A HOT BATH IS BETTER THAN A WARM ONE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 564, 3 May 1913, Page 6

A HOT BATH IS BETTER THAN A WARM ONE.

You are very likely to take cold after a warm bath unlesa extremely careful about exposure, but there is no danger whatever of taking cold after a hot bath, according to E. S. Goodhue, A.M., M.D., of the Doctorage, Hawaii.

In the ordinary bath we do not have the water much over 90 degrees, Fahrenheit, many less times it ia less than that. In the hot bath, which should be for medical purposes only and not as a cleansing bath, the water should be at least 110 degrees above to begin with. Some people cannot stand it more than 108 degrees at first, but with little practice they will find tfcev cannot only stand it, but enjoy it, and in time such people will see that the water for their hot bath is at least 115 degrees above in temperature.

Nearly everyone remembers being told that they must not go out after taking a bath as they could "'catch cold." After a really hot bath in water at a temperature of 115 degrees," says, Dr Goodhue, "a man could step nude out of doors into a temperature of 10 degrees below zero and not feßl the cold for Beveral minutes, and he could dress properly and go out of doors after such a bath with no danger of taking cold. The difference between the warm bath and the hot bath, as j.far.j as the increased benefits of the latter are concerned, is in the health-giving shock the hot bath invariably produces. This shock is felt in the arterioles, which are the minute blood vessels in the skin.

When one gets into a hot bath the sudden heat or shock contracts all the blood vessels in the skin and this forces the blood out of them. But thi 3 contraction is only for the moment, then they expand again, and as they are instantly dilated as they were first contracted, twice the normal quantity of blood rushes back into them. It iB this glow that brings health and that wards off the danger of taking cold. The warm bath will not do this because there is not sufficient shock to bring the needed amount of blood out into the skin.

"The Japanese have taken hot baths for thousands of years. The water they use would parboil us, but constant practice has made them used to it," declared Dr Goodhue, "and it is to be noted that the Japanese who take these hot baths, sometimes having the water gradually heated after they have entered it as hot aB they could stand, are wonderfully free from colds and catarrhal troubles. "Hot baths are beneficial in congestive headaches and headaches caused by neuralgia, also to lumbago, internal irritations and inflammatory conditions present in typhoid fever. The best results are to be had by taking a bath and increasing the temperature to from 115 degrees to 120 degrees above, then going to bed. "The action of hot water on the body is the simplest and most effective curative agent we have. Pain due to neuriti 3, sciatica, rheumatism or injury are relieved and the first stages of a cold are so greatly relieved that the cold will not progress further. Such a bath is in no way similar to the Turkish bath. A cold bath need not be taken after a hot bath and people living in the temperate regions will be greatly benefited by really hot baths every other day."