Part 10

The next system of treatment for invalids will be the "Sun-Cure." Institutions will be established, to which patients will flock for the cure of chronic maladies. Affections of the stomach and liver, will, by the "Sun-Cure," be relieved almost as if by a miracle. One, two or three hours a day, patients will be exposed nude, to the sun, either in part,--for example, the abdomen or back, or over the entire person, when the fault is one of digestion and assimilation. Young ladies in the matrimonial market, who are such ghosts that the men shudder and run away front them, will spend three months in one of these institutions, and return as brown and sweet as their admirers could wish. In the coming "sun-cure," diseases which are now regarded as well-nigh incurable, for example, some forms of neuralgia, will be quickly relieved.

Whether the banks pay specie or not, whether trade flourishes or languishes, whatever may be our success or failure in life, let us keep wide open the flood-gates of life; let us be true children of the sun, worshipping, not with prostrate forms, but, standing upright in the image of God, express our gratitude by baptismal evolutions in the all-glorious light.

A WORD ABOUT BATHS.

My dear girls, I want to speak to you very plainly about baths.

The clearness of the mind, the brightness of the spirits, the beauty of the skin,--in one word, the purity of the whole system, depends upon the free escape of the worn-out matter. You all know about this economy of nature.

Look at this dish of fruit,--grapes, peaches, pears; how beautiful, how fragrant, how delicious. How lusciously they melt in the mouth!

Transfer them to the stomach. If we could watch the interior processes, we should find, in a few hours, these exquisite fruits changed into filthy, poisonous liquids and gases. How shall we get rid of this stuff? The most simple avenue of escape is found in millions of small holes through the skin. Out of these the effete, poisonous matter passes away.

OILY SECRETIONS OF THE SKIN.

The skin is constantly secreting oil. It oozes out and lies on the surface.

We live in an atmosphere filled with dust, besides, there is constantly escaping from our clothes, dust and dirt of various kinds. These things, with the oil of the skin, plug up a portion of the pores, so that the effete, dirty matter cannot escape.

Keeping these poisons in the system, not only produces pimples upon the face, and discoloration of the skin, but dullness and heaviness of the whole system. The mind becomes foggy, the spirits low, the muscles stiff and sore, the breath and perspiration offensive, the whole system unclean.

Those portions of our skins that we cover with clothes are somewhat difficult to keep clean. Roll up your sleeve when your arm is perspiring, and rub the skin hard with your naked hand. You will be surprised at the rolls of dirt which the rubbing will bring away. You may rub some minutes in the same place, before the little rolls will stop coming. This dirt is held by the oil of the skin.

IMPORTANCE OF SOAP.

Nothing cleans the skin like soap. Wetting the skin every morning with simple water, and wiping it off, will not keep it clean. Such simple water baths contribute to cleanliness, and are useful; but the cleanest condition of the surface cannot be secured by such means.

DETAILS OF THE BATH.

Let me tell you just how to manage your daily baths. You must have a bathing mat, which you can procure at any rubber store. It consists of a circular, thin rubber sheet, four or five feet in diameter, with the edge turned up two inches. This, during the day, has been folded up and thrown aside. When you want to bathe, spread it out, and you have a tub four feet in diameter, and just as good as though the sides were two feet high. This is all the bath-tub you need. Perhaps I ought to say, that if it is not convenient to purchase one of these at a rubber store, you can make one with a large piece of oil-cloth, by sewing a rope into its edge. Of course you must have a wash-bowl with two or three quarts of water. Next, a pair of bathing mittens,--simple bags,--loosely fitting your hands. These are made of the ends of a worn-out crass or Turkish towel, though any thick linen will do.

Now with a piece of good soap,--it matters little what kind,--you are ready.

