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.

    86/600 (page 74)
    The patient is to be seated on the chair in a state of nudity, with the feet in the foot-bath, and then to be covered, excepting the head and the face, by the blanket. By these means the steam is kept up on the surface of the body for the space of fifteen or twenty minutes; after which the patient is to b e well dried, and be placed between blankets. In such a case the following simple plan is often efBcacious. Two or three large smoothing irons are heated at the fire ; when very warm each iron is wrapped in several folds of damp flannel, then placed upon a fiat plate, and put under the bed clothes at a little distance from the patient's body. A warm drink is ad- ministered. The result is usually copious perspiration. Public Baths.—The customs as to washing and bathing are extremely various in different countries and at different times. Our countrymen, when in warm climates, use the bath more fre- quently than when at home. Speaking generally, it w^ould appear that the frequent use of the bath has at all times accom- panied the progress of civilization. The difference is seen between the less and the more refined, even in the same country (in naming refinement I do not refer merely to a difference consti- tuted by pounds, shillings, and pence) on the outskirts of civili- zation the bath may be little known. A gentleman travelling in the far west passed the night*at a wayside tavern; he found in the room no arrangement for washing, and on applying to the landlord he was told, Folks generally wash outside the door if they want to wash at all. The traveller ordered a basin and water to be taken outside the door, and while he performed his ablutions several of the inhabitants hung raound, watching with interest what seemed to them to be a most novel proceeding. As in our own country so in early Eome the weekly bath was a national custom, but later, and during the empire, the daily bath was considered to be almost a necessary of life. It was taken before the evening meal, the time for which was not later than three o'clock, frequently earlier. The baths were favourite places of public resort, in some respects resembling our clubs, at which politics and other questions of the day w^ere discussed. In