The airbath as a means of healing and hardening the body / by Dr. Heinrich Lahmann.

  • Heinrich Lahmann
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The airbath as a means of healing and hardening the body / by Dr. Heinrich Lahmann. 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.

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    all the more because it is itself already overhetaed. Thus the strong labourer strips himself instinctively to his shirt when engaged in heavy toil. And when a man does not so strip himself, especially when he is a gymnast or a soldier mar- ching in close order and subject to the radiating heat given off by his companions, he runs the risk of sunstroke. And thanks to our perverse manner of dressing we are always comparatively running the same danger and may at any moment die of congestion caused by the heat. Is not that an unreasonable risk to run? And as the bodily strain is produced, so we find is the mental condition affected. At least it is so with me, for when I write (as I do at this moment), with both head and heart involved, I feel a strong current or wave go through the whole body and it become necessary for- me to pause and then continue my work — in airbath costume. Further, as already stated, the skin is the organ by which vapours are given off by the body. These are indeed the most poisonous waste products of the body escaping through the skin. We have, it is true, other organs of secretion, the lungs, the kidneys, the intestinal canal with the liver, but the action of the lungs must be considerably intefered with and the accumulation of carbonic acid thereby caused, much increased before there is danger to life. We know of a case in which an animal whose blood bore the repeated transfusion of urine before death supervened. The perspiration of the most healthy man resulting from exhaus- tive work has shown itself to be fatal when transfused into the veins of dogs or rabbits. Perspiration contains a larger proportion of water than urine but, according to Dr. Arloing, its poisonous property is four or five times greater. That blood poisoning through the skin is no imaginary thing but a matter of fact has been proved by exhaustive physiological experiments. If, for instance, we apply varnish to the bare skin of an animal, it dies within a short time, of blood — poisoning with suppression of perspiration. That these physio- logical facts have been so often misinterpreted in physiological books shows that the science of physiology is still incomplete. Experiments alone will not suffice. Thought directed to correct interpretation is, after all, the principal thing. When we wear insufficiently ventilated clothing or when, in consequence of an impeded radiation of warmth, the blood rises to the surface of the skin, its action becomes in a more or less important degree interfered with. This is not a fatal matter but the exudations of the skin which thus cannot