Health for the million : including hints on the physical training of youth, and the treatment of invalids and old age, with observations on unhealthy employments / by the author of How to make home happy, The accidents of life, etc., etc.

Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health for the million : including hints on the physical training of youth, and the treatment of invalids and old age, with observations on unhealthy employments / by the author of How to make home happy, The accidents of life, etc., etc. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    •^4 coming from a long journey—nor after tlie body has been long exposed to great exertion, and has experienced lassitude, debility, or chilliness—nor if there is any inward determination of the fluids to the head or the lungs. It is hardly necessary to add that to rush into cold water if at all unwell, or on the day that medicine may have been taken, is dangerous in the extreme. Persons of delicate or feeble constitution should bathe (if allowed by a medical practitioner to take sea-baths) on alternate days, rather than for many days consecutively. Daily bathing is fi-equently found pro- ductive of lassitude, accompanied by a manifest wasting of the body. Attention should be paid to the nature of the hathinfj- place. A bottom of clear sand is to be prefen’ed. Seaweeds are to be avoided, for they frequently con- tain a species of pointed shell, which is a))t to inflict painful wounds if trodden upon. Upon coming out of the water the body should be wiped dry with a somewhat rough cloth, and the ordi- nary dress quickly resumed. It is more necessary to replace the usual vestments quickly than to be ex- tremely anxious to have the surface of the body com- pletely dry, as any wetness from salt water is not likely to be j)rejudicial. After Bathiiifi use Moderate Exercise, to pi-omote the return of the heat of the body, toking care that it should neither be violent nor too long continued. If chilliness occasionally ensues, breakfast soon after bathing in the moniing; or, in the forenoon, some warm soup or broth may be taken. Indeed, if immersion, instead of being succeeded by a glow on the surface of the skin, is followed by chilliness, languor, or headache, bathing in the sea should by no means be pemisted in. During a course of sea-bathing, and even when the warm sea-water bath is used, friction with a hair-brush or coarse woollen gloves ought not to be omitted. It may enable a patient to continue the coume, when otherwise he must have given it up.