On the applications of science to human health and well-being. Being a lecture, introductory to a course, 'on the application of physics to common life', delivered to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in June, 1847 / [Alexander Bain].

  • Bain, Alexander, 1818-1903
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the applications of science to human health and well-being. Being a lecture, introductory to a course, 'on the application of physics to common life', delivered to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in June, 1847 / [Alexander Bain]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    We know still farther, in regard to the heating bath, that it vaporizes the water in the body, and causes it to pass off by the pores of the skin and the lungs, carrying with it certain of the waste matters of the system. It thus relieves and lightens the various organs in much the same way as a fire is quickened by clearing out the ashes. We have not merely a cleansing of the skin, but also a purification of the interior, after which the vital functions go on much brisker. These two principles,—the quieting of a morbid or excessive activity, and the causing of a copious perspiration and clearing out of waste matter,—may be useful in assisting our judgment in the application of the hot bath. Its most direct and obvious utility, is in the case when the body has been exposed to a long-continued cooling influence ; as on a journey, or by sitting in a cold or damp room. To betake one’s-self to a fire after such an accident, is to mistake altogether the character of the case. Long before the system can be penetrated by the heat of the fire, it may fall into a settled derangement that it will take weeks to recover from. The hot bath is the true and natural remedy. The difference between the hot-water and the vapour bath is, that the last has a far greater heating power. The steam con¬ densing on the skin gives out all its latent heat, which makes an enormous addition to the other heat, but yet does not raise the temperature so as to scorch. The vapour bath is the favourite in cold countries, as in Russia, being in fact the greatest heating influence that we know. It enables one to lay in such a stock of heat, that a great degree of cold can be endured after it, provided the langour, induced on the respiration, is dissipated by taking a cold dash at the end of the operation. If the Cold Bath were merely the opposite of the hot bath, it would in most cases be a slow murder; for the taking away of a large quantity of heat from the body is what we can rarely afford. But its great power lies in stimulating the respiratory apparatus to produce internal heat; so that it has really a heating effect, combined with another effect, namely, to increase the spontaneous vigour of the organs that purify the blood and keep up the circu¬ lation, and through them to quicken the vitality of the whole system. The cold bath is thus the most energetic of the two : but more caution is requisite in using it. We have already seen, that a vigorous, active, robust state of the body is needed to sustain tins secondary effect on the lungs and the breathing; and also that the sensation should be sharp and keen, as in the shower bath, or in the plunge into very cold water. An intense shock of brief dura¬ tion is the least dangerous and most efficacious mode of applying the cold stimulus. The extensive bathing system of the Roman and Oriental nations was founded essentially on the Hot Bath. It seems re-