Volume 2

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    71/600 (page 59)
    and irritating. A good quality of yellow soap can be borne by most skins. White Castillo soap, white curd soap, are both good. Transparent soaps are usually pure and not irritating. Sanitas soap is good and agreeable. Dark coloured and highly scented soaps, except those of the best makers, ought to be avoided, because colouring matter and perfume are frequently added to hide the inferior nature of the material used. Eed and violet soaps are occasionally coloured with deleterious pigments. Low- priced soaps are not necessarily cheap, often the reverse; they are often made from very objectionable materials, are adulter- ated, and contain an excess of water. The amount of soap to be used, and the frequency of its use, ought to be regulated by the character of the skin and the kind of exposure. Greasy skins and dirty work require a more liberal allowance of it than the converse conditions. To harsh dry skins it should be used sparingly, seeing that the oil of the skin is already too scanty. Some irritable skins resent the use of any kind of soap. For applying soap the hands are better than a sponge; they adapt themselves more perfectly to irregularities of surface. In all cases the soap ought to be washed off with a copious supply of water. Some persons have a superstitious, or perhaps it should be called, a traditional, dread of washing certain parts of the body, such as the opening of the head in young children, or of using soap to the face, &c. For these fancies there is no good reason; it is as necessary to keep one part of the skin clean as another. The feet should be as daintily clean as hands or face. The Cold Bath,—Immersion in cold water produces more or less of shock to the nervous system, as evidenced by the gasping breathing and the tremor of the muscles. The blood-vessels on the surface contract, the blood is driven to the deeper organs—the temperature of the surface is lowered, but that of internal parts is elevated. If the bather is of good constitution and in good health, and if the immersion be of short duration, on leaving the bath reaction quickly takes place. The blood-vessels in the skin dilate in excess of their former condition, the dilatation being