Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    623/896 (page 157)
    prove too severe a shock to the system, and to many this is much too great for them even to risk, then it may be modified by standing in tepid water while taking the shower. Without doubt, it needs considerable resolution and courage for a man in a dark frosty morning to step directly from bed into a bath, and deliberately pull a string, which immediately results in a deluge of cold water over his head and his warm body. Of course the first shock is the worst; but when that has passed, the bath becomes actually pleasant. And I know of nothing that braces the system more effectually than this cold bathing in the morning, and that more powerfully enables the body to resist the effects of the cold raw air of this climate. The man accustomed to the use of cold bathing, if by chance he be deprived of it, feels miserable and unhappy for the day. He has missed his usual stimulant, and is consequently less vigorous and energetic. Now, while cordially recommending the use of the daily cold bath to the strong, I am desirous that I should not be understood as advising its use indiscriminately. There are many to whom it is not only not beneficial, but actually harmful. And such persons ought always to have the extreme coldness of the water removed by adding hot water, till the temperature of the bath rises to about 50° Fahrenheit. I repeat that the test by which to ascertain whether the cold bath is safe or not, and this applies equally to sea-bathing, is the perception of that agreeable warm sensation over the body on emerging from the bath, and a feeling of refreshment and invigoration, which the healthy man experi- ences after bathing. Let me here, for the benefit of my younger hearers, interject a word of caution with regard to sea-bathing. Never plunge into the sea, however tempting it may be in a warm summer's day, when fatigued, or over-heated, or immediately after a full meal; otherwise, you will miss that after-glow which is the evidence of the good effect of bathing. The system is then too debilitated to establish the reaction, and the bather remains chilled, shivery, and depressed, instead of being warm, exhilarated, and refreshed.