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friendly Apothecary," was the sound advice given by Sir Philip Crampton to a mother; and almost equally pernicious with drugging is the custom of bathing as generally followed, and of swathing in flannels. The shrewd sense of the late William Dargan-the greatest practical benefactor his country ever gave birth to when asked on one occasion, what in his opinion would be the best way to improve the social condition of Ireland, tersely replied "Edticate the mothers," and volumes of sound practical wisdom lie in the sententious observation.

Not one mother in a thousand, no, nor in ten thousand, is practically fitted to rear and develope healthy children in consistency with the laws of Nature. What between their own ignorance of the laws of health, the habits and prejudices proverbial among the nurse class, and the prescriptions of the Doctor or Apothecary with their soothing syrups and alcoholic poisons, the wonder is not that one half the children born into the world are destroyed before completing their tenth year, but by what means two-thirds of the remaining half contrive to escape; and this more particularly applies to town populations, as well as to children in the middle and higher ranks of society. "While my old nurse was with me, the child's feet were always cold, because she insisted upon covering them up with socks; but now that I leave them exposed to the air, they are constantly warm," was the remark of an observant mother, and what is true of the feet, applies with even greater force to the functions of the skin of the whole body.

The custom usually followed in bathing or washing children is radically wrong, and when the constitution is delicate the process is generally destructive, for it debilitates and cherishes a tendency to cold and internal congestions which pass under the generic term Convulsions. Heat is an essential to the growth and healthful development of all young organizations, but the sensation of heat imparted by warm water has its reaction in cold, and is essentially different from the animal heat which nourishes and invigorates the body. It is from within and not from without that such heat must be generated, and the best

means by which that generation can be effected is by the healthful circulation of the blood, which involves a healthful condition of skin organism, while in no way can the skin be maintained in such purity and tone as by the genial action of the Hot-air Bath. It does nothing more than keep the cutaneous surface in a wholesome state; and, this done, Nature works her own purposes with the internal economy.

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It is impossible to avoid the conclusion," observes Erasmus Wilson," that the close clothing of the body from the moment of birth, and the continuance of the process throughout our lives, must tend to prevent the proper and healthy development of the skin, and also to debilitate it; and that the opposite course, of exposing the skin to the air, and promoting its natural functions by means of the Bath, must have the contrary effect of hardening and strengthening the skin, and rendering its functions more perfect." And, again, he says:-"In a word, the habit of clothing the body, of keeping it shut out from the air and from the light, weakens the nerves of the skin, and consequently the natural and healthy sensibility of the organ. The little boy bred in the Bath complains of no hurt when he is accidentally struck, or when he tumbles; and that which would be a punishment to another boy is none to him." The fondness that children accustomed to the Bath have for it, and the marvellous effect it produces on delicate, sickly infants, when judiciously administered, demonstrates how in accordance its action is with Nature's laws. It is an easy and certain means of strengthening the constitution of delicate children-it educates, trains the skin to withstand climatic changes, and thus prevents chills, colds, and an array of evil consequences-and, above all, it. counteracts or eradicates, as nothing else can do, inherited proclivities to disease, which are the penalties of past transgressions of Nature's laws.

There are few houses now built for the occupation of the middle classes in which there is not some sort of provision made for bathing-some apartment that is not satirically designated "the Bath-room." But a trough for warm water, or a shower

bath, is a burlesque on bathing; and could the balance of good and evil produced by such bathing be truly ascertained, there can be no doubt that the latter would largely preponderate. Every house should possess a proper Hot-air Bath, which combines the advantages of being the most healthful, the most useful, and the most economical.

Healthful, because it purifies and invigorates the functional life of childhood, assists materially in the development of mechanical growth, and exercises a most beneficial influence over mental dispositions by its soothing action on the nervous system. It developes in the infant system an increased power to pass with safety and ease, if not with perfect impunity, through the ordeal of what are known as Infantile diseases, which the majority of people believe that children must take, but not one of which a child should take if Nature's laws were observed.

Useful, because in the Hot-air Bath there is also combined all that is beneficial in the warm water and shower baths, and that, too, in a way that when used their action cannot be otherwise than salubrious-the action of the hot-air on the skin precluding any danger from cold douching, but making it very enjoyable and healthful. "In the exclusive, combined, or alternate use of stimulants and sedatives," says Dr. James Wilson, "consists the whole art and mystery' of Physic;" and for young life, more especially, there is nothing in Nature to compare with the stimulating and sedative influence of Temperature judiciously employed.

Economical, because the cost of a hot-air bath, with all proper conveniences, need not exceed that of an ordinary bathroom, while, if properly constructed, it can be made available for many domestic uses. It will afford a constant and plentiful supply of hot water for household purposes; while, as a dryingroom, the convenience it affords can only be appreciated by those who have had experience of it. The annual expenditure caused in the generality of families by doctors' fees and "pharmaceutical filth," with which children are soothed into the grave, would

ant mir ar god aterest n he cost of constructing and maintaining in excellent Jath cut leave a good balance; so hat, war as nere noners concerned to say nothing of the eath that es neach-Youre in its is n lnstances, das sonomy n er ade.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Bath falsely represented as a panacea—Its true merits— Curable and Incurable Disease-Drugging and Hydropathy contrasted-Illustrative cases-Skin Diseases.

THE allegation that the Bath is advocated as a panacea for all diseases, we have more than once referred to as totally unfounded; but it is one that is sneeringly whispered about in society by Physic practitioners; and small minds fancy they are uttering something remarkably smart and clever, when they parrot the jeering remark-"Oh! you know the bath will cure everything!" It is the Drug-school alone that ostensibly profess to have a specific for every complaint: no Hydropathist of character would practise any such scandalous quackery. He knows too well that there are incurable diseases as well as curable—that, as we have explained, people are born into the world with different organisms, destined to endure, if nothing whatever interfered with them, for shorter or longer periods of time-born with organic defects, with transmitted disease, or predispositions thereto, and possessing a given amount of vitality from which many things may combine to subtract, but to which no human art or skill can add.

Hence there necessarily are incurable diseases which no human skill can combat, but to accelerate their fatal termination human presumption, ignorance, and quackery, can do, and does do much. Yet it is even in such diseases that the Bath is enabled, in conjunction with an enlightened Hygiene, to afford substantial assistance; and the reader, who has followed thus far, need not have repeated how the Bath accomplishes this by assisting Nature's operations in the healthful regulation of the

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