Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/104

98 preposterous absurdity of the idea is rebuked by the example of our instinct-guided fellow-creatures who in warm weather, and after hours of strenuous exercise, drink their fill of cold spring-water, without the slightest hesitation and without any appreciable injurious consequences. Children, admonished not to touch cold water till they are cooled off, might as well be warned against falling asleep when they are tired.

And it is the same with cold baths. Professor Tyndale, in his "Hours of Recreation in the Alps," notices the astonishment of his Swiss guides who saw him plunge into the deep pool of a mountain torrent, after climbing uphill all afternoon in the glare of an August sun. "Their objections," he observes, "seemed to be founded on the difference in the temperature of the sun-heated atmosphere and that of the shaded brook, but that very contrast guaranteed the safety of the venture. In cold weather, when the organism is already suffering from the difficulty of maintaining its inner warmth at the proper medium, a cold bath might have overtaxed the vital staying powers; in midsummer there is no such risk."

And training will even reduce the peril of