You have removed your night-dress, you are standing upon the centre of your bathing mat, with your mittens or bags upon your hands. Seize the soap, make abundant soap-suds, and go over every part of the skin. Rub the soap several times, that every portion of the skin may be thoroughly covered with soap-suds. Now, dipping your hands into the water, rinse off the soap, although if it is winter, and the free use of water chills you, you may apply very little water, and wipe the soap-suds from your skin. Indeed, with many persons, it is an excellent practice to leave a certain portion of the soap on the skin. It will continue the process of neutralizing the oil. I have myself derived advantage and satisfaction, during the cold season, by the free use of soap, with very limited quantities of water.

BATH-ROOMS.

The ordinary bath-tub is a humbug. That zinc coffin, in which you lie down, put your head upon a strap at one end, to keep yourself from drowning, and then balance yourself for a while in a sort of floating condition, is simply a stupid absurdity. You can't even rub yourself to advantage; and if you are determined to rub your body, you are sure to bruise your elbows against the sides of the coffin.

With the exception of those baths which are given for some special remedial purpose, all baths should be hand baths. The bather should apply the soap and water to her own skin, and that she may use it freely and in her own comfortable bedroom, the bath-mat, which I have described, is indispensable. It never wears out, gives no care, and is on the whole, a most happy device.

HOT AND COLD BATHS.

The application of cold or hot water to the skin, produces two effects,--a primary and a secondary,--action and reaction.

If the water be _cold_, the _primary_ effect is to make the skin cold. When the _secondary_ effect or reaction comes on, the skin becomes _warm_. If _hot_ water be applied to the skin, the _primary_ effect is to make the skin hot; the _secondary_ effect, or reaction, leaves it cold.

The first effect is a momentary one; the second effect, or reaction, continues a long time.

Timid girls exclaim:--

"_Cold_ water! of course you don't mean _cold_ water! What, _cold_ water, right _on_ me and _all over_ me? Why, Doctor, I couldn't stand it! it would kill me!"

"Do you think you could take a hot bath?"

"Oh, certainly; I could take a hot bath easy enough." This conversation occurs in January.

My dear child, you are entirely mistaken. Everybody can take a cold bath, if properly managed, every day of the year; but, during the cold weather, it takes a strong constitution to bear a hot bath; for although the first, or momentary effect, is to make the skin warm and comfortable, the secondary effect, or reaction, which comes on very soon and lasts a long time, is to make the surface very cold.

During the warm weather, the hot bath is a great luxury. For the moment it makes you warm, but the secondary effect, or reaction, which will continue for a long time, leaves you in a cool, comfortable state.

Foot baths afford a happy illustration of this Homoeopathic law, "_Similia Similibus Curantur_,"--"_like are cured by like_."

You are troubled with cold feet. Dip the bottoms of your feet in cold water. Let the water be half an inch deep. Hold the feet there four or five minutes, and then give them a good rubbing. Perhaps stand on the carpet with your naked feet, and twist from side to side, until your feet are burning. Not only will your feet remain warm all night, but after practicing this two or three weeks, unless your digestion is _very_ weak, your feet will become warm as a habit.

On the contrary, if you are troubled with burning feet, a frequent hot foot bath will cure you.

But in every case the employment of hot foot baths will give tendency to cold in the head.

But you say again that you like cold baths well enough in warm weather; but if you use the cold bath in the winter, it makes you cold and shivery, it gives you headache and depresses you.

Ah, I see you haven't taken the bath in the right way. If you take it in the way I suggest, no such effects will follow. Apply soap to every part of your skin rapidly with your bathing mittens. That is the most important part of the bath. Now put on just as much or just as little water as your comfort may suggest. If you can bear a good deal, you may put it on; but if you are sensitive to the cold, manage in the way I have suggested,--put on the soap, follow with a damp mitten, and do it all just as rapidly as your hands can move, so that from the time you take off your night dress, until the soap has been applied to every part of the body, and followed by the damp mitten and dry towels, will not be more than one to two minutes. If this is done in your bedroom, instead of a cold bath-room, you will hardly be chilled or depressed by it. If you are so exceedingly sensitive that even this momentary exposure with a moist skin produces an unpleasant chilliness, then follow the soap bath by the most vigorous use of a pair of hair gloves.

