A guide to the treatment of diseases of the skin : with suggestions for their prevention for the use of the student and general practitioner / by Thomas Hunt.

  • Hunt, Thomas, 1798-1879.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to the treatment of diseases of the skin : with suggestions for their prevention for the use of the student and general practitioner / by Thomas Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the blood poison induced by inaction and poisoned air, but no more fitted for enjoying life than before. Nay, instances have occurred in which the too frequent bath has for a time induced a sad necessity for its daily re- petition, until the health has suffered from this artificial life. In fact, the good which it'may accom- plish is not to be measured by the sensations it awakens. So much for the dangers and delusions of the Turkish bath. It has been thought right to place these objections in the foreground, not with a view to write down the bath, or to condemn it in toto, but rather as a caution against the abuse of the most poiver- ful and valuable form of bath ijet invented for the pre- vention or cure of disease. It has been said, indeed, that whereas the effect of the Turkish bath is to elicit perspiration, the warm and vapour bath tend to suppress it. This is not true : but the excellence of the Turkish bath consists in this, that the sudden and violent alternation of heat and cold applied to the surface of the body, rouses the system to a powerful re-action, and calls forth the latent power of resistance with such energy that, if the patient bears it well, he is safe for a time from the morbific in- fluences of both cold and heat in the very moderate degree in which they are found in the natural atmo- sphere of our island. In order, however, that this effect should be produced, there are certain essential conditions which are not attended to in every establish- ment of this kind. To make this intelligible, the reader is requested to see that the following points are carefully attended to. The patient being stripped, with the exception of a loin cloth, is introduced to a room heated on all sides to