Читать книгу The Kneipp Cure - Sebastian Kneipp Kneipp - Страница 14

In general when speaking of half-baths, I mean such as wash the body, at the utmost, up to the stomach, but very often do not go so far. I wanted to have something between the full-baths which offer too much, and the foot-baths which offer too little. I take the liberty of calling them half-baths.

Their application is threefold:

1. To stand in the water so that it reaches above the calves or above the knees;

2. To kneel in the water so that the whole of the thighs is covered with it;

3. To sit in the water. This third application alone fully deserves the name of half bath; it reaches to about the navel.

These three applications, which are always made with cold water, rank first among the means of hardening. They are, therefore, suitable for healthy persons who wish to become stronger still, for weaklings who wish to become strong, and for those in a state of convalescence who desire to get entirely well and strong.

In diseases they should only be taken when especially and expressly prescribed; experiments ought not to be made with them; for in some circumstances they might do harm.

Whenever they are applied, be it by healthy or sick people, it must be always in connection with other applications, and they should never be taken for longer than from one half minute to 3 minutes.

I have practiced No. 1 and 2, standing and kneeling in the water, and always with great success, upon such persons who, from different causes, were in thorough decline; with this application they began the water-cure. I will not name these causes, but only indicate that there are many who, in the beginning, cannot bear the pressure of the water in whole baths, without the most disagreeable consequences. It is just such patients as these that have led me (by their great weakness and wretchedness) to these two applications; their condition required this discrete, moderate and considerate application of water, sometimes for long weeks, until they got stronger and were able to endure more.

With these two practices the dipping in of the arms up to the shoulders (see means of hardening), is generally connected, as a second means of hardening. But in addition to this manner of hardening, I use this whole application (consisting of two part-applications) especially against cold feet.

No. 3, the real half-bath, is well worthy of attention; I recommend it most impressively to all healthy persons. The disorders and diseases of the lower part of the body - and their number is legion; their cause in reality but one, want of hardening, effemination — are by this bath suffocated in the germ, or removed where they are already settled. These half-baths strengthen the bowels, and preserve and increase their strength. Thousands and thousands of persons wear one, two, or even more bandages and similar things. Do they get help from them? Many times quite the contrary; by them the effemination, the fragility, is even as it were, forced into the poor boy.

Only once try our half-baths, slowly, but decidedly, and the complaints of hemorrhoids, wind-colic, hypochondria, -hysteria, will soon greatly diminish; these diseases which now make their bewildering sport in the diseased and weakened body.

I should advise healthy people to wash the upper part of their body when rising in the morning, and then in the afternoon or evening to take our half-bath. If there is no time for the early washing, they may wash their chest and back in the half-bath.

A few incidents may show how the one or the other of these three applications is to be made in diseases.

A young man had been so much weakened by typhus, that he was quite unable to work. He tried the kneeling in the water every second or third day, first for 1 minute, later on for 2 or 3 minutes After having done so for some time, he improved from week to week, and became as strong as he had been before.

A person was suffering from violent congestions, which originated in the body. (as is often the case). The upper part of the body was washed one day, and the next day the kneeling in the water was undertaken. This was repeated for some time, and the congestions ceased.

Pains in the stomach, caused by retained wind, are cured in the same way.

The evacuation of such gases, which are so very troublesome after diseases, is quite a special effect of our half-bath.