Читать книгу The Kneipp Cure - Sebastian Kneipp Kneipp - Страница 15

The sitting-baths are taken both cold and warm.

1. The cold sitting-bath

is taken as follows. The vessel made expressly for these baths (fig. 2) or in default of it, the wide, but not deep vessel of wood, tin or zinc (fig. 3) is filled to the fourth or fifth part with cold water. The patient sits down undressed in this bath as on a chair; the lower part of the body up to the kidneys, and the upper part of the legs being in the water (fig. 4).

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

It is not necessary to undress entirely. This bath is to be taken for half a minute to three minutes.

These cold sitting-baths belong, next to the half-baths, to the most important and efficacious applications for the bowels. They evacuate the gases, help the weak digestion, regulate the circulation of the blood, and strengthen,; therefore they cannot be sufficiently recommended against green-sickness, bloody flux and such like complaints, against disorders in the lower part of the body of the most delicate kind. No one need be frightened at the cold application lasting only for one to two minutes. If taken according to prescription, it can never do any harm.

Fig. 4

To prevent colds, to become steeled and strengthened against the change of temperature, often so hurtful, it is advisable to take such sitting-baths often, but best of all at night. When awakening at any hour, spring quickly from bed and into the sitting-bath, then at once without drying go back to bed again. I wish, however, to caution against a too frequent repetition of this sitting-bath, because by it the blood is too strongly led to the lower parts, and hemorrhoids are caused thereby; 2 or 3 times a week may be allowed.

Whoever is in want of a sound, quiet sleep at the beginning of the night, who, suddenly awakening at night, cannot go to sleep again, everyone in general, who is suffering with sleeplessness, may frequently use this sitting-bath, taking it for one to two minutes. It removes excitement and produces agreeable repose.

A patient, for a long time, could seldom sleep for more than 1 or 2 hours, and, tossing about in bed, he became more and more excited with thoughts of every kind. These baths brought back to him the longed for guest (sleep).

This application is especially recommended to those who rise in the morning with a confused and heavy head, or more tired than when they lay down; also to all healthy persons it is once more recommended most heartily.

2. The warm sitting-bath

is never prepared only with warm water; it is always made either with

a. Shave-grass,

b. Oat-straw, or

c. Hay-flowers.

All these baths are prepared in the same way; boiling water is poured upon the herbs, and the mixture is put on the fire to boil for some time; then the vessel is taken away, and the mixture allowed to cool to the temperature of 24° — 26° R. (in few cases 30°), when the whole is poured into the prepared bath. Such a bath may last for a quarter of an hour; in order not to waste the herbs, I use them for two more applications. The one is made 3 to 4 hours after the first, the other an hour after the second, but both in the cold mixture, for 1 to 2 minutes each.

Such sitting-baths with herbs I allow 2 to 3 times a week at the utmost, many times only alternately with cold baths, in cases where a deep-rooted complaint is to be cured, e. g. bad hemorrhoids, fistulas at the rectum, disorder of the blind gut and such like. Those who are troubled with ruptures, need not be prevented from the use of these baths on their account.

a. The sitting-bath with shave-grass serves especially and chiefly for spasmodic, rheumatic disorders, of the kidneys and the bladder, and for gravel and stone complaints.

b. The sitting-bath with oat-straw is an excellent bath for all complaints of gout.

c. The sitting - bath with hay-flowers is of more general influence and may be used instead of the two others against all the complaints named above, but with less effect. It has always been of good service to me for the evacuation of stagnant matters in the bowels, for exterior swellings, ulcers (erysipelas), constipation, hemorrhoids, spasmodic and colic-like symptoms (caused by wind).