing waste are rendered futile if you diminish the supply of the vitalizing element and compel her to use over again the refuse material she has already cast off.
The late Prof. Willard Parker, in a lecture delivered before a cla.s.s of medical students, made a very forcible ill.u.s.tration of how the air of a room was vitiated, in the following impressive words: ”If, gentlemen, instead of air you suppose this room filled with pure, clean water, and that instead of air you were exhaling twenty times a minute a pint of milk, you can see how soon the water, at first clear and sparkling, would become hazy and finally opaque; the milk diffusing itself rapidly through the water, you will thus be able, also, to appreciate how, at each fresh inspiration you would be taking in a liquid that grew momentarily more impure. Were we able to see the air as we see the water, we would at once appreciate how thoroughly we are contaminating it, and that unless there be some vent for the air thus vitiated, and some opening large enough to admit a pure supply of this very valuable material, we will be momentarily poisoning ourselves, as surely as if we were taking sewage matter into our stomachs.” Don't leave the matter of a good supply of air to servants. See to it yourself and see that you are not robbed of it. It would be better to trust your eating to an attendant than your breathing. Do that yourself.
In spite of the amount of literature devoted to sanitary matters, it is astonis.h.i.+ng how little is understood of the principles of ventilation, and its supreme importance to the general welfare. We do not, of course, refer to ventilation in its broadest scientific sense, such as the securing of an adequate air supply in large auditoriums, for it is a melancholy fact that even our prominent architects not only display a pitiably deficient grasp of that phase of the subject, but of the simple, yet fundamental principles of the science, which every intelligent adult should be familiar with. How many heads of families, for instance, can intelligently ventilate a sleeping room?
They will open a window for a few minutes in the morning, without opening the door also, to create a current, and think that is amply sufficient to displace the acc.u.mulated carbon dioxide and other substances inimical to health. No wonder so many people are tormented by bad dreams! In sleeping apartments the bed should be in the center of the room--never near a wall. A current of air should be maintained, but without a draught upon the bed. It is better to open the window two inches at the bottom, and the same distance at the top, than to have it open for a foot either at the top or bottom only. If, through inclemency of the weather, or other causes, the window can only be opened for a few minutes, then by waving the door back and forth rapidly ten or a dozen times, the displacement of the vitiated air will be infinitely more rapid and thorough. Considering the length of time that is spent in the sleeping apartment, the paramount importance of a constant supply of fresh air is readily perceived. No matter how perfect digestion and a.s.similation may be, if the blood is not thoroughly oxygenated, the best of foods fail of their intended effect. Even the least fastidious would object to drinking water that had been used for was.h.i.+ng purposes by others; yet it is quite as objectionable to breathe air that is charged with the waste products of bodies that may even be diseased. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of ventilation.
Better let in cold air and put on more bedclothes, as long as you do not sleep in a draught.
Oxygen keeps up the animal heat of the body, and you can really keep warmer in a room with plenty of fresh air than in a close room where the air is vitiated.
But in the sick room fresh air is of paramount importance, not only for the patient, but for the attendants, who are otherwise compelled to inhale the poisonous exhalations from the diseased body.
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