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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    the consequences changed if, after full explanation, a cold rubbing is ordered? There remains always the fear of cat- ching cold. One has no objection to inhale fresh air, but to let it play over the skin? Oh, no! And so a man wears superfluous clothing and catches cold in consequence of it because the skin is not able to perform its function. There- fore a cold rubbing or a douche is of little or no use. There is only one means of hardening the body and that is the Airbath — the action of the air upon the skin. I my-self came to this knowledge by studying the hygiene of clothing. Instinctively many other persons, whole peoples indeed — have learnt and practised body hardening by the health- fa] airbath. The celebrated Dr. Benjamin Franklin, as we can see in his communication to his friend Dr. Dubourg about the year 1750, experienced the good effects of air bathing. It runs as follows: You know that here the cold bath has been for a long time a favourite means of streng- thening the body. But the shock of the cold water appears to me, commonly speaking, to be too violent and I find it far more agreeable for my constitution to bathe in another element. I mean the air. With this intention I rise every morning and sit entirely unclothed for half an hour or an hour in my room and occupy myself with reading or writing. The time varies according: to the season. This airbath is not in the least disagreeable. It is quite the reverse. And when afterwards. I creep back to bed before dressing, as sometimes happens, I can concentrate a nights' rest into one or two hours of the most perfect sleep you can imagine. I experience no evil effects from this habit and I believe that not only is my health not prejudiced but that, on the contrary, this sleep helps to preserve it. I should therefore like to prophesy for this airbath a future as a bath for strengthening the body. Further we learn from the humorous dissertation upon The Airbath by George Christoph Lichtenberg*) written about 1794 that he with some of his contemporaries had tried it. He mentions a paper which was written in 1793 by the English doctor Abernethy who occupied himself with enquiring into the relation of the skin to breathing and who considered clothing as a hinderance to this function of the skin. The knowledge of the airbath as a means of preserving, health in the first half of the nineteenth century *) The fifth volume of his miscellaneous works published by Heinrich Dieterich, Gottingen 1803.