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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    8 simply by the combustion of carbon, from its union with the oxygen of the atmosphere, which takes place at the lungs and on the general surface of the body. Do not then cloak yourselves up on leaving the Bath, for when the whole surface breathes, the more you are exposed to the air the warmer you become. The Russian rolls in the snow after the bath. After leaving the hot room in our Bradford bath, bathers were in the habit, last winter, of jumping into a bed of snow which had been collected for the purpose. I have myself spent the whole night in the woods at Blarney, without any clothing save the bath sheet, after coming out of Dr. Barter's bath at that place. This was after a ball, when with several other gentle- men, I retreated to the bath for the sake of refreshment from fatigue. So delightful was the cool air, that when far away from any dwelling, we threw aside even our sheets, to enjoy the morning breeze at day-break. You need not then fear exposure to the air, after the bath; it is not so much for the sake of cooling that this process is necessary, as to keep up the action of the Bath by exposing the skin to air; it is to compel the skin to breathe, after having put it in a state of ability to do so, by cleansing the pores. Having now taken the bath, you will continue warm, without clothing if you like, until the skin becomes again blocked up. The circulation, too, is necessarily active throughout the whole system, preventing any local congestion, coldness, or inflammation. For what is the priniarij cause of the circulation of the blood ? Is it the contraction of the chambers of the heart? Certainly not; but the attraction of pure blood to the centres of nutrition all over the body; and again the attraction of the impure blood, after having supplied those centres with nutriment, to the lungs, to the skin, and to the excrementitious glands, there to give off the effete matter with whicli it lias, in exchange for nutriment that it imparted, become loaded. The heart is merely a mechanical auxiliary, requisite in large and complex animals, but not necessary, and therefore not found in simpler organizations. But can you preserve the circulation without Air? No. Cut off the atmosphere from the lungs, and not all the power of the heart can drive a drop of blood through that organ. The blood, by con- tact with the oxygen of the nir, not only gets rid of its effete matter, but is re-charged with the vitalising principle—oxygen, which it curries to all parts of the body. Away then with your flannels and stimulants ! Every one whom I meet to-day, cloaked up to his nose, tells me that it is a cold day. I am not sensible of it, though I was formerly as sensitive to cold as most people, and was once even considered consumptive. I assure you, that 80 long as I take my bath once or twice a week, no degree of cold affects me, let me clothe as thinly as I may. I wish to correct one other objection, which after my last lecture was raised against the bath, viz. that it is wealcening. Never was a greater mistake made. The perspiration has drained away no living tissue, but merely effete and poisonous matter, which was oppressing, and not main-