As a result, the circulation is stirred up and accelerated throughout the system and the blood rushes with force into the depleted skin, flushing the surface of the body with warm, red blood and restoring to it the rosy color of health.  This is the secondary effect.  In other words, the well-applied cold-water treatment is followed by a good reaction and this is accompanied by many permanent beneficial results.

The drawing and eliminating primary effect of hot applications, of sweat baths, etc., is at best only temporary, lasting only a few minutes and is always followed by a weakening reaction, while the drawing and eliminating action of the cold-water applications, being the secondary, lasting effect, exerts an enduring, invigorating and tonic influence upon the skin which enables it to throw off morbid matter not merely for ten or fifteen minutes, as in the sweat bath under the infiuence of excessive heat, but continually, by day and night.

The Danger of Prolonged or

Excessively Cold Applications

As we have pointed out in the chapter dealing with water treatment in acute diseases, only water at ordinary temperature, as it comes from well or faucet, should be used in hydropathic applications.  It is positively dangerous to apply ice bags to an inflamed organ or to use icy water for packs and ablutions in febrile conditions.

Likewise, ice or icy water should not be used in the hydropathic treatment of chronic diseases.  Excessive cold is as suppressive in its effects upon the organism as are poisonous antiseptics or antifever medicines.

The baths, sprays, douches, etc., should not be kept up too long.  The duration of the cold-water applications must be regulated by the individual conditions of the patient and by his powers of reaction; but it should be borne in mind that it is the short, quick application that produces the stimulating, electromagnetic effects upon the system.

In the following pages are described some of the baths and other cold-water applications that are especially adapted to the treatment of chronic diseases.

How to Keep the Feet Warm

The proverb says:  “Keep the head cool and the feet warm.”  This is good advice, but most people attempt to follow it by “doctoring” their cold feet with hot-water bottles, warming pans, hot bricks or irons, etc.  These are excellent means of making the feet still colder, because “heat makes cold and cold makes heat.”

In accordance with the Law of Action and Reaction, hot applications drive the blood away from the feet, while cold applications draw the blood to the feet.  Therefore, if your feet are cold and bloodless (which means that the blood is congested in other parts of the body), walk barefoot in the dewy grass, in a cool brook, on wet stone pavements or on the snow.

Instead of putting a hot-water bottle to the feet of a bedridden invalid, bathe his feet with cold water, adding a little salt for its electric effect, then rub and knead (massage), and finish with a magnetic treatment by holding his feet between your hands and willing the blood to flow into them.  This will have a lasting good effect not only upon the feet, but upon the entire organism.