RATIONAL USE OF THE BATH.

Admitting the importance of the bath to the health and well-being of society, when properly employed, it becomes our duty to consider in what the propriety of its employment consists.

It consists in the selection of a temperature which is suitable to the constitution and idiosyncrasies of the individual; of a time of day most in accord with the constitution of the body; of a period of duration of the bath; of the frequency of repeating it.

Then we have to consider certain points of detail which come before us in the shape of objections to the bath: for example, the apprehension of taking cold after the bath; of causing disturbance of the nutritive functions; of inducing weakness. And, again, we may view it as a remedy against certain affections of a spasmodic type, in which its mode of action is so clear as to be intelligible to the unmedical understanding; and further, we have to regard it in its applicability to our fellow-creatures of the four-footed class, and especially to the horse.

PROPER TEMPERATURE OF THE BATH.

The history of the Bath, together with its practice, so far as I have been able to comprehend it, both point to the Turkish Bath, as it at present exists in the East, as representing the proper standard of temperature. The Turkish Bath is a mixed bath of vapour and heat; and although we have no information of its precise thermometric grade, yet we have sufficient data before us to be assured that the temperature cannot be high; for we know, on the one hand, that watery vapour above 120° of Fahrenheit is scalding; and, on the other hand, that the Turkish Bath is constantly taken by travellers and strangers; and that inconvenience resulting from its temperature is an accident of the rarest kind; so rare, in fact, as to be scarcely possible. Whereas, in the high temperatures at present in use in London, 170° and 180° of dry air, disagreeable and even dangerous symptoms are extremely common.

The great purpose to be arrived at, as far as temperature is concerned, is to obtain one which shall be agreeable to the sensations; which shall slowly expand the pores of the skin; which shall produce gently and slowly and without effort; so that it may be continued for an indefinite length of time. The temperature of 135° or 140° is very agreeable to the sensations; but in me it excites a perspiration which is too profuse; the energy of perspiration occasions a feeling of exhaustion; and the exhaustion is succeeded by quickened action of the heart, throbbing pulse, a sensation of faintness, of oppression, which makes it necessary that I should quit the Calidarium for a few minutes. It is true that these unpleasant sensations quickly pass off; but they are again renewed after a time, as often as I return to the Calidarium. It is easy to see why these disagreeable sensations occur; it is easy to understand, that the blood, suddenly robbed of a considerable proportion of its watery fluid, must, for the moment, occasion a physiological change in the whole economy. But we must do more than explain them to our own mental satisfaction, we must stop them; and the way to stop them is, I believe, to use lower temperatures.

Again, high temperatures clearly frustrate the purpose of the bath; by producing excessive perspiration, they shorten the period passed in the bath; they bring it to a too sudden and too rapid conclusion. Profuse perspiration is an excess of function, and excess of function cannot exist without fatigue and consequent injury to the organ so excited; together with more or less disturbance of the whole economy. I have had many complaints of the bath made to me, which have been clearly referrible to the use of high temperatures at the beginning of treatment; and the abuse is so plain, that I wonder, having once occurred, it could again be repeated.

These remarks point to the importance of a Tepidarium when a Tepidarium can be obtained; the time passed in the Tepidarium may be considerable, the body undergoing a gradual process of warming, of softening, of perspiration; and at the end of this process, being transferred for a few minutes only to the Calidarium.

TIME OF TAKING THE BATH.

The best time for taking the Turkish Bath, and, indeed, every form of bath, is that which is least likely to interfere with the process of digestion; for example, before a meal. But at this point it is necessary to draw a line of distinction between the Turkish Bath and all other kinds of bath: the Turkish Bath abstracts from the system a proportion of its solid constituents, more or less considerable, while it makes only a gasiform return in the form of oxygen. All other baths abstract little or nothing; and therefore, in this particular, there is a wide and important difference between them. It is as needful to take the sea bath before a meal as it is the Turkish Bath; but the sea bath may be taken before breakfast, which I should in nowise advocate in the case of the Turkish Bath. I do not mean that, to those who can bear it and who approve of it, the Turkish Bath might not be suitable on first rising in the morning; but the generality of mankind will find the most advantageous time for taking it from three or four, to five or six hours after meal. At that time there will be that in the economy which nature can spare, and often with benefit to the health, the waste of the digestive process, the detrita of nutrition; whereas, before breakfast, there is or ought to be scant matter for giving off from the blood by way of perspiration. Invalids may take the Turkish Bath three hours after breakfast; or three hours after the midday meal or lunch; while the man of occupation may advantageously devote to its rites the hour and a half or two hours which immediately precede dinner; and the more engaged may probably, with equal advantage, take it in the evening, after the dust and toil of the day are at an end, and shortly before bedtime.