HAIR GLOVES OR MITTENS.

For three thousand years, hair mittens have been in use. Hippocrates rubbed himself with a pair.

Girls, you should all have a pair of hair mittens. Buy Lawrence's English patent. They are the best in the market. At night, when you are about to retire, rub every part of the skin till it is as red as a boiled lobster. Ah, how sweet it makes the sleep, how sure to remove all tendency to morning headache. I have seen this practice entirely break up unpleasant dreams. Your skins are always in the dark. They become pale and bloodless. The blood which should circulate in the skin, retires within the body, producing congestion of the liver, with bad complexion; congestion of the stomach, with dyspepsia; congestion of the heart and lungs, with short and labored breath, and congestion of the brain, with headache.

If the skin, which has so many blood-vessels, and is designed to hold so large a quantity of blood,--if the skin enjoyed a constant, free, vigorous circulation, it would relieve the organs within the body of most of their sufferings. I know of no other simple or single means, by which such circulation can be established and maintained in the skin, as by the constant and spirited use of the hair mittens. Besides, it will do wonders for the beauty of your face. Giving the skin of the residue of the body a free circulation, the skin of the face is not likely to be called upon to do more than its share of removing the effete matter in the system, and, therefore, is not likely to take on pimples and other evidences of impurities in the blood.

HOME GYMNASIUM.

The effeminacy of our civilized life, with the employment of machinery for the hard work, necessitates a resort to artificial physical exercise.

Every home, especially where there are children, should have a room devoted altogether, or, on occasions, to gymnastic exercises.

Happily, Schreber, the most eminent of the German school of physical training, has devised a complete apparatus for family use, to which he has given the name of "Pangymnastikon," (which may be translated as meaning all exercises upon one piece of apparatus).

This piece of apparatus weighs not more than ten pounds, may be put into a small box, can be hung up in any room or hall, a parlor, for example, in a minute, and offers complete facilities for a greater variety of fascinating and effective physical exercises than can be found in a gymnastic hall a hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and filled with the ordinary gymnastic apparatus.

When no longer needed, it may be taken down and put away in a moment.

This piece of apparatus is pretty, inexpensive, and perfectly safe. The manufacturers furnish with it six little wall maps, on which are represented, in engravings, one hundred different exercises, arranged in six groups, and adapted to the varying strength and capacity of the pupils. A very considerable number of the best of these can be performed by girls and women in their ordinary long skirts.

But if I had daughters in my own family, and we were using the Pangymnastikon, I should urge them to drop their long skirts at the hour of exercise, and wear a pair of loose pants and a jacket. Such a dress would permit many profitable exercises for the legs and hips, which women greatly need.

They seem now, except, perhaps, in the case of dancing girls, to be almost as helpless, in any extraordinary circumstances, as our wooden-legged soldiers.

For example, if a woman undertakes to step upon a street car when it is motion, she is sure to lose her balance; and if she steps off the car when it is in motion, though the horses are only walking, down she goes. An hour's exercise each day with the Pangymnastikon would soon cure her of this awkward helplessness, and, at the same time, would develop the muscles about the lower part of her body, and thus save her numberless weaknesses and sufferings.

WHAT YOU SHOULD EAT

In all countries where food is plenty and cheap, excessive eating is well-nigh universal.

The parents indulge in excesses, the father inflames his appetite with narcotics, the children inherit an unnatural craving; during the nursing period they are fed constantly; during childhood they are bated with cakes, candies and other sweetmeats, and afterwards they are tempted with a variety of condimented meats, and these are followed with appetizing desserts, fruits, and other tit-bits.

CONSEQUENCES.

