Cold Applications: Reactions
Reaction may be insured or made stronger by taking certain precautions either before the bath, during the bath, or after the bath. Warmth of body or room, or taking hot water or a hot enema or a hot bath, or exercising or rubbing the body to a glow before a cold bath, will make reaction more certain and more vigorous. The reaction may also be hastened and strengthened by the use-of very cold water, by a very short application, by the addition of friction or force, or by alternating hot with cold water. After the bath practically any of the measures mentioned for use before the bath may be employed, friction and exercise being best.
Numerous conditions retard or prevent reaction and should be taken into account when cold baths are considered. Babies and very young children may not react well. Neither do aged people, especially those with even moderate hardening of the arteries. Great fatigue and exhaustion prevent reaction or permit of only feeble reaction. Anemic individuals, whether fat or thin, do not react quickly nor completely, nor do any fat people. Very nervous people, those with lifeless or cold skin, those who chill very easily or who greatly dislike cold baths or applications, and those of a rheumatic tendency, have poor reactions. Besides these conditions, there are numerous diseases and other abnormal conditions associated with defec¬tive reaction.
All cold applications reduce the body temperature some¬what, as well as the temperature of the skin. By thermic reaction is meant the restoration of heat lost, and the reestablishment of temperature balance. The cold bath depends for much of its great value upon thermic reaction. Every organ and cell is benefited by cold baths when they are followed by proper thermic-reaction which, of course, will be associated with proper circulatory reaction. When reaction is incom¬plete, there is internal congestion which may be manifested by headache, weariness, and pains of different kinds in various localities, dizziness, and general weariness and in some cases by diarrhea.
EFFECTS OF HEAT IN HYDROTHERAPY.—Effects of appli¬cation of heat to the body are as important as effects of application of cold, and the laws by which it operates should he thoroughly understood. Heat may be applied to the body in several ways, by means of hot water, fomentations or hot compresses, steam vapor, hot air, the direct rays of the sun, or radiation from some electric appliance that may or may not supply light also. As with cold, so the effects produced by the application of heat depend upon: 1, its mode of application; 2, its degree; 3, its duration; 4, the condition of the subject.