"Would it be no comfort, no pleasure, no benefit to an English lady, on returning from a ball, and before going to bed, to be able, divested of whalebone and crinoline, and robed as an Atalanta, to enter marble chambers with mosaic floors, and be refreshed and purified from the toil she has undergone, and prepared for the soft enjoyment of the rest she seeks?"[16]

DURATION AND FREQUENCY OF THE BATH.

The length of time spent in the bath must be regulated: partly by the object to be obtained; partly by the habits of the individual as regards the use of the bath; partly by his strength and powers of constitution; and partly by the temperature of the bath. The object of the bather may be a moderate perspiration, or a thorough sweat; he may desire simply to evaporate from his skin the waste particles that occasion fatigue; or he may wish to distil from his blood the morbid atomies of rheumatism, neuralgia, or gout; he may seek for the after enjoyment which follows upon a day's hunting or shooting; or he may strive to gain the health-giving results of active exercise, for a body that has been immured in committee or in office all the day long. I have shown, in an illustration at p. 78, how the bath may be used for the removal of fatigue, of hunger, the cobwebs of the brain; and how it may be made to fortify the powers of the muscular system and of digestion.

The practised bather will know when to cease the bath, without reference to other authority than his own sensations and experience. The weak and the strong must be equally guided by their powers of endurance, and all must be influenced to a greater or less extent by the thermometer. A bath at 180° cannot be borne for the same length of time as a bath at 130°; and it is clear that if a protracted bath be the object sought to be attained, the temperature must be moderate and agreeable to the sensations. In the baths of very high temperature the bather is forced to retreat before a full perspiration is accomplished, and he is therefore rendered liable to a secondary perspiration, which chills the skin and endangers catarrh and other local congestions, while he is deprived of the refreshing and exhilarating sensation which follows a properly-accomplished bath. For him, there is no jumping over a lamp-post, much less "the moon."

I have often passed an hour in the bath. Mr. Urquhart, Mr. Holland, and Mr. Witt have spent several consecutive hours in the bath. Mr. Rolland lived in the bath for three days, quitting it only for a short period at a time. To some, a quarter of an hour in the Calidarium would be enough; while others would prefer half or three-quarters of an hour. The Romans indulged in the bath to so great an excess, that it became necessary to pass a law to restrict its use to two hours. Dr. Millingen, Physician to the Sultan, in a letter from Constantinople, addressed to Mr. George Witt, observes:—"If a Moslem enters the bath for the object of a legal ablution, half an hour is amply sufficient; if, however, a person wishes to go through all the stages of a complete bath, an hour, at least, or one hour and a half, is the usual time."

The frequency of taking the bath must, like other points of balneal economy, be regulated by the purpose sought to be attained. Where maintenance of existing health is the object, once or twice a week may be sufficient. I can conceive the bath to be made a part of the process known as "dressing for dinner," and then it may be taken as often as we dine. Medically, its frequency of repetition must be left to the medical man; and in every case the amount of effect produced must regulate its repetition. "Little and often," I would suggest as a maxim applicable to the bath as to some others of the enjoyments of life; and much to be preferred to the opposite position, "seldom and much." The Romans took the bath daily; the Mussulmans take it once a week.

