A General view ...
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Salvos Online continues a new series of unexpected and decidedly prescriptive teachings that General William Booth gave to his soldiers 124 years ago, excerpting the 1902 publication Letters to Salvationists on Religion for Every Day (volume 1). We are publishing General Booth’s thoughts on everyday topics, including sickness and bereavement, sleep, hygiene, life challenges, conversation, clothing, poverty, the Bible and the Sabbath, industrial relations and more.
William and Catherine Booth held a deep Victorian interest in alternative health practices, strongly believing in homeopathy and hydropathy (the ‘water cure’) to manage exhaustion, physical ailments and chronic depression. William Booth frequently visited hydrotherapy spas in Matlock, Derbyshire, using cold-water immersions to recover from nervous strain.
The water treatment
BY GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH Salvation Army co-founder
(The article below is a shortened version of General William Booth’s original transcript.)
This is not intended as a treatise on Hydropathy, but only a few simple directions for treating those diseases to which our people are most exposed, and which, if badly managed, often leave consequences of a serious nature.
The neglect of the skin, in dealing with sickness, is a strange evidence of want of thought and common sense in the great majority of people.
When we remember that there are in the skin of every human body upwards of seven millions of pores, the main purpose of which is to drain away from the body that which nature cannot use in sustaining or building it up, we need not be surprised that when these pores are to a great extent blocked up, the blood becomes charged with impurity, and that the whole system is consequently deranged.
When people generally learn the value of God’s precious, beautiful gift of water, both internally and externally, there will be far less suffering and much greater happiness and length of life.
We have frequently been astonished and amused at the prejudice manifested against any kind of application of water to the whole body.
Cold sponge bath Perhaps one of the most valuable applications of water is the simple cold bath every morning, for those who are strong enough to bear it.
This is cleanly invigorating, and a sure preventive against taking cold, and can be easily managed in the following way: Where a person has not the convenience of a hip-bath – that is, one of those baths in which the bather sits down – he should get a large tub, and a good-sized sponge or piece of flannel. [Following bathing] the bather should rub himself smartly, till he feels all in a glow.
Wet sheet pack (for fevers in general) When a person becomes feverish, giddy and restless, or manifests other symptoms of approaching sickness, a wet pack, properly given, can do no harm, and, in almost every case, will do incalculable good.
Spread three or four blankets on a bed so that the patient can be laid down in the centre, with the ends folded over him. Then take a small sheet that will reach from the neck to the ankles.
Wring this tightly out of cold water, or, if the patient is very delicate, out of tepid or warm water, and spread the towel or sheet on the top of the blankets. Then undress the patient as quickly as possible, and let him lie on his back on the sheet, lifting the arms, so that one end of the sheet can be wrapped round the body under the arms ... The patient may be kept in the pack from three-quarters of an hour to an hour and a quarter, according to the severity of the symptoms.
Sitz or hip-bath
The sitz-bath may be considered one of the most useful appliances for home treatment and a most powerful tonic-derivative in its action. Scarcely any vessel is so generally useful in a private house, and there is no form of bathing appliance so universally resorted to from which so much benefit is derived ...
What is understood as a sitz or hip-bath considered hydropathically is a vessel in which the patient is seated in tepid or cold water as the case may need, with the feet outside and the body covered with a blanket to prevent exposure to the air of the room.
There should be sufficient depth of water to embrace the whole of the bowels, the stomach, the lower portion of the liver and the lungs, while at the back the water should extend about two-thirds of the way up the spine, thus covering the kidneys.
The beneficial action of the sitz-bath is various. It is had recourse to for weakness of the digestive apparatus, for piles and weakness of the bowels, looseness or constipation, uterine or kidney affections, also for undue flow of blood to the head and general debility.
I have also found it very useful for brain workers, taken twice a day for about ten minutes each time. The temperature of the water must be regulated necessarily to the patient’s age, the time of the year, whether winter or summer, etc., and the powers of reaction.
As a general rule, during the winter months the water should range between 65 and 75 degrees, and the duration from seven to twenty minutes ... When the sitz-bath is resorted to for constipation, it acts upon a person very much better when it is preceded by hot applications across the bowels for thirty minutes.
The bed bath
In this bath the Nurse, without disturbing the bedclothes, slips a warm blanket under the patient, and, after removing the nightdress, holds up the bedclothes with one hand and with the other sponges the body all over. The process is followed by a brisk dry rubbing.
Local spongings are administered in the same way. Extreme caution should be observed in order to avoid chilling the patient. In very delicate cases the sponge should be dipped in tepid water; in ordinary cases in cool or cold water.
The bed bath is only resorted to in cases of extreme debility and difficulty of reaction. It is very soothing and often induces sleep when nothing else will.
Fresh air
Fresh air is of the greatest value both in preserving health and in all kinds of sickness and weakness.
Open your windows as much as possible-indeed there should always be one window open-only avoid putting the patient in a draught.
Thousands of people are made invalids by being put to sleep in too close sleeping rooms.
Soaking the feet in hot water
A very common mistake is to put the feet in water as hot as the patient can bear, and then let it gradually cool. This often does more harm than good.
The water ought to be of a moderate heat at first, and a kettle of boiling water should be kept near, so that the attendant can keep adding a little, so making the heat of the water greater when the feet are taken out than when they were put in.
Mustard added to the water is also a great advantage. On taking the feet out, they should be well dried, and warm wool stockings put on if the patient is going to remain indoors; but if he has to go out, he should plunge his feet quickly into cold water before wiping, taking them out again immediately; but the safest plan is to go to bed.
NEXT WEEK: General William Booth’s thoughts on work.
*This series has been compiled by Barry Gittins, The Salvation Army Australia Museum Specialist (Melbourne)
