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Cold Taking

Sources: Papers On Health

Where cold is easily "taken," it is the skin which is

defective in its action. The cure must therefore deal with it. Even

spasmodic asthma can be traced to the failure of the skin to throw off

waste sufficiently. Men exposed to great heats and chills, women and

children whose nervous energy is small, are liable to this skin

failure. Kneipp linen underwear, besides being more absorbent of

perspiration than woollens, has
a stimulating effect on the skin owing

to a certain hardness (by no means unpleasant) of the fibre. Wearing it

is an excellent preventive of skin failure (see Underwear). This may

also be treated by careful, kindly rubbing over the whole body with

warm olive oil, the patient being kept warm during the operation. This

rubbing may with advantage come after a sponging with M'Clinton's soap

(see Soap). To face the wintry blast at half-past five in the morning

is for many severely trying. This treatment the night before will give

immense help to those who are so exposed. It is the best preventive

against taking cold known to us.



There is one great difficulty that stands in the way of such a remedy

as we have suggested--that is, the "trouble" which it implies, not so

much to ourselves as to others. Many a useful life is lost lest

"trouble" should be given. It needs to be well understood that this is

a temptation. If we can buy a quantity of some drug from a chemist

according to the prescription of some medical man, and just quietly

swallow it, that "troubles" nobody. So powders to sweat us, and powders

to stop our sweating, are readily "taken," greatly to increase all

tendency to "take cold." Our relatives and others have, as the fruit of

such a system, worlds of serious trouble and loss that might all be

saved if only a very little trouble were given in the more natural and

reasonable way.



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