To the natives of a country possessing a damp, cold, and variable climate, like that of Britain, wherein catarrhs are the scourge of the population (such catarrhs being attributable in most cases to checked perspiration and extreme cooling of the surface of the body), the apprehension of cold and catarrh from the use of the bath is a natural expectation. But the practice of the bath proves such an apprehension to be unfounded, and our reason helps us to see that there is in reality no such danger. The ordinary process of taking a cold is as follows: we are warmed by exercise, perhaps somewhat exhausted at the same time; the skin is bedewed with perspiration; the perspired fluid evaporates, producing chill; and the chill occasions a shock to the nervous system and to the whole economy, that results in the reaction known as "a cold." But if we contrast these conditions with those of the bath, we find that there is no parallel between them. In the bath we perspire; in a warm and genial temperature we abstract from the system all the watery fluid that Nature has, at the time, to spare; we rinse off the perspiration with warm water; we shut up the pores by means of cold water; we warm the body anew; we then rest tranquilly until every particle of moisture is removed from the skin; and when we are thoroughly dry, we put on dry and warm clothes. In this process it is clear that there is not even a chink by which a cold can approach us. If we hear of people taking cold after the bath, we may be assured that they have broken its laws somehow or somewhere. The bath, properly conducted,—and improperly conducted it is not the bath—THE BATH CANNOT GIVE COLD.

That which is most needful to impress upon nations unaccustomed to the bath, is a respect for its ordinances. People are apt, on their first introduction to the bath as a new idea, either to take alarm at the apparent severity of its processes, or to go to the opposite extreme of treating it inconsiderately. People require training to the bath, as they do to other processes which are calculated to affect the well-being of their constitution. If they were bred to the bath from their infancy, no training would be requisite; but as they are not, there are very few who can go through the London Turkish Bath in all its entirety, and as it is at present conducted, without risk of accident of some kind—that is, before they are properly seasoned. I call to mind a gentleman of susceptible constitution, whom I myself introduced to the bath: the temperature did not exceed 135°; he felt very little uneasiness during the process; but his liver took offence at the inordinate and unusual industry of its coadjutor, the skin, and was many days before its anger was appeased, the possessor being much troubled in the meantime by the intestine feud of his interior. But this affords no ground of argument against the bath; it only corroborates the views of moderation which I am endeavouring to inculcate. Had my friend taken the bath at a lower temperature, or reduced its duration to a shorter period, he would have suffered no inconvenience; and, after all, it was but the inconvenience attendant upon the initiation of a new physiological process.

A similar event occurred in the instance of another friend, a literary man, of sedentary habits, but thin, and not overcharged with waste humours. The temperature of the bath was the same, but my friend was not equal to the demand made upon his vaporizable fluids, and the use of the bath tended to derange his nutritive functions and lower his powers. Here, again, it was clear that a more moderate temperature, a slower transpiration, and a shorter period of duration, were the natural agents of cure. With these conditions there would have been no strain on the circulating or nervous system, and the bather would have enjoyed relatively the same advantages as another abounding in humours. If we had a choice, if we had the opportunity of selecting subjects for the bath, we should take them from the latter class; and these are the persons who would derive the greatest benefits from its use. Another example of the abuse of the bath was a lady who had taken twelve baths with enjoyment and advantage: on entering the bath the thirteenth time, the temperature was 190°, she felt uncomfortable, and remained unwell for several days. On the other hand, I have had the pleasure of seeing many with whom the bath had disagreed at first, become accustomed to it, and derive great benefit from its regular use.

Non-bathers often express an alarm lest the bath may be weakening. But the bath strengthens, it never weakens, except, as in the instances above narrated, it be used improperly. The idea of weakening is suggested by the loss of fluids by perspiration; but this loss is, as I have endeavoured to show, a gain and not a loss. The expulsion of watery fluids from the economy is a natural process, necessary to our very existence, and without it we should die. It would be very unreasonable to regard the watery fluids expelled by the lungs, by the skin, and by other emunctory organs, as a loss of material necessary to the economy, or a loss which could in any way affect the nervous and muscular powers of the individual otherwise than beneficially—unless, indeed, the loss be inordinate and excessive. Is it not one of the conditions of our healthful existence, that we should earn our bread with the sweat of our brow? and, writhe as we may under the verdict, we must do so, or suffer the evil consequences of a breach of Heaven's law. Mr. Urquhart has the following observations on this subject:—

"There is an impression that the bath is weakening. We can test this in three ways; its effects on those debilitated by disease, on those exhausted by fatigue, and on those who are long exposed to it.

