Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-06-01
YOUTH COMES BACK
And Pain and WEAKNESS Take Flight
in the Electric Bath.
SHIRLEY DARE SINGS ITS PRAISE.
The Sweat, the Massage, the Tingling Cur
rent and Sweet Repose.
1T WOULD MAKE THE WORLD BETTER
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH. 1.


Nav blossoms. To sleepless half-nights
follow useless days, when weariness of body
and brain mock the aspiring will. The
hair loses its gloss and color, the skin is
sallow and its sense dull, the hand is un-
certain, the sight blurred.
'Life is so short, life is so sweet, the
dreamer sings. but in this unhappy mood
it is true only that "life grows weary, life
grows gray" Many women wear their
part out in such melancholy torpor. Ihave
found how to Danish it.
"Have you tried the electric baths?' asked
a woman who has the secrets of well-being
at her fingers ends. "Then we will drive
right over to them, and have you put in
better condition at once"
Ten minutes after an interior of curtained
alcoves opened to US, with gliding figures,
statuesque in linen sheets; disappearing
behind the curtains, bare armed, bare
footed attendants in tunics of red cotton
fitted around like kindly demons at first
glimpse, like very kindly. seYviceable, in
telligent women when you come to know
them and their ministrations. A hot sheet
was handed me, which proceeded to drape
in classic folds, and was meekly led into a
light room, apparently just the right heat
OF an oven for sponge cake. Rows OF wooden
extension chairs held the bathers, who here
take the preparatory perspiring stage of the
Turkish bath.
UNCOMFORTABLE AT FIRST.
It is uncomfortable, though it seems
deliberate aggravation when cup of very
hot water is given one with directions to
drink it to promote perspiration. Perhaps
Dives might have been glad of it, though it
could hardly have cooled his tongue; stlll,
being ready to accept anything, I sip the
almost blistering fluid, and presently feel
myself dissolying, not In drops, but sheets
of perspiration. Fifteen minutes sufices,
and one is led into a cheerful marble cell,
where slab with rubber pillow is rather
suggestive of the morgue when one lies
down with the red sylph in attendance. A
clever red gnome it is, who proceeds to
lather and scrub one with bathing brush
some sizes larger than a blacking brush, till
the old cuticle peels off in rolls and fakes,
so black that it seems as if one had never
bathed before.
Helplessly and deliciously one submits to
the thorough cleansing process, and the
scientific kneading and rubbing which fol-
lows. Not rubbing up and down, but round
and round the wrist. the arm, the shoulder,
which rubs the muscle inexpressibly and
develops its roundness. As the firm, smooth
hand of the masseur goes over one every
particle of WEAKNESS flies. But handful
of sand, apparently, flung over one and
rubbed In with good will, provokes vigorous
remonstrance. TITS only salt, laughs the
bath girl, "to tone up the skim" And then
one is reused from the trance of rest on the
marble slab. stood upright, and sprayed off
with a hose from faucet in the wall. which
plays first warm and by degrees cooler, to
restore the body to its normal temperature
after the liquifying heat which it has ab-
sorbed.
TAKING THE ELECTRICITY.
Wrapped in the sheet, which seems the
only suitable and com Portable wear for
humanity, one goes round TO another bath
room where a long wooden tub half full of
warm water, in which the attendant dis
solves a saucer of salt, offers another tempt
ing repose She holds the pole of an cleo
trio battery in the water, and passes brush
over the arm, neck, shoulder, chest 'Good
heavensl what are you about?" l say, for
the electric current tingles along each
muscle. I see stars and feel them exploding
in the tissues, and the intensely metallic
acid taste in the mouth felt sometimes
before thunderstorms is developed to the
edge of unpleasantness. To the verge
merely, for these experts know that natures
rule is whatever gives pain or uneasiness is
not beneficial.
The crinkling goes out of the chest and |
elbows, you are turned over on the wooden |
slope which serves as a pillow, and the |
ache dies out of your spine, and soreness |!
from the muscles where you caught cold |
last. Below the waist there is little or no |
sensation from the electric current, which is |
- aA1w htr,I-c hN.k
There is no sense but that the pain leaves; |
the ache has gone from eyes, from head II
from the spinal muscles and the bright, |
quiet kind, talk of the operator is part OF |
the case, SO helpfully do certain tempera-
ments in physicians and masseurs affect one. |
IN BLIssFUL REPosE.
"Now you can get up" is the word, and
you try to assure yourself that it is the
same painful person who went into the
water half an hour before. II one had
changed tor 16-year-old body the sensa
tions would be the same. You feels clean,
so whole, so cheerful, so Juvenile. You feel
like good child, or as the French say as if
you had just taken sacrament. You wipe
off, and don your cerements again, and are
laid out, silent, rejoicing ghost on one of
the lounges, a red blanket is thrown over
you. with friendly pat and tuck, and you
lie in blisstul trance with odd fancies
going through your head.
Y'ho was it in Dickens used to invite
people to come and be dead? Will it be as
happy when the last trouble is over, and
the pains and the body laid close together?
You move a finger to be sure of being in the
body after all. Summer clouds are nothing
to it. You might be a summer cloud your
self, floating away in reverie, till you lose
the last vestige of yourself in blue ether. Is
this the fog of sleep, showing over the rim
of sensation, drifting toward one, cool and
dim, and blank.
The rest is silence,
the lightest sleep that ever chloroformed
in which you feel the tissues
growing, film by film, and come to in the
same happy, tranquil nirvana. 1 should
like to follow out DR.. Weir MitchelPs sys- :
tenn after this, have the patient transported
without jar or effort, to sunny,
open chamber, perhaps a wide balcony in
balmy air among flowers, to lie
in this recuperative dream for days
and days, not having to stir a
hand, every want anticipated, letting
the nerves rest and strength accumulate.
By such cure we must pay for years of over
work and worry. The iret and the sin are
Ill of course, but if one wants q week of
his absolute rest, il seems heathenish self
indulgence. Yet when we have trained at
;endants to the intelligence which divines
wants and forestalls need, the cure of
nervous prostrauon will not be the tedious
hing it is now, but We will aid it with
Ipray of fountains and flowers and per-
umes. Soft music and pleasant voices, and
pleasant looks such as Lizzie and Agnes,
he red-cheeked bathgirls steal round to give
me in the red blanket grave.