Page:Willich, A. F. M. - The Domestic Encyclopædia (Vol. 1, 1802).djvu/209

Rh height. It remains torpid during the winter in some subterraneous retreat, revives in the beginning of spring, and the female brings forth from two to five young at a time, which it suckles like other mammillary animals.

As the bats of our climate are frequently troublesome, by infesting chimneys, and annoying the neighbourhood of dwellings, we shall communicate a method of destroying them, nearly in the words of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Take the flower-cups of burdock, whiten them with chalk, and throw them up into the way of their flight: thus attracted by the whiteness of the substance, the bats injure their membraneous wings by the hooks of the bur, and fall to the ground.

In our opinion, these animals are more useful than injurious; as they devour a multitude of insects; though they likewise prey upon bacon, and other animal food suspended in chimneys. But having very formidable natural enemies in the owls, which chase them into hollow trees and obscure holes of walls, there will be little occasion for persecuting them with the burdock.  BATH, in the general acceptation of the term, signifies a convenient receptacle of water adapted to the various purposes of washing or cleansing, and bracing the body, either by plunging, or continuing in it for a certain time.

Baths may be divided into cold, cool, warm, and hot: and these again into natural and artificial.

In order to treat this interesting subject systematically, we shall consider it according to the division above-mentioned.

Cold Baths are those of a temperature varying from the 33d to the 56th degree of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The general properties of the cold bath consist in its power of contracting the animal fibres, while it dissipates the caloric (or matter of heat) that exists between their interstices, and thus effects a greater approximation of the particles, which were before dilated and relaxed by heat. That such is the natural influence of cold, cannot be doubted; and hence this species of bath, by its powerful action on the whole system, is one of the most important medicinal remedies presented by the hand, and, as it were, supplied by the very bosom of Nature.

Even in the most remote times, cold bathing was resorted to with obvious advantage, by nervous and debilitated persons; but in the dark or middle ages, this genuine source of health was totally neglected, till the good sense of Europeans again adopted it as a general restorative, when the prevailing diseases of relaxation and atony rendered the use of such a remedy inestimable.

The superior advantages of cold bathing over all internal corroborants, consists chiefly in its immediate salutary action on the solids, without the intervention of the organs of digestion and nutrition; without having to perform a passage through numerous channels, before it can exert its efficacy. For this obvious reason, it is peculiarly adapted to those constitutions which, though robust, and apparently healthy, are liable to nervous, hysteric, hypochondriacal, and paralytic affections, as well as to frequent attacks of flatulency, and consequent indigestion.  Without