Indian Naturopathy, Naturopathy in India, Naturopathy Hospital India

If every mother and every child received a “course” of sun-baths yearly for a few years, the health of the human species would be vastly im¬proved within a single generation, and within a few genera¬tions we would have a race of surprising stature, hardihood and resistance to disease.

If one would have “children of quality,” children with su¬perb little bodies, with the greatest possible resistance to dis¬ease, with sturdy bones and strong beautiful teeth that resist decay, with alert minds and abundance of energy, they should have plenty of sun during the growing period. For at least one or two months every year, if it is impossible to continue them through the whole season in which exposure to sunlight is effective, a child should have sun-baths daily, or at least every other day, while the mother should be subjected to the same beneficial influence before conception and through the periods of pregnancy and lactation.

The cool or cold wet-hand rub is the best tonic application to use for children after the sun-bath, though the sponge or wet-towel rub may also be used, especially with older children. After the age of adolescence has begun, practically any tonic application suitable for adults may be used, provided it is not made too severe or of too long duration and care is taken to insure prompt and complete reaction, which will not be difficult when effective sun-baths can be taken.

In giving sun-baths to children and infants, much care must necessarily be taken to avoid overexposure. Their skins are delicate and easily affected by the ultra-violet rays—even more so than the sun-starved skin of adults—and there are, besides, great differences between them. Some possess the elements that permit them to bronze quickly and become pro¬tected against overdosage, while others have these elements in such small amounts that caution must be observed for a much longer time. As to the duration of the first sun-baths, much depends upon the time of the year and the time of day, the atmospheric conditions and other factors. But during the summer, when the sunlight is quite intense at mid-day, it is much safer to give the sun-baths lief ore ten A. M. or after three v. M., with an exposure of not more than five minutes. The exposures may increase in length from three to five minutes daily, depending upon the complexion of the child and other natural and individual factors easily determined.

Much will depend, of course, upon the reaction secured as to the dura¬tion of succeeding exposures. If erythema of more than the first or second degree develops, succeeding exposures must be shorter, or there should be a rest from the treatment. After tanning has begun, the exposures may be increased somewhat more rapidly, but, except with older children and those with an abundance of natural pigment, as revealed by their dark skins, hair, and eyes, there should be less rapid increase at any time than with most adults. With all children the head should be protected, and, in the case of infants, it is much safer to keep the head entirely out of the sunlight, as by having it be¬hind some opaque object, which may be the body of the mother or nurse.

The pregnant woman who desires to give her developing child the best possible body, and at the same time save her own tissues and hhealth, will do much toward realizing these ends by taking sun-baths during pregnancy. Still better re¬sults will be secured if these sun-baths are begun months be¬fore conception. Many women give up to their developing children the calcium, as well as other elements, from their own bones. “For every child a tooth,” is an old saying, and some women lose more than one tooth for every child they bear, because of the demand of Nature for building material for the child. A perfect diet will do much to preserve a pregnant woman’s tissues from this drain; but a less perfect diet, pro¬vided it is not markedly deficient in any element or elements, will serve the purpose if she secures plenty of sunlight directly upon her body. The best plan, of course, would be to have the best possible diet, plus sunlight. Sunlight and diet are not the only factors necessary for ensuring the health of a pregnant or nursing woman and her child, but no other fac¬tors surpass these in importance.

If we need further proof, all that is necessary is an observa¬tion of the differences in stature and appearance of the boys and girls of the plain and mountain sections of the country and those of cities,especially the cities that have many manufac- tories with a heavy film of smoke hovering overhead and filling the atmosphere at the breathing plane. Note the hardihood of the boys and girls of our northwestern rural districts, where a combination of bright sunlight in summer and cool or cold nights and winters is the rule and the more or less dwarfed and stunted figures of the city-dwelling children. Compare even the city children having access to the parks and those of the slums and tenement districts, and the comparative in¬fluence of sunlight and darkness will be apparent. Delicate children, who are “born tired and never get over it,” need sun¬light more than any other single health factor except proper food.