"1. In affections of the lungs and intermittent fever, the bath is invariably had recourse to against the debilitating nightly perspirations. The temperature is kept low, not to increase the action of the heart or the secretions; this danger avoided, its effect is to subdue, by a healthy perspiration in a waking state, the unhealthy one in sleep. No one ever heard of any injury from the bath. The moment a person is ailing he is hurried off to it.

"2. After long and severe fatigue,—that fatigue such as we never know, successive days and nights on horseback—the bath affords the most astonishing relief. Having performed long journeys on horseback, even to the extent of ninety-four hours, without taking rest, I know by experience its effects in the extremest cases.

"A Tartar having an hour to rest, prefers a bath to sleep. He enters as if drugged with opium, and leaves it, his senses cleared, and his strength restored as much as if he had slept for several hours. This is not to be attributed to the heat or moisture alone, but to the shampooing, which in such cases is of an extraordinary nature. The Tartar sits down and doubles himself up; the shampooer (and he selects the most powerful man) then springs with his feet on his shoulders, cracking his vertebrÆ; with all his force and weight he pummels the whole back, and then turning him on his back and face, aided by a second shampooer, tramples on his body and limbs; the Tartar then lays himself down for half an hour; and perhaps, though that is not necessary, sleeps. Well can I recal the hamÂm doors which I have entered scarcely able to drag one limb after the other, and from which I have sprung into my saddle again elastic as a sinew and light as a feather."

Sir Alexander Burnes, in his "Travels in Bokhara," on the same topic observes:—"You are laid out at full length, rubbed with a hair brush, scrubbed, buffeted, and kicked; but it is all very refreshing." And Anquetil gives the following account of shampooing;—"One of the attendants on the bath extends you upon a bench, sprinkles you with warm water, and presses the whole body in an admirable manner. He cracks the joints of the fingers and of all the extremities. He then places you upon the stomach, pinches you over the kidneys, seizes you by the shoulders, and cracks the spine by agitating all the vertebrÆ, strikes some powerful blows over the fleshy and muscular parts, then rubs the body with a hair-glove until he perspires, grinds down the thick and hard skin of the feet with pumice-stone, anoints you with soap, and lastly, shaves you and plucks out the superfluous hairs. This process continues for three-quarters of an hour, after which a man scarcely knows himself; he feels like a new being.

"You will see a hammal (porter), a man living only on rice, go out of one of those baths where he has been pouring with that perspiration which we think must prostrate and weaken, and take up his load of five hundredweight, placing it unaided on his back.

3. "The shampooers spend eight hours daily in the steam; they undergo great labour there, shampooing, perhaps, a dozen persons, and are remarkably healthy. They enter the bath at eight years of age: the duties of the younger portion are light, and chiefly outside in the hall to which the bathers retire after the bath; still, there they are from that tender age exposed to the steam and heat, so as to have their strength broken, if the bath were debilitating. The best shampooer under whose hands I have ever been, was a man whose age was given me as ninety, and who, from eight years of age, had been daily eight hours in the bath. This was at the natural baths of Sophia. I might adduce in like manner the sugar-bakers of London, who, in a temperature not less than that of the bath, undergo great fatigue, and are also remarkably healthy."

The medical properties of the bath are based upon its powers of altering the chemical and electrical conditions of the organic structures of the body and abstracting its fluids. The whole of these changes take place simultaneously, and no doubt harmoniously; but in certain instances we may rely upon a greater activity of one of these processes over the other two: for example, in neuralgia, the electrical power should preponderate; in the destruction of miasma and poisonous ferments, the chemical power; and in the slow removal of accumulated morbid deposits, as in chronic gout and rheumatism, the fluid abstracting power. The required greater activity of one or other of these powers would also be our guide to those physical conditions of the bath which are calculated to effect these objects—for example, temperature and moisture. The temperature and degree of moisture for the treatment of disease must be different from that which is suitable to health. It may be necessary to have recourse to very high temperatures; or it may be requisite to fall below the healthy standard. Moreover, the healthy standard itself may require variation for different individuals and different constitutions. The physician is perfectly conversant with this necessity of adapting his means to the special constitution or idiosyncrasy of his patient.

