pliance, baths may be divided into single baths and common baths, single baths including sponge baths, tub baths, needle baths, shower baths and douches; common baths including swimming pool baths, river baths, sea baths, Turkish and Russian baths.

DEFINITION OF BATHS.

Sponge. The simplest form of bath consists in bathing the whole body with water by means of a sponge. This is the socalled sponge bath; and, where other bath ing facilities are lacking, this bath should be taken daily.

Tub.-A full tub bath is one in which the bather sits or lies down in an appliance which does not permit him to otherwise alter his position, the whole body being immersed up to the neck.

Wave. In some parts of the Continent, the wave bath is much used; the motion of the bather imparts to the body a feeling similar to that of waves in the sea bath.

Douche.-The douche consists of a compact, solid stream of water, either hot or cold, of varying size and force, which is made to fall upon some part of the body. The "Scotch douche" consists in the alternate use of streams of hot and cold water.

Shower. The shower bath differs from the douche in that the water issues under moderate pressure in a finely divided stream through numerous small openings of a sprinkler-shaped or a ring-shaped shower.

Needle. In the needle bath, the water is applied in minute jets to the whole body by a series of vertical and horizontal perforated ring tubes.

Rain. The rain bath is a form of shower, so fixed that the descending streams of water are inclined, so as to prevent the water from striking the head of the bather.

W'et Pack. This is a method of applying water to the body in order to obtain a refrigerating action. The patient is stripped and enveloped in the wet sheet; the action of the skin may be encouraged by placing several blankets over the wet sheet.

Russian. In the hot vapor or so-called Russian baths, the bather is surrounded by moist air of 120° to 150° Fahrenheit. This opens the pores and causes profuse perspiration and raises the body temperature.

Turkish. In the hot-air or Turkish bath, the bather is placed in rooms containing dry air, varying in temperature from 150' to 200° Fahrenheit. Both the Turkish and Russian baths are followed by shampooing, cold douches, needle baths, or a cold plunge bath, and terminate in thorough drying, massage and rest.

Mud-Mud baths are much used in some parts of Germany. They consist of water mixed with moor earth, or the mud deposited by some of the mineral springs: they cool unequally and retain their heat in the center for long periods.

Pine.-Pine baths are of great repute in regions where pine trees are plentiful, as in the Black Forest, the Harz Mountains and elsewhere. A decoction is made of the fragrant tops of the pine trees, and this is added to the baths in varying quantities.

Sand. Sand baths belong to the remedies which are hallowed by antiquity. The patient is buried in the sand and exposed to the full rays of the sun, and the combined effect of the heat and the surface irritation produces a copious perspiration.

EFFECTS AND USES OF BATHS.

A cold bath is essentially a stimulant; the cutaneous vessels at once contract and send the superficial blood supply inward: the respiration is at first quickened, and then slowed and increased in depth. The whole nervous system and all of the mental faculties receive an immediate powerful stimulus. The pulse is somewhat slowed. Upon emerging from the bath, respiration and pulse return to their normal rates; the vessels of the skin relax and dilate, and the return of the blood in increased volume to the surface gives a sensation of warmth which is known as "reaction." Not the least in importance of the effects of cold bathing is the immunity which its devotees appear to enjoy against "catching cold."

Many of those who practice cold bathing the year round have no trouble whatever with colds, and can withstand exposure which to others is productive of much illness. A cold bath is refreshing and invigorating, and the best time for taking it is early in the morning, as soon as possible after rising. After a warm bath, cold bathing will close the pores of the skin and prevent one from catching cold. The cold bath is of value in fevers; in certain nervous conditions, such as hysteria, St. Vitus. dance and night terrors, and in some skin diseases.

In sea bathing, the element of enjoyment has a most important influence. The salts are commonly supposed to be the chief source of benefit; but the influence of the salts contained in the sea water is nil. The benefits of sea bathing are the result of the physiological action of cold; the attendant exercise of swimming; the pure air; the absence of domestic and business cares, and the sense of enjoyment.

Warm baths are taken for the purpose of cleansing the skin, to alleviate pain, and to stimulate the excretory organs. Warm and hot bathing cause dilatation of the cutaneous vessels, and more or less profuse perspiration; the respiration and pulse are increased in frequency, and a general soothing effect is produced. For purposes of personal cleanliness, warm and hot baths are better suited than cold, since they can be borne longer with comfort, and the relaxation of the skin, which they induce, is more favorable to complete removal of the adherent matters. Hot bathing is a most grateful means of reducing soreness of the muscles after violent exercise, and a valuable assistant in the treatment of insomnia. Warm baths are far more useful, generally, in diseases than cold baths. Gout and rheumatism are much treated by hot baths. Many baths on the Continent have a high reputation for the treatment of these conditions. Warm baths are of value in paralysis, neuralgia, lumbago, diabetes, skin diseases and extensive burns of the skin.

