HEALTHY BATH


Having had my Deepavali bath this morning, I realized, for the first time, that the subject of bathing, a very common custom in our country, has very scanty literature on its history, significance, and the aesthetic values, not to speak of the enormous health benefits of regular bath. Even in the best of libraries there are hardly any books on this subject, except the one written by Edward J. Claude in 1917, which has been recently reprinted.



We have come a long way from the time we have been unicellular organisms in seawater. Even today our body cells, of which there are one hundred thousand billion in all, have to survive only in the environment of salt water surrounding them (intracellular water). If that water dries up our cells die. We are made up of water to the extent of 60-80% of the total weight. Even the very hard bones contain nearly 60% water. If you are one of those who does not believe in the Darwin’s theory of evolution, we still have come from within our mother’s womb wherein we have been submerged in water right up to the time we get born. Both the creationists and the Darwinists should realize that we have been deep down in water ever since the beginning of life.



Nature, in its wisdom, has given us a third lung, our skin, that extends to about 15-18 square feet in all, to help us clear many of the impurities of metabolism and also to get rid of a major part of the heat produced in the body. The skin works like an assistant of the lungs and the kidneys, assisting and helping them to do their work more efficiently. Body temperature has to be regulated within a narrow range lest there should be permanent damage to the cell protein. In addition, the skin works as a barrier to external germs from getting into the delicate internal structures. In the bargain, our skin hosts billions of germs of all kinds in its vast surface, and the wet skin folds in particular. English poet Auden, in one of his poems, laments about scalding these guests of his skin, each time he takes a hot bath. I think it was very infrequent, anyway. Among the Europeans the British have been the dirtiest people, with a history of very little bathing in the distant past.



Our skin, in addition, contains millions of tiny blood vessels, the capillaries, which help regulate the circulation in times of need. If, for any reason, the blood supply falls, say after an injury, the millions of skin vessels close down to supply relatively more blood to the vital organs, despite the fall in total blood volume. Similarly on very hot days or in hot atmosphere the skin vessels open up supplying extra blood to the skin to send out the heat through conduction and also by enhanced sweating which gets rid of lot of internal heat to the surroundings.



Hence it is not surprising that hydrotherapy has been in vogue for centuries all over the world. This was practised in our ancient wisdom of Ayurveda, from the time of the Rg Veda, which proclaimed, that “water cures the fever’s glow.” Modern medicine came to know about the good effects of hydrotherapy much later when Hippocrates, in the first century BC, wrote extensively about the good effects on health of water on the skin, both hot and cold, depending on the season.



There are reports in Greek mythology that the God of healing, Aesclepiades, who was born nearly 126 years before Christ, himself described the good effects of shower bath. Pliny the junior, however, disputed this in the first century AD, giving the credit to a Greek thinker, Surgius Orata, instead. Hip baths, foot baths, whole body immersion, etc. were in vogue in the West ever since, but the routine bath for daily cleansing and its good health effects were in practice only in India, through its popularity via the religious route. It was the wisdom of the day that all health tips be given as religious tenets for better compliance. So it was ordained that bath is a pre-requisite to visit temples or to perform one’s prayers at home. This resulted in almost universal compliance. One of the very important uses of whole body immersion in warm water is in treating insomnia. Even now the old granny’s wisdom says that a hot bath just before retiring might give a good night’s sleep, the latter is due to the stimulation of the opioids necessary for good sleep.



Modern scientific medicine ratifies the Vedic wisdom, that for the treatment of fever the best method is to cool the body with tepid baths. This brings down the body temperature physiologically, without any detriment to either the disease process or to its recovery. In fact, the drug treatment of fever with antipyretics, that we resort to many times, is bad both for the body’s recovery and for the immune system which is trying hard to kill the germs, causing fever in the first place. Care should be taken, however, to keep the bath water temperature much lower than the body temperature at the time of the bath. Another precaution is to avoid physical exertion while bathing which might bring on fainting attacks during or after the bath. Similarly one has to avoid very hot water bath while having fever as it might precipitate a heart attack or stroke even, in addition to pushing up the temperature further. Otherwise one or two good tepid baths a day will make the fever patient’s life that much easier and recovery that much faster.



Ancient Peculiar Bathing Habits in the West:



Bath was a luxury in the cold West in the distant past. Some of the idiosyncrasies of those people look ridiculous now. English are the worst culprits in this field. Many of the Victorian houses do not have a bathroom at all. They did not have toilets as well. People used to have an occasional bath, may be once after the winter, in the common bathrooms provided by the municipality. Similar was their periodic defecating habit; so much so constipation was the commonest illness. Fig tree was brought to Scotland by travelers from the East, mainly for the treatment of constipation. In the villages people used to defecate in the open; during winter months in the early mornings one could not even imagine to lift the warm clothing from the buttocks. A good description of this is found in the beautiful book The Undertaking by the famous American writer of Irish origin Thomas Lynch. “ Still, there are nights in West Clare when I eschew the porcelain and plumbing in favour of the dark comforts of the yard, the whitethorn or lilac or the mock-orange, the stars in their heaven, the liberty of it; whenever I am at the duties of my toilet”.



There were famous ladies in history that bathed in asses’ milk, wine, strawberry or elderflower juice, chickweed, and various other delectable products. They would have been healthier if they had bathed in rainwater, the purest water one could get, but they would not have been as famous. One queen in Europe is said to have kept three hundred asses for the milk to bathe only.



Old Norsemen in the Land of the Midnight Sun had still more peculiar habits of bathing. They used to have congregate baths; the famous traveler hunter, Paul du Chaillu, gives one such graphic description, when a family invited him (when he was their guest) for a congregate bath. It was a Saturday afternoon and the weather was especially cold with temperatures in the range of minus 20 centigrade. The whole village assembled in one large bathroom, with a good supply of very hot water to bathe together. People of all ages and both sexes had to walk in their birthday suits, with nothing on their bodies, to the bathroom and indulge in all sorts of fun while giving bath to one another with hot water, and birch twigs to scratch their skins with. At the end of it all they had to walk naked back to their homes in the freezing temperature. This was said to be invigorating! However, no one had the feeling of shame or any such evil thoughts. Their motto was “Honi soit qui maly pense”( Evil to him who evil thinks). How nice!



Healthy Bath:



Bathing daily and many times in a day on a hot day, is very good for health and is invigorating. Hot water bath is the best, but in very hot weather cold water could be as good, if not better. Combining hot and cold water, alternately, is the best bet, if one is completely healthy, without any heart disease. The combined bath gives, in a manner of speaking, good massage to the whole circulatory system. The skin capillaries, basically, control the mean capillary pressure (the swimming pool of the body circulation) which determines the total functioning of the heart and the circulation. This is why I cautioned you earlier that you should be absolutely healthy to indulge in this luxury, as otherwise the quick changes in the capillary mean pressure could send a diseased heart into a state of failure. I can not think of a better method of daily stimulating your whole circulation other than the daily bath with hot and cold water.



After a hard days work when the skeletal muscles have accumulated lot of extra heat, a good tepid bath would quickly recharge your batteries. In most parts of our country cold water would do as good, if not better. On a cold day, hot bath is very stimulating, as it encourages skin circulation. Our system of bathing where water cleanses the body after we soap liberally is very good compared to the western bathtub bath where the soap or the detergent remains on the skin, drying and cracking the skin in the long run. Never be parsimonious in buying bathing soap. Let it be the best in the market made out of pure oil only. I only know of baby soaps in this category (I may be wrong). If you have any skin disease your best bet is to consult your dermatologist.



Go ahead and enjoy your next bath armed with all this new knowledge.





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