The guide to health : designed to promote the health, happiness and longevity of students and all others in sedentary life, especially invalids / by Daniel Newell.

  • Newell, Daniel.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The guide to health : designed to promote the health, happiness and longevity of students and all others in sedentary life, especially invalids / by Daniel Newell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    but it also refreshes the mind; and spreads over the whole sj'stem a sensation of ease, ac- livitj, and pleasantness. It removes stagna- tion in the larger as well as in the capillary vessels; and gives uniform circulation to the blood. Bathing preserves that wonderful bar-, mony in our interior organs, on the disposition of which our health and comfort much depends. It preserves the solid parts soft and pliable and renders the joints flexible. Hence it protracts the season of active lite and excludes many in- firmities from old age. The cold bath produces an instantaneous shock through the whole system which expels the heat from the surface of the body, hence that exertion of the vital energies to counter- act the shock and restore the lost quantity of animal heat, which is called reaction. It will be seen that while the body is placed in these critical circumstances, for a few moments, a considerable impression must be made on the sentient system, or the brain, as well as on the whole body. Every cold bath applied to the whole sys- tem, should be of ver^' short duration. Since much depends on the first impression the cold makes on the external and nerves, we should plunge into the bath ; for in this manner the impression is uniform; effect is produced all over the body. Thus the blood is not driven from the lower parts to the brain, as when we enter the bath slow and timorously. The morning is the best time, unless we bathe in a river, in which case the afternoon «*