Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c16.28

c16.28

The next article of the Eastern practice, which offers in the course of our discussion, is their sluicing their patients over head and ears, morning and evening, with cold water, until the fever comes on; in which the inoculating Bramins are, beyond controversy, singular: but before we can penetrate the grounds and reasons for this practice, it becomes necessary to bestow a few words on the usual manner of cold bathing in the East, when medically applied, which is simply this; the water is taken up over night, in three, four, or five vessels, before described, (according to the strength of the patient) and left in the open air, to receive the dews of the night, which gives it an intense coldness; then in the morning, before the sun rises, the water is poured without intermission, by two servants, over the body, from the distance of six or twelve inches above the head. This mode of cold bathing has been adopted from the Eastern professors of physic, by all the European practitioners, and by constant experience found abundantly more efficacious than that by immersion, in all cases where that very capital remedy was indicated; notwithstanding it has been ever the received opinion, that the success of cold bathing, is as much, or rather more, owing to the weight and pressure of the circumambient body of water, than *the shock*. The remarkable superior efficacy of this Eastern method of cold bathing, can only be accounted for, from *the shock* being infinitely greater, and of longer continuance, than that received by immersion; which is a fact indisputable, as will be acknowledged by every one who goes through a course of both methods; the severity of the one being nothing comparable to the other: this I assert from my own personal feelings; and I never had a patient that did not aver the same, who had undergone both trials: indeed, the shock of this Eastern method is so great, that, in many cases, when the subject was deeply exhausted and relaxed, I found it absolutely necessary to begin the course only with a *quart* of water.