Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/420

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��Popular Science Monthly

���half an hour before douche.

��the

��Patients taking a hot-air bath before being given a Scotch douche. The interior of the cabinet is heated by electricity to induce free perspiration

��the temperature constantly. But all human beings are fallible, and, if the nurse should happen not to be watching the thermometer during those few minutes when the water began to get hot, the patient might be scalded; hence the safety-valve.

In some hospitals a sheet is stretched across the tub over the patient, only his head projecting. In others there is nothing over the patient, in which case he can escape from the tub. He does that fre- quently at first; but since he has no clothes he finds the temperature of the room chilly and is glad to get into the water again. His meals are served to him in the tub. He sleeps there. He -may remain in the tub for weeks at a time. The continuous bath has also been used with great success in treating severe burns.

Often before being given Scotch douche treatment a patient is put in a hot-air bath. He sits on a stool in a little cabinet, with his head projecting through the top and a cold cloth bound around it. The interior of the cabinet is heated by electricity to 130 or 140 degrees. Soon the patient begins to per- spire profusely. Then he goes under the shower bath. The same result may be obtained by a hot pack for

��Curing Sleeplessness

A simple treatment for sleeplessness often effectual involves the use of "Neptune's girdle." An old sheet is cut in half. One half is folded until it is about three inches wide. Just before bed- time this is soaked in cold water, wrung out and wrapped around the body at the waist line, next to the skin. The other half of the sheet is folded until it is about five or six inches wide. It is kept dry, and wrap- ped over the first sheet. Another simple way in which water may be used medicinally is in headache. We all know what a relief a cold compress gives to a throbbing head. Sometimes a hot footbath will relieve the pain. If not, try the application of hot and cold water alternately to the back of the neck. The description of the ways in which water is used in mental disorder must not of course be taken to mean that we have discovered a cure for insanity. We have merely found that it is easier for us and more pleasant for the excited patient to subject him to the soothing influences of the warm bath than to beat him with clubs or drug him with powerful narcotics.

���The fastener consists of a tongue and body member attached by means of punch holes and eyes

��Use This and Your Shoe-Laces Will Never Come Untied

MANY a disposition has been sorely strained because a simple little thing like a shoe- lace wouldn't behave. A Sacramento, California, man — Alexander F. Urgu- hart — has invented a shoe- lace fastener which prom- ises to keep the laces for- ever in the background. The fastener is nothing more than a single piece of stamped metal attached to the shoe half an inch from the strap at the back of the shoe. The laces are drawn up under this and held securely until removed.

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