Warm bath

“Remedies: infusions, enemas, spiritual baths, song, prayer and changes of diet. Some plants must be gathered at set times of day or night, with incantations and offerings at harvest.”

“Skin and wounds. Aloe gel on burns, cerasee bath or rub for boils, itching, dry skin and lice, cooled guinea hen weed leaf bath, king of the forest for fungal "liver spots", topical neem, vervain wash and bissy powder on cuts. TRAMIL demands strict hygiene and nothing older than 24 hours. Never holy thistle oil on the skin.”

“The bath also carries danger. The Consumer Affairs Agency estimates about 19,000 bathing-accident deaths a year in Japan (14,000 to 18,000 also circulate, many deaths are not autopsied). 5,398 household bathtub drownings in 2018, nearly double the 2,870 of 2004, over 90% of victims 65 or older. About 7,000 elderly accidental drownings a year, mostly November to April, peaking December-January (CAA via Osaka Prefectural Police, nippon.com 2020). 2023: about 8,993 drowning deaths, almost 80% in a bathtub, about 90% of those aged 65+ (nippon.com).”

“One bath at 40-41°C for 10 minutes, with all six CAA rules. Heart or blood pressure trouble: the doctor first.”

“A bad day. Pain: "Alles ging mis." Reframe: "Then it was a bad day. A day. Not a bad life, not a bad you. Days end, that is the one thing you can count on them for." Step: a warm meal, a shower, bed before eleven. "Morgen is 't anders."”

“Washcloths and baths. A lukewarm cloth on the forehead for comfort. A cold bath for a fever, never.”

“Chamomile sitz bath for intimate irritation. Cabbage leaves on a swollen breast, harmless.”

“Danger signs: cannot swallow spit, drooling, cannot open the mouth, swelling on one side, noisy or hard breathing, very ill with high fever, a rash, bad pain past a week.”

“Ge Hong 葛洪, 4th century. Taoist and alchemist. His Zhouhou Beiji Fang 肘后备急方, "Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies" (about 340 CE), says to soak a handful of qinghao in water, wring it out and drink the juice. Sixteen centuries later that line led to artemisinin.”

“The warm bath. A plain warm bath can be a comfort for old joints and a good start to the night. Warm, not hot, about 40 degrees, about ten minutes, never after alcohol, someone in the house for frail people, a mat against slipping, stand up slowly. People with heart disease, low blood pressure or great age ask their GP first. Someone unconscious or confused in a hot bath: 112. The Tibetan hot spring baths and the medicinal Lum baths (sowarigpa skill set) are told as stories, without herbal recipes.”

“External therapy (dpyad): poultices, massage, moxibustion, needles, baths and other outer treatments”

“The bath and the body. Some mothers waited seven days before bathing. Some bathed with sedr and henna, bound the belly and waist, and afterwards rubbed the body with oil or black seed oil.”

“One line. Very hot baths and saunas are not for pregnancy, heart disease or low blood pressure without the doctor's agreement, and a hot bath ends with water to drink.”

“Her house. A bath after the oil every morning, warm water on the body, the head washed with water not too hot. "Hot water on the body, not too hot on the head, my mother said." Feet dried well between the toes.”

“The books. The bath has its verse (Charaka Sutra 25/40), after the oil and the exercise, and the care of the feet its own (Sushruta Chikitsa 24/69 to 71).”

“The bath spirit. The bannik, or baennik, lives behind the stove. People called him bannyi khoziain, master of the bathhouse. Popular tales picture him as a small, wrinkled, hairy old man who can scald a rude bather or set the bathhouse on fire. He could also tell the future, the tales say: a soft stroke on the back meant good fortune, a scratch of claws meant bad. On the holy nights of Christmas, New Year and Epiphany the bathhouse was used for fortune-telling.”

“Mustard foot baths and mustard in the socks. Grandmothers' warming. One line: for adults only, warm not hot, never on broken skin, never for children.”

“The smoke bath. Dukhan is the smoke bath of the women of northern Sudan. The woman rubs her skin with a scented oil (karkar), sits wrapped in a thick wool blanket (a shamla) on a seat over a small pit in the floor where talh wood (Acacia seyal) smoulders, sometimes with shaf wood (Terminalia brownii), and stays in the warm, fragrant smoke as long as she can bear it. Afterwards comes dilka, a scented rub or massage that leaves the skin smooth.”

“In the papyri. The Edwin Smith surgeon put honey on wounds to keep them from going bad. He also used raw meat to stop bleeding, stitched wounds of the lip, the throat and the shoulder, and used bandages, splints and poultices. Honey appears in other papyri too, even among the contraceptives of the Kahun papyrus.”

“Hot bath/shower 1-2 hours before bed (paradoxical cooling - vasodilation dumps heat)”

“Toxic shame: Not "I did something bad" but "I AM something bad." A body-level, pre-verbal conviction of being fundamentally defective. This persists long after the person cognitively accepts themselves.”