WHAT IS A COLD BATH?

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3016, 24 February 1881, Page 3

WHAT IS A COLD BATH?

The sea9on of tlie year when very many people who have experienced pleasure and advantage from a daily cold bath have to discontinue the practice has come. Months will elapse before the return of genial weather will allow of their indulgenco in what may be termed man's natural stimulant. Among the young and robust there are a large number who are able to baths even in the depths of winter; the advantage of so doing is, however, questionable. But let it be once well understood what a cold bath really is, and the course by which we can avoid Scylla and Charybdis will bo obvious. A cold bath is nob necessarily a bath in water of the temperature of the atmosphere. A hath is really and truly cold when it produces a certain physio-

logical effect—a elight momentary shock, followed by pleasant and lasting reaction. These effects are for the majority of people most pleasantly obtained by bathin water about 35deg. to 40deg. below the temperature 6f the body—the usual temperature of unheated water in June and July. Bearing this in mind, we can enjoy our physiological " cold" bath as safely and pleasantly at Christmas as at midsummer and there is no necessity for the most timid or weakly to discontinue his morning tub because the summer weather is over. When the water sinks below a temperature of 60deg., let it be heated to that point and then used, and we shall still have our" cold" bath, though of heated water. The daily stimulant effect of such a bath is so beneficial to the great majority of persons and is of such marked service in maintaining health, that it is very important to have it widely known that a cold bath may be taken all the year round, provided cold is not mistaken to mean "at the temperature of the outer air." To heat out bath during the winter months is too often thought to be unmanly, while in reality it is truly scientific, and to bathe in unheated water all the year l'ound, whatever the temperature that water may be, ie to prove oneself an ignorant slave of outward cix'cumstances. — Lancet.