Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-10-11

feel dirty, drink when they are parched, bu
are unconfessedly glad to escape the neces
sity of either. 1t is hard to tell what chill
dren hate most, learning a Sunday schoo
lesson or taking the Saturday bath e1actet
of them.
1t takes as much cultivation to appreciate
bath as to enjoy painting. A country
lad will find interest in looking at Verest
chagin's war pictures, but their terrible
eloquence is lost upon him. Curious that
in an age when conveniences for bathing
are common as street lights there is not the
most distant need of warning devout souls
against too great indulgence in the pleasures
of the bath, as Holy Church in the Middle
Ages found necessary.
BEAUTY BEFORE DECENCY.
I notice that public spirited persons, o,
those who mean to be such, are anxious to
secure classic picturesquess for the facade
of the free baths which they design to ir.
fiict upon the public, while they overlook
provisions indispensable for refinement and
safety from contagion. Public gifts demand
closer scruting than they are likely to
receive, and none more than a public bath
house.
The bath has hundred benefits be ides
acting the part of washerwoman in launder-
ing our garment of skin. 1t refreshes by
change of temperature, for man is not at
his best in air over 70 degrees orssbelow zero.
| Very few people know, what the Russ and
Finn are well aware of, that a hot bath
in winter will so heat the body as to enable
it to bear cold better for days. Few under
stand the necessity for freely perspiring per-
sons of two baths daily in hot weather, to
clear the pores and cool the body, morning
mir h,,h he
almost unknown if this were the habit of
all classes, especially of working men who
sweat copiously. The bath as a means of
physical development is hardly known. A
properly fitted bathroom is not second to a
gymnasium for perfecting the body.
TOO MUCH THEORY IN BATHING
People take their baths too much by
theory. The rigid disciplinarian bathes in
cold water the year rouud as a corporeal
and spiritual benefit and a protest against
weakness of the flesh. The nervous, con-
scientious woman endures it, hoping to har-
den and strength herself, dreading above all
things making herself tender. The iniu-
dicious parent urges her shivering into the
cold tub or the most dreadful shock of the
shower bath, never dreaming OF the mis-
chief she does.
To break the constitution of a susceptible
child and lay the train for paralysis, hys-
terra and epilepsy nothing is surer than a
course of hardening in early youth. If the
cold bath or the shower is dreaded, if there
is catching of the breath and tremor as the
child enters the water, empty the bath of
till he is glad to get in and play in it. A
mother would be alarmed if child fully
dressed took chill from cold air, which
lowers the bodily warmth far less than the
morning chill of cold water she administers
daily. If you want to give a girl weak
constitution by all means insist on the
various systems of discomfort which ex-
cellent persons consider improving.
AN INGENIOUS SPIRIT OF ToRTURA
A woman speaking of this sort of bring
ing up said that in looking back to her
childhood she could hardly remember ever
being comfortable, as she was either made
to wash in cold water or weighted down
with too much clothing when she went out
of doors, forbidden to hover round the fire
for fear of getting tender, and obliged to
sleep in an icy chamber for the same reason,
while diet and habits were regulated with
an ingenious spirit OF torture. Instead of
hardening it undermined her constitution
and left her one of the most susceptible of
creatures. We can breathe and move in
cold air, though that is ingeniously warmed
before it reaches the skin and lungs, but I |
doubt if we were ever made to delight in
cold water in cold weather.
The coolest nations take the hottest baths |
and are not enteebled by them. 1t is blood |
heated by youth or the fire of full life which |
likes the cold dip or spray, but beware how /
you have to nerve yourself to endure it. A |
cold bath may be a risky experiment. The |
rule that cold bathing is safe when followed |
rN01,- lo11
recall a woman who used to take baths of |
the coldest well water daily and find great
from them, who afterward |
charged weakness of the heart and general
debility to these excessive stimulus Dr.
Shoemaker says all the persons he has
known who boasted of breaking a film of |
ice TO take their baths died early, vet
doubtless they felt good reaction at the
lime.
LET THE BABIES PLAY IN IT.
If you would have vigorous, fair, healthy
children make their baths diversion, hay
ng the room and water kept so warm that
hey can play in it to their hearts content.
Do not hurry them out of it, for water is a
stimulus to growth and tonic to muscles
md nerves Half an hour in room heated
o so degrees at the walls and free from
lraughts and cracks, with water not allowed
o fall below So degrees at any time, the
children permitted to get in and out of the
ub and run about, to spatter and frolic, is
IS goon system of physical development
IS you can devise for all under 12 years of
.ge.
One reads with envy Mr.. Lafarge's de-
cription of the Japanese habits, "a whole
mother, children-tiling
lown to the big bathroom at the corner,
7hose windows were open," where he
heard them romp and splash and saw their
aked arms shining through the steam.' A
athing garment for the elders would sat
n cur own houses the charming scenes
french artists imagine from the Greek,
Tell known by the photographs, where
7omen and naked children lounge and froIic
n the marble-lined, fower-decked pools of
he spacious bathing rooms. Our public
nd private baths are much too business
Ike, and in dingy surroundings hardly
lore tempting than sculleries.
AN ANTIDoTE TO PAIN.
The bath is woman's best antidote to pain,
he tonic for her strength and preservative
f freshness. Chronic irregularities and
eriodic attacks of pain seldom refuse to
ield to a course of varied baths From
be time girls enter their teens preliminary
ches and languor call for bet footbaths that
re footballs. The best foot tubs ever saw
-ere the three gallon tin cans in which pep
erEiint oil comes for the druggists, which ,
llows the legs to be immersed to the knee.
uch leg bath taken with very warm
pap and water sitz bath on retiring, wiping
n warm towels and getting Immediately
Ito warm bed with hot bricks or soap .