Bathing considered as a means of promoting health : a lecture delivered in the Bath Saloon, Victoria Street, Glossop-Road, Sheffield, on Monday evening, May 8, 1837 / by Charles F. Favell.

  • Favell, Charles F.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bathing considered as a means of promoting health : a lecture delivered in the Bath Saloon, Victoria Street, Glossop-Road, Sheffield, on Monday evening, May 8, 1837 / by Charles F. Favell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    law, we shall find the most strict injunctions laid down on this subject. We know that the leprosy was one of the diseases with which the Jews were most sorely afflicted ; that it was one which they regarded with the greatest abhorrence and disgust, and that the most prompt mea- sures were enforced to effect a cure. Now we read that in order that the plague might be discerned, and a proper treatment recommended, recourse was had to ablution, and in the cure of the disease the external application of water was also employed—“ he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean ; and after that, he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his tent seven days. But it shall be on the seventh day that he shall shave all his hair off his head and his beard and his eye-brows, even all his hair he shall shave off, and he shall wash his clothes; also he shall wash his fiesh in water, and he shall be clean.”*—And in other diseases besides leprosy, we find the same means em- ployed, as for example in what is called ec an issue”— into the nature of which, however, it is not expedient for me to enter at present; but we read that “ when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue, then he shall num- ber to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean.”f This disease seems to have been a conta- gious one, and we find that whenever a person had been in even the slightest degree exposed to the danger of con- tracting it, he was required to make use of preventive measures, the most powerful of which seems to have been Bathing. Thus whoever sat on the bed whereon the patient lay—whoever touched his flesh, or in fact touched any thing which the diseased had touched, was required to “ wash his clothes and bathe himself in water.” But it is quite impossible for me to dwell on this interesting topic. I must pass on, without further comment or in- troduction to the few general remarks to which I have already alluded, and without which, however imperfect * Leviticus, ch. xiv., v. 8, 9. f Leviticus, ch. xv., v. 13.