369
to ; after that there is a gradual return to the. original condition of the pulse and res-
piration except that the deep breathing persists somewhat longer than the other
phenomena. Usually within two hours, I have found the patient has returned to his
former state. A marked feature in many cases, and experienced on every occasion
upon which the author took a bath, was slight dizziness and throbbing of the cerebral
vessels coining on after the advent of sweating. Personally for four or five hours
after the bath, a sense of well-being was most marked and on one occasion a slight
bronchial catarrh was much improved.
Sweating comes on usually when the patient has been in the bath twelve minutes;
but the time varies between 4 and 25 minutes. In many cases presenting a few
scattered r&les in the chest much improvement was noticed, and reviewing the whole
series, I think these were, the cases most benefited by the bath. There can be no
doubt that much relief is afforded the majority of the patients, delirium especially
being relieved. The sweating which generally occurs also is a source of great relief,
though at the time of its immediate onset, the circulatory and respiratory
changes referred to cause a little discomfort. Urination is very common ; the cases of
retention of urins were very few ; defecation also occurs, but less commonly, and I
understand that many of the cases took their food better after the bath. It is to be
expected from these remarks that some degree of improvement occurred in many
cases, but unfortunately the results shew that the relief is relief only, and not cure and
that symptoms only, and not the real disease have been controlled. This is borne out
by the effect of repeated baths ; each bath gives relief, but in my opinion the relief
afforded by the second is less than that afforded by the first and so on for the third.
That a patient after eight or nine baths should recover, does not, I think prove that the
baths saved him. Before pursuing this matter, however, I will now introduce Part III
in which the question will be again brought forward.
PAET III.
Three Charts are presented in this part. In the earlier part of this investigation,
I thought that the Bath cases lived longer than the Non-bath cases. To test this
belief, the first hundred odd fatal cases in each group were carefully classified .and sixty
pairs were selected. During the process of selection the number of days the patient
lived was quite unknown, having been noted in a different note book which was not
consulted until a couple of weeks later. Age, sex, time of admission, number of days
sick, type of disease, locality, caste and occupation were all considered, and pairs as
similar as possible were selected. The result was unexpected in one respect, namely,
that the tendency to prolongation of life was wholly in favour of the balh. The
results are expressed on Chart C-l. There the red line is throughout, above the blue
line denoting that bath cases live longer, though on the average only a day or two.
I do not know whether this feature was maintained during the later period of the in-
vestigation } in March so rapidly did the Bath cases die that the difference between
the two methods could only be very slight. But it does shew that no harm was done
to the patients.
On page 367 I have stated in what ways I think the bath gives relief. But if one
bath can give relief, then why should not several continue that relief and materially
aid the recovery of the patient. My experience is that such continued relief is not
what actually occurs, and that the relief afforded by the first baih generally exceeds
that of the second bath and so on. What the bath does is chiefly in the direction of
stimulating afresh the many and varied functions of the body—circulation, respiration,
digestion, excretion, secretion, and so on in a probably complex manner. A little
thought will lead one to realize what a powerful therapeutic agent a vapour bath is
and how much the whole, body is brought under its influence. That it should be a