The Turkish bath in health and disease : being the substance of a lecture delivered at Sheffield on the 10th of December, 1858 / by John le Gay Brereton.

  • Brereton, J. le Gay (John le Gay), 1827-1886.
Date:
[1860]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Turkish bath in health and disease : being the substance of a lecture delivered at Sheffield on the 10th of December, 1858 / by John le Gay Brereton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    matic Sciatica, many cases of Tic Doloureaux, &c., tlie bath will certainly cure. The high temperature alone, of the bath, will often euro chronic rheumatism, and various forms of neuralgia. High temperature, too, is curative in Inflammations, Burns, and Scalds. High temperature arrests all diseases of fermentation. The Plague is arrested in climates above a certain temperature. The hot winds of Australia are said to arrest fevers of various kinds. In short, it has become a question with me, not what the bath loill cure, but what it will not cure ? I am aware that such diseases as have, their origin in the nervous centres, and in the forces or fluids which those centres secrete,—Dynamic diseases we may call them,—demand equally subtle, dynamic remedies ; these the bath does not supply, but in blood diseases I see no necessary limit to its curative power. Under this class come Diseases of the Skin which I ought to have particularized : for the most part they are mere efforts, in ore or less ineffectual, to throw off impurities, and are of course superseded by the Bath. This we know, that scrofula and gout are almost unknown in countries where the bath is in vogue. Witli all these facts, is it not strange that we should so long have neglected it ? We well know that if we do not exercise our horses, aye, and shampoo them, too, they break into grease or some other disease. We know, too, how grooming refreshes a jaded horse. While we daily court the very accelerators of death, we habitually shun the means of averting their mischievous effects. We eat and drink to excess, and are too often indolent in proportion as we are gluttonous. The old Romans exceeded us in gluttony, but then they had the Bath, and did so with comparative impunity. What the destined duration of life may be we do not know. The Psalmist tells us that in his day the limit was from 70 to 80 years. But there is no declaration in Scripture that it ought to be or need be so for ever. We are told, on the contrary, that man shall live 120 years, and that the child shall die an hundred years old. This is not more than we should expect, compared with the lower animals, of a being who takes at least twenty years to arrive at maturity. Be this as it may, how few live out even their 70 years, and how few again are perfectly healthy even in middle or somewhat advanced life ? You will some of you be startled to hear that half the children born in London die before they are three years old. It is needless for me to tell you, that if the statements I have already made be true, the Turkish Bath will make a vast difference in these statistics. I lately read a book recording 1,712 authentic cases of people who had lived to the ago of 100. Some had been great eators, many had been vegetarians, some few had been great drinkers, some had been teetotallers, some had been bachelors, some were married, and had large families; but all had lived much in the open-air, and with one exception of an infirm clergyman, had been in the habit of taking active exercise ; if in the upper ranks of life, as sportsmen, and when poor, in their daily avocations.