Metcalfe's Hydropathic Establishment, (Limited,) Wellington Square, Hastings : synopsis of the theory and practice of hydrotherapy with a sketch of the rise and progress of the Turkish bath / Richard Metcalfe.

  • Metcalfe, Richard.
Date:
[1890?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Metcalfe's Hydropathic Establishment, (Limited,) Wellington Square, Hastings : synopsis of the theory and practice of hydrotherapy with a sketch of the rise and progress of the Turkish bath / Richard Metcalfe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    much blood, and this implies that some other part has too little. Thus, for example, when the internal parts are oppressed with blood, what is the skin’s condition ? One of ancemia or bloodlessness. The blood, which should by its presence impart to it colour, warmth, and vitality, is locked up in the interior. There it produces irritation, inflammation, oppression, congestion, or obstruction. Examples of this are every day met with by the practitioner. It has been stated that the effect of the impact of cool or cold water on the skin is at once to tonify the cutaneous nerves, and as these control the capillary blood-vessels, which spread their network throughout the skin’s texture as thickly as do the nerves, the latter are speedily constringed and emptied of blood. The blood thus driven from the capillaries on the surface, retreats on the vital organs, but these having been roused by the impulse communicated to their nutritive nerves, as well as by the sudden invasion of blood from the surface, will not allow the interior vessels to retain what is thus forced into them, but re-act and send the blood back to whence it came, where the emptied capillaries are ready to receive it, together with the addi¬ tions which it brings with it. By the continued repetition of this process the blood is at length in due measure fixed on the surface, and as a consequence the internal difficulty is removed. From a pathological point of view it would not be difficult to bring a very large array of distinguished medical opinion to bear me out in my conclusions as to how external applications act on the human body. Space, however, will not admit of my giving more than two opinions of men of undoubted reputation. The effect of the cold appliances is well described by Sir John Forbes in the Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine. “ The application of cold water to the surface of the body produces an immediate and very powerful influence in the economy through the medium of sensation. The whole nervous system seems suddenly impressed and as if about to yield beneath some hurtful power; but, in general, before any of the important functions have been materially disturbed, the conservative energies are roused to successful resistance. “ Refrigeration, to a certain extent, must of necessity result immediately from immersion in a cold [or cool] bath—cceteris paribus^xX is proportioned to the lowness of the temperature and the duration of the immersion. “ There is an immediate retrocession of the fluids from the surface of the body to the internal parts. The bath produces this effect partly through the nervous impression excited by it, partly by the contraction of the whole superficial capillaries from refrigera-