The Cold Water Cure: Reprinted, with Additions, from the Last Edition of the "Baths of Germany"

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John Churchill, 1844 - 50 pages
 

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Page 11 - The cooling, of the body, by whatever cause it may be produced, increases the amount of food necessary. The mere exposure to the open air, in a carriage or on the deck of 'a ship, by increasing radiation and vaporization, increases the loss of heat, and compels us to eat more than usual.
Page 13 - They will sometimes come out, still naked, and converse together, or with any one near them, in the open air. If travellers happen to pass by while the peasants of any hamlet, or little village, are in the bath, and their assistance is needed, they will leave the bath, and assist in yoking, or unyoking, and...
Page 13 - Another particular that appeared very singular among the customs of the Finns, was their baths, and manner of bathing. Almost all the Finnish peasants have a small house built on purpose for a bath: it consists of only one small chamber, in the innermost part of which are placed a number of stones, which are heated by fire till they become red. On these stones, thus heated, water is thrown, until the company within be involved in a thick cloud of vapor.
Page 13 - The Finnish peasants pass thus instantaneously from an atmosphere of 70 degrees of heat, to one of 30 degrees of cold — a transition of a hundred degrees, which is the same thing as going out of boiling into freezing water ! and what is more astonishing, without the least inconvenience, while other people are very sensibly affected by a variation of but five degrees, and in danger of being afflicted with rheumatism by the most trifling wind that blows.
Page 12 - ... increases the loss of heat, and compels us to eat more than usual. The same is true of those who are accustomed to drink large quantities of cold water, which is given off at the temperature of the body, 98-5°.
Page 29 - Graefenberg, within two days' journey from Dresden, and only eight or ten days' from London, there exists one of the greatest benefactors of mankind, one of the most astounding geniuses of this or any other age — the founder of a system — by which he proves, beyond the power of contradiction, that all curable diseases, and many declared by the faculty beyond the power of their art, are to be cured by the sole agency of cold spring water, air, and exercise...
Page 12 - ... affusions of tepid, and finally of cold water, are practised by pouring buckets full of it on the head. Sometimes, when there are no conveniences for a supply of cold water, a Russian will rush out from the bath and plunge into the nearest stream, or even roll in the snow.
Page 19 - ... secondary importance in disease. The elements of general and internal disease, or the morbid predispositions which form the most important objects of treatment, may, then, all be reduced to vitiated states of the blood, and of the lymph ; or to derangement of the nervous system.
Page 36 - Taking this sentence as a text, and having an eye to those which precede it, we shall take the liberty of preaching a little sound physiology to those who talk about " the thinning of the blood." Of the patients who resort to Malvern for the treatment by water, air, exercise, and diet, seven out of ten labour under the interruption or obstruction of more or fewer of the organs which minister to the digestion of food ; and the periods of their ailments date variously from two to twenty years previously....
Page 40 - ... efficacy of mineral waters, the experience of centuries which confirms this efficacy, the universal favour in which they are held among all civilised people notwithstanding the difference of medical theories, sufficiently demonstrate that they are of all remedies those of which the reputation is the most justly established. Nature bestows these remedies liberally upon us in order to invite us to have recourse to them...

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