The Turkish hot-air and the Russian hot

vapor baths are a great aid to the city dwellers who get an insufficient amount of air and exercise, since these baths produce an activity of the skin which can only be brought about otherwise by violent exercise. A common cold may sometimes be cured or cut short by means of a Turkish bath.

No form of bath is better adapted, from a hygienic and economic point of view, for working people than the tepid shower or rain bath. It is the simplest, quickest, cheapest, cleanest, and, withal, the best bath for the great mass of people; it is the one which requires the least space, the least time, the least amount of water, the least fuel for warming the water, the least attendance, and the least cost of maintenance. Standing under such a spray, the bather can soap and rub his body, rinse it with more clean warm water which falls in a gentle, yet invigorating, rain from the neck downward; and, finally, he can let some pure, cold water flow to increase the mechanical and tonic effect and to prevent catching cold. All waste water flows away immediately. Such a simple bath at once cleanses, refreshes and invigorates the person, and it therefore has the cleansing and tonic effect combined. The shower bath has, for these reasons, become the favorite modern method, and it is destined to be the bath of the future.

Bathing, in all its forms, increases the internal work of the body; it increases the heart action, the rate of respiration, the rapidity of the circulation, the rate of tissue change, and, in the case of hot baths, the rate of perspiration through the skin. This necessarily makes a call upon the vital forces and causes a certain amount of exhaustion. Therefore, baths must not be taken at a time when the body is much fatigued; and, moreover, strenuous exercise should not be indulged in after a bath until a considerable period of time has elapsed.

Again, since bathing invariably affects

the distribution of the blood, causing either anæmia or congestion of the internal organs, it is important not to overtax those organs during the period of bathing. Hence, it is never advisable to bathe directly after

a meal.

Proper ventilation of the bathroom is a matter of prime importance; for, since the respiration is quickened by the act of bathing, it is evident that a foul atmosphere in the bathroom is very liable to produce an ill effect upon the bather. It is a very common custom in private houses to place the bath and the water-closet in the same room. That this is an undesirable arrangement is evident; for the water-closet is, of all places in a house, the one in which a foul odor is most likely to be encountered.

Friction and massage are valuable accessories to bathing, and serve to take the place of exercise in those diseases in which the patient is unable to exercise his body. thoroughly himself. Friction is applied to the skin to remove the surface layers of the cuticle; to encourage the dilatation of the superficial vessels, and to increase the transudation of the perspiration. Massage is a deeper and more forcible kind of a friction in which the muscles are manipulated and kneaded. This acts as a stimulant to the muscles, much as an electric battery acts.

"THERE are men who are always in travail of some great work which never sees the light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of calculations which they take very good care not to publish, politicians who live on a newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose performances are never given to the world, men of science who pass current among those who know nothing of science, much as Sganarelle is a latinist for those who know no latin; there are the men who are allowed by general consent to possess a peculiar capacity for some one thing, be it for the direction of arts, or the conduct of an important mission. The admirable phrase,

upon them. It must be borne in mind, however, that friction and massage are both exhausting, and must not be used to excess.

As to the temperature of the bath and its duration—although these are both very important questions-it is impossible to lay down any exact rules, for they must be settled according to the condition of the individual bather.

CONCLUSION.

If there is at present too little appreciation of the healthful effects of bathing in the lower classes of the population, it is largely on account of the lack of baths in our cities. Let bathing opportunities at reasonable expense be provided, and the people will surely make use of them, and bathing will once more become popular with the masses, as it was centuries ago. Hand in hand with increased care of the body and bodily cleanliness, will go cleanliness of the clothing and underwear, as well as the habitations; and this, in turn, wif lead to a vast improvement in ventilation and in the general health conditions of the cominunity. It will also tend to lessen the ravages of contagious diseases, which are particularly marked where there is absence of cleanliness.

"A man with a special subject," might have been invited on purpose for these acephalous species in the domain of literature and politics."

A MAN is often known by the company he keeps away from. We should go up, not down, for our companions.

PEOPLE Who croak and kick are not deserving of our sorrow and sympathy. We should ever be ready to relieve distress, but should be careful not to undermine independence. Above all be kind. There is nothing so kingly.

THE time has come when there must be a readjustment in the relationship of the medical profession to the public, and the distressing thing about it is that we are not going to be permitted to dictate the terms of that readjustment. The old day of medical dictatorship-of the infallibility of the doctor-is past. Popular education has unlocked the doors of the storehouses of medical knowledge, and we are no longer to be permitted to dole out to the public such information or misinformation as we think may be good for them.

There are no longer any medical secrets. All that we know or think we know is now available to any interested man or woman, and layman and laywoman are ransacking what was once the sacred and exclusive domain of men of medicine, and are carrying away and appropriating whatever strikes their fancy.

