Our Girls Part 21

BATH-ROOMS.

The ordinary bath-tub is a humbug. That zinc coffin, in which you lie down, put your head upon a strap at one end, to keep yourself from drowning, and then balance yourself for a while in a sort of floating condition, is simply a stupid absurdity. You can't even rub yourself to advantage; and if you are determined to rub your body, you are sure to bruise your elbows against the sides of the coffin.

With the exception of those baths which are given for some special remedial purpose, all baths should be hand baths. The bather should apply the soap and water to her own skin, and that she may use it freely and in her own comfortable bedroom, the bath-mat, which I have described, is indispensable. It never wears out, gives no care, and is on the whole, a most happy device.

HOT AND COLD BATHS.

The application of cold or hot water to the skin, produces two effects,--a primary and a secondary,--action and reaction.

If the water be _cold_, the _primary_ effect is to make the skin cold. When the _secondary_ effect or reaction comes on, the skin becomes _warm_. If _hot_ water be applied to the skin, the _primary_ effect is to make the skin hot; the _secondary_ effect, or reaction, leaves it cold.

The first effect is a momentary one; the second effect, or reaction, continues a long time.

Timid girls exclaim:--

"_Cold_ water! of course you don't mean _cold_ water! What, _cold_ water, right _on_ me and _all over_ me? Why, Doctor, I couldn't stand it! it would kill me!"

"Do you think you could take a hot bath?"

"Oh, certainly; I could take a hot bath easy enough." This conversation occurs in January.

My dear child, you are entirely mistaken. Everybody can take a cold bath, if properly managed, every day of the year; but, during the cold weather, it takes a strong const.i.tution to bear a hot bath; for although the first, or momentary effect, is to make the skin warm and comfortable, the secondary effect, or reaction, which comes on very soon and lasts a long time, is to make the surface very cold.

During the warm weather, the hot bath is a great luxury. For the moment it makes you warm, but the secondary effect, or reaction, which will continue for a long time, leaves you in a cool, comfortable state.

Foot baths afford a happy ill.u.s.tration of this h.o.m.oeopathic law, "_Similia Similibus Curantur_,"--"_like are cured by like_."

You are troubled with cold feet. Dip the bottoms of your feet in cold water. Let the water be half an inch deep. Hold the feet there four or five minutes, and then give them a good rubbing. Perhaps stand on the carpet with your naked feet, and twist from side to side, until your feet are burning. Not only will your feet remain warm all night, but after practicing this two or three weeks, unless your digestion is _very_ weak, your feet will become warm as a habit.

On the contrary, if you are troubled with burning feet, a frequent hot foot bath will cure you.

But in every case the employment of hot foot baths will give tendency to cold in the head.

But you say again that you like cold baths well enough in warm weather; but if you use the cold bath in the winter, it makes you cold and shivery, it gives you headache and depresses you.

Ah, I see you haven't taken the bath in the right way. If you take it in the way I suggest, no such effects will follow. Apply soap to every part of your skin rapidly with your bathing mittens. That is the most important part of the bath. Now put on just as much or just as little water as your comfort may suggest. If you can bear a good deal, you may put it on; but if you are sensitive to the cold, manage in the way I have suggested,--put on the soap, follow with a damp mitten, and do it all just as rapidly as your hands can move, so that from the time you take off your night dress, until the soap has been applied to every part of the body, and followed by the damp mitten and dry towels, will not be more than one to two minutes. If this is done in your bedroom, instead of a cold bath-room, you will hardly be chilled or depressed by it. If you are so exceedingly sensitive that even this momentary exposure with a moist skin produces an unpleasant chilliness, then follow the soap bath by the most vigorous use of a pair of hair gloves.

HAIR GLOVES OR MITTENS.

For three thousand years, hair mittens have been in use. Hippocrates rubbed himself with a pair.

Girls, you should all have a pair of hair mittens. Buy Lawrence's English patent. They are the best in the market. At night, when you are about to retire, rub every part of the skin till it is as red as a boiled lobster. Ah, how sweet it makes the sleep, how sure to remove all tendency to morning headache. I have seen this practice entirely break up unpleasant dreams. Your skins are always in the dark. They become pale and bloodless. The blood which should circulate in the skin, retires within the body, producing congestion of the liver, with bad complexion; congestion of the stomach, with dyspepsia; congestion of the heart and lungs, with short and labored breath, and congestion of the brain, with headache.