One of the most important properties of the bath is its power of preserving that balance of the nutritive functions of the body which in its essence is health; in other words, preserving the condition of the body. The healthy condition implies an exact equipoise of the fluids and the solids, of the muscular and the fatty tissues, of the waste and the supply. This state of the body is normally preserved by a proportioned amount of air, exercise or labour, and food; but even the air, the exercise, the labour, and the food must be apportioned, in its kind and in its order, to the peculiar constitution of the individual. Those who have ever had occasion to reflect on this subject, must have felt the difficulties which surround it, and have been aware how extremely difficult it is to say what may be faulty in our mode of using these necessaries of our existence. If I were asked to select an example, as a standard of the just equipoise of these conditions, I should take the ploughman; intellect at the standard of day to day existence, moderate food, vigorous but not over-strained labour, plenty of air, and plentiful exposure. But who would care to accept existence on such terms as these. Give us brain, give us mind, however ungovernable, however preponderant its overweight to the physical powers, however destructive to the powers of the body. In a word, we select a morbid condition: our meals, our air, our exercise, our indoor and outdoor habits are all unsound; we prefer that they should be unsound; the necessities of our life, of our position, require that they should be unsound. How grand, therefore, the boon that will correct these evils without the necessity for making any inconvenient alteration in our habits!

That Boon is the Bath. The bath promotes those changes in the blood for which fresh air is otherwise needful. The bath gives us appetite, and strengthens digestion. The bath serves us in lieu of exercise. "The people who use it," writes Mr. Urquhart, "do not require exercise for health, and can pass from the extreme of indolence to that of toil." How glorious a panacea for those home-loving matrons whom no inducement can draw forth from their Lares and Penates, to enjoy a daily wholesome exercise, and who, as a consequence, become large, and full, and fat, and bilious, and wheezy; and who, in their breach of Heaven's law, lay the foundation of heart disease. "A nation without the bath is deprived of a large portion of the health and inoffensive enjoyment within man's reach; it therefore increases the value of a people to itself, and its power as a nation over other people."[17]

Dr. Millingen, in the letter to Mr. George Witt, previously referred to, makes the following interesting remarks on the bath, and offers an opinion of its importance, for which we were hardly prepared in a man living in its midst, and having its operation constantly under his eye. The prophet is clearly no less a prophet at home than abroad:—"As to the application of the bath in the prevention and cure of diseases. The working classes among the Turks, for such classes do exist, and are as numerous and fully more hard-working than elsewhere, know of no other means of prevention, on feeling indisposed, but the bath. In the numerous cases arising from sudden changes in the temperature of the body, a copious perspiration, which a stay of more or less duration in the Calidarium is sure to occasion, does, in the great majority of cases, restore the body to the equilibrium of health. After over-exertion, again, the bath is had recourse to. In short, it is looked upon so much in the light of a panacea by the lower orders, that they hardly ever dream of consulting a physician when taken unwell. If the bath fail to cure them, nothing else will succeed. This prevailing conviction accounts, in a great measure, for the total absence of dispensaries and civil hospitals, not only in this large city, but throughout the empire. Yet I apprehend, from the tables of mortality monthly published, that the mortality is not greater than it is in countries blessed with those institutions. The higher classes, and women especially, do not, as with us, know much about regular exercise, so that I perfectly agree with you that, were it not for the ample compensation afforded by the bath, they would not enjoy the excellent health they generally possess.

