Indian Naturopathy, Naturopathy in India, Naturopathy Hospital India

During the past very few years several makes of glass and glass-substitutes pervious to ultra-violet rays have been placed upon the market. The value of this discovery is twofold. It aids those in health resorts and curative institutions of various kinds to get well more quickly, and it is of tremendous %’alue
to those who are not ill, helping them to gain more health and energy than would otherwise be possible. Already some hospitals and sanitaria have provided some of their rooms, jjarticularly their solaria, with glass that lets in the life-giving actinic rays. Farmers, stock-raisers, and chicken-raisers have
used some of the glass-substitutes instead of ordinary glass for the buildings in which animals are housed, and have healthier stock, with greater production of milk and eggs, than under the old conditions. Even the reflected sunlight through such glass has proved to be of greater value than direct sunlight through ordinary window-glass. Factories and schools are now putting in window-panes of the new materials, with marked benefit to the occupants. Within a comparatively short time, let us hope modern dwellings and all other build¬ings in which people are housed will be provided with windows permeable to the ultra-violet rays. No more useful application of helio-hygiene and heliotherapy could be made.

Many people bask in the warmth of the sunlight as it comes through ordinary window-glass, wrongly thinking they are getting sun-baths. They are getting light and heat baths; but they are not getting sun-baths, for ordinary window-glass will not permit passage of the ultra-violet rays. A room may be flooded with light, or broiling under direct sunlight, as in a solarium or hothouse, yet have none of the life-giving actinic rays. Physicians used to prescribe for patients exposures to the light of the sun through windows, and for a long time the observing ones wondered why those so exposed did not pro¬gress as well as those who were exposed directly to the sunlight in the open air. Even with plenty of fresh air provided, patients will not make much progress under these conditions, nor will sunlight received through ordinary window-glass give immunity to diseases known to be preventable by sunlight. Hence, the discovery of certain methods of treating glass and some other transparent substances so that most of the actinic rays will pass through is one of the most vital and im¬portant that has been made by modern science.

Indoors it is easy to protect the head by simply lying so that it is in the shade of the window-casing and wall. Out¬doors it may be necessary to use a hat or a parasol. In the s enclosures one may lie with the head in the shade of a wall, or a projection may be built or canvas stretched outward from the south wall for use during the time when the sun is fairly well overhead.

The outdoor solarium will be more valuable if some facility is provided for the cold or cool water application, which should be taken immediately after the sun-bath, or, during prolonged baths, every ten or fifteen minutes. One may, of course, go indoors for the cool bath, but the inconvenience of doing so may lead to carelessness in regard to this important part of the treatment. A suitable piping with a shower-head and faucet arranged in the enclosure is an excellent provision. A sitz bathtub may also be provided, if desired. If these ar¬rangements are not possible, one may have a basin or tub of water, for a splash, sponge, or towel bath.

Those who have access to a beach may take part of their sun-baths there. Here it will be necessary to wear the bathing-suit, which is usually made of materials and of colors that prevent practically all the actinic rays from reaching the covered parts of the body. But sun-baths so taken will be better than none at all. Those who have private beaches can easily provide facilities for taking the sun-bath nude, perhaps by boarding up a suitable enclosure. Such an enclosure may also be made in the back-yard by people owning or even leas¬ing property in towns, and by farmers. It should be pro¬vided with air space below all or part of the walls, or should have a shutter-like window on each side.

But even in such districts, it is often necessary for the sun-bath to be taken through a window of the residence. If the top sash of the window is lowered completely and the curtain and shade removed, one may secure a thoroughly beneficial sun-bath while reclining on the floor, or on a cot or bed. In an apartment building having windows of other apartments opposite, the lower half of the window may be curtained. If this does not afford sufficient protection, a cheese-cloth or mosquito-netting curtain may be placed over the open part or the whole window; or half the body may be irradiated at a time; or very light-weight, porous material, either white or light-colored, may be laid over the body itself. Nothing should be worn if it is possible to avoid it, but there are times when compromise is necessary.

