Page:Guide to health.djvu/106

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94
A GUIDE TO HEALTH

the patient will experience some shivering, but this will soon give place to an agreeably warm sensation. He can lie in this position from 5 minutes to an hour or more. After a time he begins to perspire, or at times falls asleep. Soon after coming out of the sheets he should bathe in cold-water. This is an excellent remedy for smallpox and fever, and skin-diseases like the itch, the ringworm, and pimples and blotches. Even the worst forms of chicken-pox and small-pox are completely cured by this process. People can easily learn to take the "Wet-Sheet-Pack" themselves, and to apply it to others, and can thus see for themselves its wonderful effect. As the whole dirt of the body sticks to the sheets in the process of taking this bath, they ought not to be used again without being well washed in boiling water.

Needless to say, the full benefit of these baths cannot be derived unless the rules already mentioned as to diet, exercise and the like are strictly observed. If a rheumatic patient, for instance, were to take to Kuhne's bath or to the "Wet-Sheet-Pack," while eating unwholesome food, living in impure air, and neglecting his exercise, how can he possibly derive any good out of it? It is only when accompanied by strict observance of all the laws of health that water-cure can be of any effect;