"You speak of the temperance of the people as being pointed out as the principal cause of gout being hardly known in this country. If this is partly true, on the other hand I must remark that intemperance of late years is much on the increase; and, moreover, that it is carried on to an extent which, if stated, might be looked upon as fabulous. Yet the gout is not more prevalent, nor delirium tremens either. This immunity I can attribute to nothing else but to the expulsion of the alcohol circulating in the system, by the lungs and skin, during the stay in the bath. You wish to know how long, on an average, does a person remain in the bath. If a Moslem enters the bath for the object of a legal ablution, half-an-hour is amply sufficient; if, however, a person wishes to go through all the stages of a complete bath, an hour, at least, or, one hour and a half, is the usual time.

"I consider that you are engaged in an attempt, which, if successful, will confer in an hygienic point of view, a service on our countrymen as eminent as the discovery that has immortalized the name of Jenner.

"We have not here the statistical returns indispensable to ascertain whether the medium range of human life is above or below the average in other countries. Instances of extraordinary longevity are far from being uncommon. I have known, and know yet, several individuals among the natives more than a hundred years old."

My friend B—— is a man of leisure, so far as the common necessities of life are concerned; his worldly career has been successful; and, in gratitude to the Giver of mercies, he has devoted the remainder of his days to the service of God, to the doing of all the good he can to his fellow man; he is largely concerned in the management of public charities of all kinds; he is regular in his habits, active, and moderate in his diet; but, in spite of moderation, he is fat, and as a man who despises personal indulgence, his fat is an annoyance to him, and an incumbrance. "What can I do to become less bulky?" said he to me one day. "Go to the bath," said I; "and after the bath walk to your home in Kensington." "Impossible," said he; "Kensington is three miles away, and I cannot walk the length of a street without panting." "Have faith," said I, "and do as I tell you." A week after I received a note from B——: "I took the bath, as you desired me; after the bath I felt that I could walk to Kensington, or to Richmond, if I had chosen; but I had an appointment that obliged me to hurry home in a cab. Yesterday I took a second bath; I did walk home to Kensington, no less to my own amazement than that of my family; I ate my dinner with a relish that I had not known for years; and after dinner, the power and the desire to walk were so great that I could hardly repress them." B—— has continued the bath regularly ever since; he looks fresh and well, and more shapely; he knows no fatigue in walking; during the late severe winter he has required no great coat; in the midst of the bitterest frost he walked to the Serpentine in his shirt sleeves, with his coat upon his arm, and his clothing is now his only incumbrance. "I want to fit up a bath for the poor in my neighbourhood," was his remark to me at a late interview. "What convenience have you for the purpose?" said I. "A capital roomy cellar," was his answer. "Sell your wine, then," said I, "and make a bath." "Oh! I can give away my wine," was his rejoinder; "those who take the bath need no wine." Heaven's blessing on thy head, B——; thou art an honour to the name of Man.

While on the subject of examples of benefit to the health resulting from the use of the bath, I may mention the case of a neighbour, by name Buckland, who has put up a bath in Westmoreland-street, Marylebone. Buckland was an upholsterer, but being seized with rheumatic gout, lost his business and fell into poverty. For fifteen, years he was a cripple, and tried in vain, medical remedies, waters, and baths, one while taking the baths of Buxton, and another, drinking the healing waters of Wales. He then, by good luck, fell under the influence of Mr. Urquhart: by his advice he visited Manchester, and took several Turkish Baths there; he then returned to London and followed a course of baths at Evans's in Bell Street, Edgeware Road; and in 1859 he fitted his own bath, and has managed it ever since. He is no longer a cripple, but able to earn own livelihood, and is an object of astonishment to those who knew him in the days of his suffering. The medical eye discovers that he is not thoroughly sound yet; but the degree of recovery which has already taken place is marvellous, and one instance among many of the triumph of the Turkish Bath. He has also had the good sense to discover the evil of very high temperatures; so that he is one among the very few to whom I can conscientiously consign the invalid.