The results are seen on every hand, in almost every individual. The stomach becomes weak and deranged, the body heavy and in-elastic, the mind foggy and sluggish, the temper irritable.

In no other department of American life do we so much need a thorough reform. Fashionable people hate the word _reform_, but in this connection no other word will answer; we must set about a thorough, earnest, radical _reform._

The Creator has so contrived our bodies, He has made them so resistant and elastic, that an occasional abuse seems to make little impression.

For example, a man may get drunk once a month, and at the end of a dozen years he seems scarcely touched by the vice; although, as the physiologist has shown us, upon each indulgence the lining coat of the stomach is strangely inflamed, and changed in appearance; indeed, for three or four days after each debauch the mucous lining of the stomach continues to exude a matter which closely resembles pus. Besides these marked and apparently alarming effects, it is well known that alcohol is a powerful poison to every tissue of the body, especially to the nerve; and yet the alcohol is not digested, but goes, bodily and unchanged, creeping through every atom of the brain itself; nevertheless, after hours of deep, death-like lethargy, the man awakens, and his wonderful mechanism is ready to grapple again with the duties of life.

A child takes into its mouth a bit of tobacco. It is followed by a pale face, cold sweat, alarming palpitations, and violent vomiting. And yet, after a little practice, the human system may be deluged with this powerful, narcotic poison,--a man's mouth may be kept swimming, month after month, with the strongest juice of the strongest tobacco,--his very perspiration may be so filled with this intense poison, that, falling on the battle-field, the most loathsome beast of prey will not touch his body. Yet so complete is his facility of adaptation, so immense his power of resistance, that, for a life-time, his bodily, mental and moral machinery will struggle on in the midst of this sea of poison.

And so it is with this almost universal vice of improper and excessive eating. The stomach and liver are clogged and deranged, the blood is filled with crudities and impurities, the brain is crowded with this vicious blood, and yet the Good Father has given us such an immense reserve, that we can bear all this, and still have force enough left to move about, to think, to feel, and sometimes to have hours of real enjoyment.

Our Father gives us "signs;" he hangs out "flags of distress,"-- pimples, and blotches, and sores, a red nose, inflamed eyelids, etc.; besides, he gives us rheumatism, gout, and numerous other aches, but he lets us live on for years, apparently in the hope that we may learn something.

Our American system of diet is altogether bad. There is too great variety, the food is too rich, the cooking is often very bad, we eat too frequently, and we eat at the wrong times.

I confess to a deep personal interest in this subject. It is my sad, but most deliberate conviction, that I have wasted a large part of my life-force by taking too much food. I have not made this mistake for some years; but the gray hairs began to make their appearance before I learned about it.

Ah, my dear young friends, how deeply do I yearn to help you in this vital department of your life!

Will you permit me a little of my own experience? I believe that, in this way, I can speak more acceptably and more effectively, than by giving the deductions of physiology.

For nearly thirty years I have been in the habit of visiting one dear woman, in the State of New York, once or twice a year. (She does not seem any older to me now, than she did when, from the front window, she watched me on my way to Sunday-school, on a beautiful Sabbath morning, forty years ago.

On my visits at the old home for these thirty years, I have been tempted by those dishes which no one but a mother can make, and have eaten more than usual; and, although the visit was, otherwise, such as freshens and invigorates the faculties, I constantly observed that, upon my return, my lectures were duller rather than sprightlier as they should have been after such a pleasant rest. At length, I came to suspect that visiting, even with my own mother, did not agree with me. But it occurred to me, a few years ago, to deny myself the custard pie so thick and luscious, to refuse the chicken pie, with its rich crust, to deny myself all the desserts and other tit-bits, and live on a moderate quantity of plain beef and bread. Since then, my pilgrimages to the home-shrine have greatly refreshed both body and soul, and I return home to resume my duties with new pleasure and new strength. Why will people, (I trust my mother will pardon the question,) why will people prepare such elaborate and tempting dishes for their friends? If one has a keen appetite, and sits at the table in a social spirit, and takes even a little of each article urged upon him, the variety and quantity must derange his digestion, and then his capacity for enjoyment is at an end.

