The consequence
was a mode of treatment too severe and exhausting; and many practices
were spread abroad not warranted by true medical science.
But in spite of these mistakes and abuses, the treatment of the skin
for disease by the use of cold water has become an accepted doctrine
of the most learned medical practitioners. It is now held by all such
that fevers can be detected in their distinctive features by the
thermometer, and that all fevers can be reduced by cold baths and
packing in the wet sheet, in the mode employed in all water-cures.
Directions for using this method will be given in another place.
It has been supposed that large bath-tubs for immersing the whole
person are indispensable to the proper cleaning of the skin. This is
not so. A wet towel, applied every morning to the skin, followed by
friction in pure air, is all that is absolutely needed; although a
full bath is a great luxury. Access of air to every part of the skin
when its perspiratory tubes are cleared and its blood-vessels are
filled by friction is the best ordinary bath.
In early life, children should be washed all over, every night or
morning, to remove impurities from the skin.
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