the worn-out tissues of the several organs, ought to be kept in a state in activity and vigor. In aid of this excretory function, bathing, of some form, is generally regarded as valuable; and still it cannot be denied that great numnbers of individuals, in our farming districts, pass many years without, in a single instance, plunging or washing their entire bodies in water, and notwithstanding attain to an advanced age. Dr. Livingstone, in a communication. recently read before the British Scientific Association, mentions that, in African explorations this year (1860), he found a tribe who live in villages; are industrious, cultivate and manufacture cotton, work in iron, and produce fruits, grains, and esculent roots. They have a healthy climate, judging from the number of white-headed men, apparently very old. They are averse to ablutions, or to bathing in any form. "An old man said he remembered washing himself once, when a boy,-never repeated it, and from his appearance, the truth of his statement could hardly be doubted." ..... “The castor oil with which they lubricate themselves, and the dirt, serve as additional clothing." The sponge-bath is one of the least troublesome varieties, occupying less time than any other. The apparatus is simple, viz. a basin of water, a sponge, a towel, and a mat, or bit of carpet, to stand upon. With the sponge, the body and limbs are moistened with water, and then rubbed dry with the towel. The water may be tepid or cold, according to the preference of the bather. In cold weather, when it is an object to excite a free re-action upon the skin, a hair mitten or a flesh-brush may be used after the towel. The plunge-bath and the shower-bath may be warm or cold. Bathing should not be resorted to while the stomach is occupied in the process of digestion. Eleven o'clock in the forenoon is a good hour for the tonic effect of the warm bath, or of the cool or cold bath, in hot weather, if the person has eaten nothing since six or seven o'clock. For the shower-bath, the head should be protected by an oiled silk cap, unless the hair be so short as to be easily wiped dry. In the natural drying of much hair upon the head, too much heat is abstracted from the brain. Few individuals have the resolution to encounter the cold shower or cold plunge bath in winter. I know an English gentleman who believes that the daily morning shower-bath, through summer and winter, protects him from a tormenting rheumatism, which had lasted for years. At Liverpool, in 1830, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Maury, the United States consul in that city. He informed me that after having, for a number of years, suffered much from rheumatism, he was advised to resort to the cold plunge-bath every morning; that he had practised this method for the last forty years, and during that period had enjoyed an exemption from the malady. He was then, as nearly as memory serves me, not far from eighty-three years of age. At the suggestion that a good share of firmness was necessary to perseverance in the practice, he remarked that for many years he had not come up to that tub of cold water, which was about to receive him bodily, without a momentary feeling of repulsion and dread. Almost every one knows that bathing is not healthful unless speedily followed by a sense of warmth upon the surface; or a feeling of exhilaration, rather than languor or depression. The public baths of Imperial Rome were among her most men specimens of architecture. Es are still visible of those of Tas Pudain, il Crad Those of Circula were fumibed with sirten kan ind seats of marble, apon which three thousand persons could be seated at the same time. Those of Pixeltiin surpassed all the others in size and sumptacostess of dees oration. The palle baths in £ the dies of Rome, frequentel by classes alimudy became schools of idleness, effeminary, and Brentiousness and had no small share in unnerving the power which had conquered the world. Poppaa the wife of Nem hal at her control five hun dred she asses, in whose milk she was wont to bathe, for the benefit, as she supposed, of her complexion. The last work fon bathing) of Dr. John Bell, of Philadelphia, published in 1852, seems to have exhausted the literature of the subject, leaving nothing for subsequent laborers in that department. Upon water, as a prophylactic, and a remedial agent in certain diseases, both in its ancient and modern history, it is very fall. This book is entitled to a place in every medical library. CHAPTER III. - DAVIS'S EXPERIMENTS ON CONSUMPTIVE ALCOHOL PATIENTS. ALCOHOL, when taken somewhat dilute into the human stomach, produces a sensation of warmth, which is in no long time diffused among the several organs, accompanied by a general feeling of exhilaration. The pulse, in half an hour to an hour, is sometimes accelerated to the extent of six to ten beats in a minute, while the respirations are but slightly, if at all, changed in frequency. In certain conditions of the nerves, however, even small doses of distilled or fermented liquor operate as a direct sedative upon the pulse. I have a medical friend, who, in convalescence from an attack of hemiplegia, tried, by the advice of his physicians, wine and Huxham's tincture of bark. The taking of a tea-spoonful of either of these articles was very soon followed by a falling of the pulse from fifty-two to forty-eight and forty-six. This effect was uniform on repeated trials. At the same time, there was a confused and uncomfortable sensation in the head. The doctor soon laid aside these remedies, and recovered without them, on the mildest food. For several years past, the hypothesis has obtained that alcohol, as containing a considerable proportion of carbon, must be a valuable agent in sustaining the vital temperature, by being burnt in the lungs; this hypothesis, too, chiming so well with social customs and individual appetites in almost every class, has widely prevailed. Plausible, however, as this view may be, there is good reason to believe that it is not true. If alcohol combine with the atmospheric oxygen admitted to the lungs in respiration, it is natural to ask, why is there not, at the same time, an increased exhalation of carbonic acid? But so far from this being the fact, it has been clearly proved that the amount of carbonic acid discharged from the lungs while alcohol is in the circulation is decidedly diminished. From the experiments of Bernard, it is inferable that no combustion, as it is called, takes place in the capillaries of the lungs; that oxygen is simply taken in, and carbonic acid given out; that the combination occurs in the capillaries of the body, and that there heat is evolved; and that it takes place by means of the oxygen which enters by the lungs.1 Robin and Verdeil, in their Physiological Chemistry, take substantially the same view. They regard heat as the result of nutritive changes of all kinds, but not the object of them.2 Carbonic acid gas exists in the lungs, the blood, the alimentary canal, and the urine. The amount dissolved in the blood would be sufficient in its gaseous state to occupy from one fifth to one third of the space filled by the blood. There is more in arterial than in venous blood, (one hundred and twenty-three to one hundred,) as is the case with oxygen and nitrogen also. It is dissolved in 1 Dr. Walter Atlee's Notes of M. Bernard's Lectures on the Blood. |