If the skin, which has so many blood-vessels, and is designed to hold so large a quant.i.ty of blood,--if the skin enjoyed a constant, free, vigorous circulation, it would relieve the organs within the body of most of their sufferings. I know of no other simple or single means, by which such circulation can be established and maintained in the skin, as by the constant and spirited use of the hair mittens. Besides, it will do wonders for the beauty of your face. Giving the skin of the residue of the body a free circulation, the skin of the face is not likely to be called upon to do more than its share of removing the effete matter in the system, and, therefore, is not likely to take on pimples and other evidences of impurities in the blood.

HOME GYMNASIUM.

The effeminacy of our civilized life, with the employment of machinery for the hard work, necessitates a resort to artificial physical exercise.

Every home, especially where there are children, should have a room devoted altogether, or, on occasions, to gymnastic exercises.

Happily, Schreber, the most eminent of the German school of physical training, has devised a complete apparatus for family use, to which he has given the name of "Pangymnastikon," (which may be translated as meaning all exercises upon one piece of apparatus).

This piece of apparatus weighs not more than ten pounds, may be put into a small box, can be hung up in any room or hall, a parlor, for example, in a minute, and offers complete facilities for a greater variety of fascinating and effective physical exercises than can be found in a gymnastic hall a hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and filled with the ordinary gymnastic apparatus.

When no longer needed, it may be taken down and put away in a moment.

This piece of apparatus is pretty, inexpensive, and perfectly safe.

The manufacturers furnish with it six little wall maps, on which are represented, in engravings, one hundred different exercises, arranged in six groups, and adapted to the varying strength and capacity of the pupils. A very considerable number of the best of these can be performed by girls and women in their ordinary long skirts.

But if I had daughters in my own family, and we were using the Pangymnastikon, I should urge them to drop their long skirts at the hour of exercise, and wear a pair of loose pants and a jacket. Such a dress would permit many profitable exercises for the legs and hips, which women greatly need.

They seem now, except, perhaps, in the case of dancing girls, to be almost as helpless, in any extraordinary circ.u.mstances, as our wooden-legged soldiers.

For example, if a woman undertakes to step upon a street car when it is motion, she is sure to lose her balance; and if she steps off the car when it is in motion, though the horses are only walking, down she goes. An hour's exercise each day with the Pangymnastikon would soon cure her of this awkward helplessness, and, at the same time, would develop the muscles about the lower part of her body, and thus save her numberless weaknesses and sufferings.

WHAT YOU SHOULD EAT

In all countries where food is plenty and cheap, excessive eating is well-nigh universal.

The parents indulge in excesses, the father inflames his appet.i.te with narcotics, the children inherit an unnatural craving; during the nursing period they are fed constantly; during childhood they are bated with cakes, candies and other sweetmeats, and afterwards they are tempted with a variety of condimented meats, and these are followed with appetizing desserts, fruits, and other t.i.t-bits.

CONSEQUENCES.

The results are seen on every hand, in almost every individual. The stomach becomes weak and deranged, the body heavy and in-elastic, the mind foggy and sluggish, the temper irritable.

In no other department of American life do we so much need a thorough reform. Fashionable people hate the word _reform_, but in this connection no other word will answer; we must set about a thorough, earnest, radical _reform._

The Creator has so contrived our bodies, He has made them so resistant and elastic, that an occasional abuse seems to make little impression.

For example, a man may get drunk once a month, and at the end of a dozen years he seems scarcely touched by the vice; although, as the physiologist has shown us, upon each indulgence the lining coat of the stomach is strangely inflamed, and changed in appearance; indeed, for three or four days after each debauch the mucous lining of the stomach continues to exude a matter which closely resembles pus. Besides these marked and apparently alarming effects, it is well known that alcohol is a powerful poison to every tissue of the body, especially to the nerve; and yet the alcohol is not digested, but goes, bodily and unchanged, creeping through every atom of the brain itself; nevertheless, after hours of deep, death-like lethargy, the man awakens, and his wonderful mechanism is ready to grapple again with the duties of life.

A child takes into its mouth a bit of tobacco. It is followed by a pale face, cold sweat, alarming palpitations, and violent vomiting.

And yet, after a little practice, the human system may be deluged with this powerful, narcotic poison,--a man's mouth may be kept swimming, month after month, with the strongest juice of the strongest tobacco,--his very perspiration may be so filled with this intense poison, that, falling on the battle-field, the most loathsome beast of prey will not touch his body. Yet so complete is his facility of adaptation, so immense his power of resistance, that, for a life-time, his bodily, mental and moral machinery will struggle on in the midst of this sea of poison.

And so it is with this almost universal vice of improper and excessive eating. The stomach and liver are clogged and deranged, the blood is filled with crudities and impurities, the brain is crowded with this vicious blood, and yet the Good Father has given us such an immense reserve, that we can bear all this, and still have force enough left to move about, to think, to feel, and sometimes to have hours of real enjoyment.