By careful scientific experiment it has been proved that. when all other factors are conducive to rickets, the disease will not develop if sunlight is provided, even in comparatively small doses. So active are the rays of sunlight that general sun-baths every second day will correct rachitic changes. Furthermore, if both wrists, for instance, are affected with rickets, and one of these be excluded from the sunlight during the sun-bath, the unexposed as well as the irradiated wrist will be restored to normal. Artificial sunlight has also been proved to be capable of preventing and curing rickets, and even such sunlight as reaches the inhabitants of a city like New York has a prophylactic and curative influence.

A well-known school in England had the windows of one of its classrooms fitted with one of the new glasses permitting passage of the ultra-violet rays. In this room thirty boys between nine and eleven years of age conducted their regular school work for ten months. In another classroom not pro¬vided with such glass was a “control” group of boys, practi¬cally identical as to age and physical condition. During the ten months the average gain in weight of the “control” boys was 2.83 pounds, in height 1.22 inches, and in hemoglobin 7.53 per cent. But the boys in the experimental room made an average gain of 6.11 pounds in weight, 1.86 inches in height, and 16.14 per cent, in hemoglobin. This means that the class in the health-glass room gained 4.28 pounds, .64 inch in height, and 8.60 per cent, in hemoglobin more than the con¬trol class in the same ten months, with all other circumstances practically identical.

Now as to the sun-bath for children. Children naturally grow into adults if they maintain life at all. But all do not develop alike. Even discounting inherited and individual dif¬ferences and varying diets, children develop differently. One of the most important of all influences upon their develop¬ment is sunlight. A child who receives an abundance of sun-light from infancy through the growing period, or even for the first few years of life, is vastly different from a child who lives in darkness, even if every other factor is the same in the two cases. The latter will develop certain physical weaknesses from which he can never completely recover. As was pointed out earlier, the various mineral elements and vita¬mins present in food are made more available by sunlight; and as children are growing and have cells greedy for every element required in the makeup of the body, the influence of sunlight starvation is greater in childhood and infancy than in adult life.

The bones of children show, perhaps, more than any other part of their bodies, the influence of a deficiency or an abun¬dance of sunlight. While the teeth are not, strictly speaking, hones, they share the same loss or gain. The effect of sun¬light upon the calcium and phosphorus content of the blood, and the relationship between an assimilable supply of these minerals and the bony system have been noted. But it is in childhood that the bones make the most pronounced growth, and it is during this time that denial of the elements of growth causes the greatest derangement. The report of an experi¬ment to demonstrate or ascertain the value of sunlight upon growing children will prove interesting and instructive.

It has been proved that everyone needs sunlight. Every¬one needs not only light, or heat, or the ultra-violet rays, but all of these,every portion of the sunlight; and there should be few conditions in life making it impossible to get enougli sunlight to maintain health, reduce susceptibility to disease, make ordinarily serious illnesses less severe, and promote re¬covery from them. A person who understands the advan¬tages of sunlight, and still continues to starve his skin and blood for lack of it, is entitled to little sympathy for the ailments he develops and the greater rapidity of the aging processes within his body.

If one must take sun-baths indoors and cannot take them through open windows as has been suggested, one should secure a glass that is permeable to the actinic rays. The pres¬ent disadvantage of such a form of improved glass is that it is expensive .But even so, it would not cost a great deal for Home to equip one or two windows with it. However, some glass- substitutes are very inexpensive and almost as good. In fact they even have a certain advantage over the glass in that they are not transparent. They let in the light, but cannot be seen through; hence they insure complete privacy. A sun-porch, or a portion of it, may be provided with such a glass-substitute; or a window-frame might be fitted with it, to be slipped into the window and secured by means of cleats or slight tacking, after the window has been opened as widely as possible. A still further advantage of the glass-substitute, especially one with wire mesh coated with a semi-transparent substance, is that it lets in more heat than either ordinary glass or the sj^ecial glass; yet it is very tough and resistant to even severe rain and hailstorms. The glass and glass-substitutes that permit the ultra-violet rays to pass through them are procurable through builders, lumber-dealers, and dealers in glass and hardware.