There is a painful tension of the muscles known by the name of spasm or cramp: like other complaints, it may be represented by a scale or ladder, of which the lower bars are slight enough, but the highest bring us to a knowledge of locked jaw, the fistful spasms of Asiatic cholera, of tetanus, of hydrophobia. Heat and moisture are the well-known and popular remedies for this state, and the good woman of the house is always prepared in such cases to recommend hot salt, the tin of hot water, hot flannels, and flannels wrung out of hot water. These remedies are found to be useful, and, being easy of access, are universal: a step above these stands the hot bath, that unready remedy, that, except in public establishments where it is in common use, is scarcely attainable. For the relief of, spasm, the hot bath stands first among our external and simpler remedies; but miserable and wretched indeed is the hot bath by the side of the Turkish Bath. In the hot bath it is a perpetual struggle to keep your balance in the water, to keep the head from going down and the feet from coming up; the head is kept above the water in a temperature different from that of the body, the neck feels cold and damp; the water is constantly varying in temperature; and last of all, you are lifted out of the half-cooled water into the chilly air, to recover your heat in a blanket the best way you can. Perspiration in the hot bath is no sign of the state of the skin; the head seems to perspire, but it is probably nothing more than the condensation of vapour on the skin; the perspiration of the rest of the skin, if it occur at all, is lost in the water of the bath; and in the very outset of the perspiration, perchance, the pores are chilled and a dangerous shock is communicated to the whole frame. Well may Mr. Urquhart exclaim:—"None but a Frank would call a miserable trough of water a bath."

When, years ago, I prescribed for Mr. Urquhart, while he was labouring under a frightful attack of consecutive spasm, a hot bath, he gave me a practical lesson of the uses of heat and moisture, by subjecting himself to a vapour bath of such a degree of intensity and duration as astonished all who saw it. The bath attendant whispered me that he had never seen such a thing before, and relieved himself from responsibility by saying Mr. Urquhart "would have it so." In fact, he had converted the bath-room, for the nonce, into a Turkish Bath. But how miserable, how puny, how inefficient is the hot bath, or the boxed-up vapour bath, to the free, the open, the well-ventilated and well-heated Calidarium! The sufferer from spasm may live in the Calidarium, he may sleep there the whole night and the whole day; he may not only bring his muscular system down to any degree of relaxation that he desire, but he may keep it in that condition for any length of time, or until the disposition to spasmodic tension has entirely passed away.

In a paper entitled "Thermotherapeia; the Heat Cure: or the Treatment of Disease by Immersion of the Body in Heated Air,"[18] I appended the following note as a convenient popular illustration of the action of the Turkish Bath in the relief of muscular spasm. "How many are the instances of spasm which come under the observation of medical men! Spasm of the stomach, of the bowels, of the ducts of the liver and kidneys, of the muscles. How needless to remind my brethren of their infinite variety; of their fearful agony; of our poverty of means for their relief. But here, again, the Turkish Bath cries out emphatically: 'Behold, we bring succour!' Without going more gravely into the matter, let us smile over the paragraph which I have just cut out of the Cork Examiner. As physiologists, we recognise the point and the value of the illustration; as philosophers, we appreciate the lesson, and become the wiser for its gift. 'One day last week, a boy, employed in Messrs. Simpson and Baker's biscuit factory was ascending to a loft, when one of the workmen below called him; and in turning his head quickly to answer the call, he got a crick in the neck of such severity that the head lay almost flat on the shoulder. The poor boy was going home in great agony, when he was met by Mr. Hegarty, the proprietor of the City View Turkish Bath, in the neighbourhood of Blarney, who, on learning what was the matter with him, sent him to take a bath. When the boy was inside about a quarter of an hour, and perspiration had set in, he was placed under a tepid shower-bath, and as soon as the water commenced to fall on him, the neck began to straighten, and in a short time the head had recovered its natural position, to the great delight of the poor lad, and rather to the astonishment of the other parties in the bath, who did not expect so speedy a cure. The boy was still suffering from a pain in the neck; but a second bath the next morning removed that, and he returned to his work immediately.'

"What remedy so potent for that dislocation and spasm of the fibres of the sterno-mastoid as the relaxing warmth of the Calidarium. How many who read this will call to mind hundreds of cases in which its effects to the untaught mind would be equally amazing. We may dare to balance its merits against those of chloroform. We may discover in it a valuable aid in the reduction of dislocations; in the relief of strangulated hernia; or in soothing the wasted pangs of parturition."