As to where the sun-bath may be taken, this sometimes proves to be quite a problem. People in rural districts should have little if any difficulty in finding an isolated place where prying eyes are absent. The back-yard is an excellent place in towns and parts of cities where there are no tall buildings. A portable canvas screen may be placed about a cot, a mat¬tress or blanket on the ground, thus giving privacy and com¬fort. If one can have a sand-pile at this place, the sun-bath may be combined with a sand-bath, with greater enjoyment and somewhat better results. In one case, a farmer took his sun-baths through the window of his hay-loft, while lying on gunny sacks on the hay; another went into the woods, and another into the tall weeds behind the barn. There are many places about the farm, or in thinly settled rural districts, where one can secure a sun-bath in privacy.

When the early morning hours of summer are used for the general sun-bath, additional local irradiations, for superficial lesions and wounds, may be given between eleven and twelve, providing the sunning is of short duration and interrupted frequently. In short, it seems only common sense that, whether general or local baths be given, the sunning be regu-lated, in duration and extent of surface covered, according to the intensity of the sunlight and the nearness of the hour to noon or the hottest part of the day. In autumn and spring, in temperate latitudes, the middle of the day will be the only time during which effective sun-baths can be taken without very long exposures; and during these seasons the effective¬ness of the sunlight will be even further reduced in proportion to the time distance from the middle of summer. In high altitudes at this season there may be enough of the actinic rays in the sunlight so that, by exposures for an entire morning or afternoon, very beneficial sun-baths can be secured.

The weaker the individual, the more pronounced an ab¬normal condition, the greater the susceptibility to diseases of the blood-vessels; and the fairer, the paler, or the more lifeless the skin, the greater will be the need, at first, for short sun-baths.

Having learned how to take the sun-bath and when not to take it, the question is: When and where shall we take it? As for the time of day, there is some difference of opinion. Some heliotherapists claim that, during the hot season, the sun-bath should be taken only during the early and late hours of the day. When the sun is intensely bright and hot, they say, the actinic and heat rays are too powerful and are liable to produce depression. Those who hold this view, however, are much in the minority, and even they prescribe sun-baths, during the cooler season, in the middle of the day, when there is a larger proportion of both the actinic and the heat rays in sunlight.

Rollier claims that for best results there should not be too much of the heat rays, which are depressing and fatiguing. In fact, he prefers relatively cool surroundings, and recom¬mends taking the sun-bath in summer between six and nine A. M. and after three p. M. The morning, however, he considers better than the afternoon. The trouble in lowlands during the summer, in many sections at least, is that there is no rela¬tively cool time of the day for days at a time. Certainly one should not wait for such a time to begin sun-baths, or halt treatment when a hot and sultry period comes. If the intense heat in the middle of the day is avoided, or if, when this is the only time available, the exposures are short, nothing but good should result from the irradiations, if other factors are favorable. Rollier says that sun-baths taken with the tempera¬ture in the shade up to 64 degrees, may be called sun-baths, while those taken with a temperature higher than this should be called hot-air baths. But by whatever name they arc called, they would be sun-baths, nevertheless, and very effective ones if not overdone.

As a general rule, one should avoid sun-baths, or modify either the after-treatment or the manner in which they are taken if they are followed by depression instead of by exhilara¬tion. If there remains any erythema from the previous sun-bath, it may be better to postpone the next treatment until this has disappeared. If the skin is scaling or peeling from previous sun-baths one should either wait until the desquama-tion is completed, or remove the dead scales by friction with hand, towel, or flesh-brush, for these scales absorb the ultra¬violet rays and prevent them from reaching the live skin where they are needed.

Among the many other conditions which are benefited by sun baths are boils, carbuncle, catarrh, ozena, colds, general debility, dandruff, also in felon, goiter, hip-disease, incon¬tinence of urine, infantile paralysis, insanity, jaundice, sup¬purating joints, locomotor ataxia, malaria, masturbation, plethora, psoriasis, purpura, ring-worm, scrofula, seminal losses, shingles, Pott’s disease, sterility, syphilis, cretinism, sleeping sickness, leucorrhea, whooping-cough, rheumatism, arthritis deformans, balanitis and barber’s itch.