To be sure, these pillagers do not know what to do with much of this medical junk when they get it. There will be dangerous explosions of scientific machines that were believed not to be loaded, and many things will be used for purposes of which their creators and the medical profession never dreamed. Already chunks and blocks of medical knowledge have been torn from the mass to which they belonged and have been used by shrewd but ignorant laymen as foundations for creeds and cults and schools of cure.

Hack writers, penny-a-liners, lecturers and reformers out of a job have ripped the covers from medical text-books and have flooded the newspapers and popular magazines with anatomical sonnets, pathologic epigrams and rag-time therapeutics, for the editors have seen the trend of the public interest toward livers, lights and miscellaneous inwards, and these editors are determined to satisfy the popular demand.

While we may laugh at some of the

crude results of an uninitiated people grappling for the first time with medical lore, and guffaw at the fantastic medical cults which laymen have created, we cannot get away from the fact that the province of disease and disease prevention is no longer exclusively our own.

believe and to have others believe that we are responsible for the popularization of medical knowledge; that we have set in motion the interest which demands a fuller exposition of scientific things. Whether this be true or not-whoever may have given the original impetus - we have reached a place where we are absolutely unable to stay the movement of the popular mind. The layman has broken in on our preserves; he has squatted there, and he does not propose to be ejected.

Further than that, the layman is so industriously cultivating the soil of our old homestead that doctors themselves will have to become more serious students of preventive medicine if they hope to hold a creditable position in this newly created democracy. Many laymen social workers have absorbed practically all of our knowledge of disease prevention, and are utilizing that knowledge for the public good far more effectively than we have done in the past, when that knowledge was our exclusive possession.

Dr. Richard Olding Beard, of the University of Minnesota, sees the situation not with the eyes of a prophet, but as an observer of real existing conditions. He

says:

The effect of this change upon the physician's place in the community is making itself felt. Compelled to part with his exclusive proprietorship of the whole body of scientific truth, as applied to medicine; differentiated from his fellows by differences of knowledge and training, as well as by degrees of experience and skill, he no longer sustains his old-time relation

either to his own clientele or to the public at large. The personality of his professional power has been impaired. His kingdom has been divided, and the people know it as well as he. To them he no longer represents the fulness and finality of medical salvation-the answer to the entirety of their need. Popular confidence in scientific medicine has not diminished-it has increased; but, of necessity, it has been replaced, as far as the personality of the medical adviser is concerned.

The old code (of medical ethics) had three sections-the one concerning the relation of the physicians to their patients; the second dealing with the relations of members of the profession to each other and to the profession at large; and the third, oddly enough, treating with the duties of patients to their physicians and of the public to the profession. This third party was a non-participating one in the framing of the code, and if it accepted the conditions that instrument imposed, it did it because the medical profession of that day was in a position to dictate terms to the people. This is no longer true, and it will never be true again. Sigh as we may for "the grace of a day that is dead"-a day that wore a very tender grace of relationship between the old doctor and his 1ound of patients-it "will never come back."

There will be a third section of the code, but it will be written not by the patriarch and graybeards of the medical profession, but by a very husky and rather exacting public. Armed with a knowledge of medical things and medical possibilities, which was once exclusively our own, the people will make certain definite demands upon us. They will ask us in no uncertain terms to fill a sphere of usefulness which we have neglected in the past-to rise to the fullest possibility of rendering service to our fellow men.

To those who have observed the astounding growth of popular knowledge in medical matters, it is unnecessary to say that, in the very near future, the rank and file of the people will be fully aware of how valuable medical men can be to the people if they will map out their line of activity on a broad and comprehensive

of doing for the people, we will be expected to do it. We cannot meet the obligation which our knowledge imposes upon us and remain mere piil givers and bone

sawers.

We laugh at the so-called discoveries of lay medical enthusiasts. They tell us that tuberculosis is preventable and curable. We have been fully aware of that for some years. They tell us that disease and death may be prevented by better supervision of housing and the living conditions of the poor. Have we not known this for a generation? They tell us that we may strengthen the race and reduce the numbers of the unfit by reasonable concern as to child welfare. This, we assure them, was an axiom in the days of Benjamin Rush. They tell us of the possibilities of the physical and intellectual betterment of our race by the sane control of venereal disease, and we reply with a sarcastic and egotistic "Is it possible?"

The layman is astonished and intensely interested by these "discoveries." In the superiority of our knowledge, we assure him that all of these things have been familiar to us for years and years.

And, at this juncture, the great public will pause before it writes that third section of the code of medical ethics, and will turn to us with these pertinent and fair interrogatories:

If the great truths of prevention of physical and intellectual disease and inefficiency have been familiar to the medical profession, why have you waited to apply these truths?

If you have been possessed of this truth, and laymen have had it only at second hand, if at all, why have you waited for laymen to take the initiative in the battles for the people?

Why are the most active recruits in the anti-tuberculosis crusade taken from the ranks of laymen social workers? Why is a layman the nation's authority on the physical and moral evils of unsanitary hous ing? Why are laymen the leaders in the fight for the physical betterment of the