Manual of the Turkish bath : heat, a mode of cure and a source of strength for men and animals / from the writings of Mr. Urquhart ; edited by John Fife.

  • Urquhart, David, 1805-1877.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of the Turkish bath : heat, a mode of cure and a source of strength for men and animals / from the writings of Mr. Urquhart ; edited by John Fife. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    35/460 (page 11)
    Mr. Wihon.—Certainly. Mr. Urquhart.—Well, I have asserted the state of our skins as resulting from our habit of covering up the body, and so excluding air and light, to be morbid. Tbe sense of pain is a matter of degree ; but taking the average sensation of pain that we endure from average causes, these, I say, are symptoms of disease, not conditions of health. Mr. Wilson.—Clearly. Mr. Urquhart.—I have myself found from experi- ment made upon a child, by bringing him up with his body exposed to the action of the light and air, and subject to the extremest alternations of heat and cold which our climate affords, that he presented the oppo- site phenomena, namely, sensitiveness to pleasurable impressions and insensibility to unpleasant ones. I arrived at a subdivision of the fibral nerves. The same conclusion has been microscopically arrived at, I understood, at Berlin. Thus we have engendered a state in ourselves which when we examine it, as that of nature, disqualifies us for understanding the physio- logy of man. Mr. Witt.—What is your experience as to the value of the skin ? Mr. Urquhart.—The results of my experience are, that I have the consciousness of possessing entire com- mand over all organic disease by means of the skin, and can command the skin by heat. A man comes to me with a disease of the heart, the lungs, the liver ; if he is still able to move about, I am certain as to the result. I can arrest the further progress of the disorder: if