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Chapter VIII: Scientific Bathing.2139
Chapter VIII: Scientific Bathing.
T
he use of the Bath as a means of promoting, preserving and restoring
health, has been known to the Hindus from the earliest ages. In fact, it
may be considered in the light of a primal instinct of the race. The primitive
Argon did not bathe in order to remove dirt from his body—that is, he
did not do so consciously—he merely obeyed the instinctive craving for
laving in the stream or river, or swimming in the lake or sea, that arose
from the depths of his sub-conscious self. With him cleanliness was merely
an unimportant incident of the bath, the prime factor being his desire to
experience that glow and throb of life that comes to all normal, natural and
healthy persons when they plunge into the water. The exhilaration that he
experienced was the cause of his persisting in the habit. Taught to indulge
this instinct from early childhood, he naturally “took to it,” as, in the familiar
saying, “just as a duck takes to water.”
The ancients, as the developed in knowledge, recognized the therapeutic
value of the bath, as well as its natural hygienic virtues. They saw that not
only was the bath calculated to preserve natural conditions of the physical
body, but that also, when intelligently applied, it was a potent factor in the
treatment of disease. And, so when the Water Cure idea began to develop
among modern people, the practitioners naturally went back to the