Salt-water Bath. — Add 4 or 5 pounds of sea salt, which can be pur chased of any druggist, to a full bath at the temperature of 65° F. The patient should remain in this bath from 10 to 20 minutes, and after wards should rest for half an hour in a recumbent position. Such baths are useful in general debility pro duced by wasting diseases, as scrof ula and other diseases of the skin, anaemia, etc. Sea salt should not be used for children. It does not pene trate the skin, but acts as a stimu lant.
Mustard Bath.—The addition of 3 or 4 tablespoonfuls of powdered mustard to a hot footbath in cases of chill is a preventive against taking cold, and is also useful in the early stages of colds to induce perspira tion. The feet should be taken out of this bath as soon as the skin red dens and begins to smart. The parts bathed should be carefully cleansed, rinsed, and wiped dry. Great care should be exercised in giving mustard baths to children, else the skin may become badly blistered.
The Bran Bath.—Make a decoction of wheat bran by boiling 4 or 5 pounds of wheat bran in a linen bag. The juice extracted, and also the bran itself, ,should be put into the water. This is for a full bath at a temperature of about 90° F. This bath is of service in all skin affec tions accompanied by itching.
Cabinet Baths.—A number of spe cial cabinets are devised for giving different kinds of baths for medicinal purposes. Purchasing one of these is usually not necessary unless there are one or more invalids in the fam ily. In such cases the selection of a suitable cabinet should be made only upon the advice of the family physi cian. The following forms of bath ing require the use of cabinets: Stool is likewise known as the Russian bath. It consists in
filling a room with steam at a tem perature under low pressure of about 120° F. Stool baths are very little used, but the same effect is produced by a cabinet which has an opening for the head so that the patient is not obliged to breathe the steam. A steam bath for the face and head may be obtained by holding the face over a receptacle full of boiling wa ter, and throwing a cloth or oilcloth over the head and shoulders so as to partly prevent the escape of the steam.
The Hot-air Bath.—In the Turk ish bath, several connecting rooms are heated to different degrees of temperature, and the patient passes slowly from the coolest to the warm est room for the purpose of inducing perspiration. He is then given a cold shower or douche, rubbed dry, wrapped in blankets and permitted to rest. These baths are very ener vating and should only be taken by persons of strong constitution. The hot-air bath, however, for the pur pose of inducing perspiration, is su perior to the steam bath. It should be so taken that the person's head will be outside of the cabinet and he will not be obliged to breathe the hot air. A temperature of 120° to 130° F. is sufficient. Great care should be taken that the air does not become superheated, as danger is likely to ensue from a temperature exceeding 140° F. The patient should not re main in the hot-air bath more than fifteen or twenty 'minutes, and should then be given a cool bath and rubbed down. If additional perspiration is desired, he should be wrapped in blankets.
Steam baths and hot-air baths should ordinarily be taken only by and with the advice of the family physician.