I was invited, a few months ago, to dine at the house of a lady, who is recognized as standing at the head of the intellectual aristocracy of a most intellectual and refined city. The lady is noted, likewise, as the best of housekeepers, and as a most charming hostess. The plate and crockery were the finest I have ever seen at a private table. We had four courses: 1st, a small glass of lemonade, 2nd, a bit of melon, 3rd, roast beef and sweet potatoes, 4th, ice-cream.

Our hostess, with her fine conceptions of life, could no more have given us soup, fish, meat, game, puddings, pies, raisins, nuts, fruits and ice-creams, than she could have offered us whiskey, rum, gin, brandy and all the rest of them. All this sort of thing, whether of foods or drinks, belongs to the vulgar and barbarous.

Some time since an august Medical Association assembled for its annual meeting in Boston. The city government voted a large sum of money to the entertainment of the "distinguished visitors." It was a precious opportunity for the homoepathic physicians of the city, under whose management the money was to be spent, to show what a generous and refined hospitality could do.

Boston has a peculiar reputation. In some respects it stands alone among American cities. And this was a peculiar occasion. Several hundred representatives of a dominant school of medicine, one which now commands the intelligence of the country, were to convene in Boston. The strangers stopped at hotels and with the brethren, and, it may be fairly presumed, got enough to eat.

What do you suppose our doctors did? I will tell you. The evening before the convention, the delegates were invited to attend a preparatory meeting, at which meeting the _preparation_ consisted in eating, in the evening after supper, sundry salads, cold chickens, cakes, oysters, creams, &c.

The convention adjourned next day at twelve o'clock, for a collation, although it may be supposed that the members had all been to breakfast. After the collation, many of them went to dinner, then came the afternoon session, then another stuffing, then an evening session, then a surfeit, and even when the entertainment was given in Music Hall, which was really fine, the members were invited to another hall to fill up their stomachs before they went to bed.

If this meeting had occurred in some frontier town, where they had nothing but victuals, it would have been tolerable, as a good- natured back-woods hospitality; but in Boston, something better was expected.

If I had been a member of that convention, I could have said:

"Gentlemen, we can get cold turkey and chicken salad at home, but if you will permit us to assemble in the art gallery of your splendid Atheneum, and your artists who have made this gallery a special study, will give us their bright thoughts in connection with the works of the great masters there collected; if you will allow us to spend a half day in your 'Natural History Building,' and give us Prof. Agassiz to explain things; if you will permit us to assemble in that crowning glory of New England Education--'The Institute of Technology,' and give us President Rogers for a brief explanation; yes, gentlemen, if you will show us any of twenty Boston institutions with the assistance of intelligent guides, we shall be most grateful. Gentlemen, don't be afraid of us, we shall not be offended if you happen to appeal to something above our stomachs. Gentlemen, we have come from the West to Boston, imagining that your two hundred years of uninterrupted growth and accumulations, have enriched you with something besides chicken salad, but here we find, that nothing is thoroughly organized and placed within our reach, except another dinner, exactly such as we get at home at any of our village taverns. Gentlemen, you think we can't appreciate anything else, and so you kindly condescend to our condition and feed us, but really we could appreciate your finest music, and best dramas, your great pictures, und your matchless educational institutions. At any rate you should have given us a chance at some of these things, under the guidance of your eminent specialists, and if we had shown that lack of appreciation which Red-Cloud and Spotted-Tail--the Indian chiefs--exhibited when taken through the Patent Buildings in Washington, then you could have fallen back on victuals again; but until we had shown that utter lack of sense seen in R. Cloud, Esq., and S. Tail, Esq., it was hardly fair to deny us all opportunity to examine the treasures of your city.