For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Hydrotherapy and Mahatma Gandhi

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net;

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com

Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

Hydrotherapy and Mahatma Gandhi

Hence, when children reach maturity, they should courageously make known their impotency if any and such other defects. If treated in time, such weakness can even be cured. But I cannot advise this particular husband to torture the girl while he makes efforts to regain his potency. If he wishes to undergo treatment after having got the girl settled in another marriage, he is free to do so. But certain precautions are necessary even in doing this. No one can gain true virility by taking matras, tejabs and yakutis. What they do get through these is artificial stimulation. No one has been able by means of yakutis to turn a weak mind into a strong one. The remedy for one who has lost his virility is exercise, a wholesome diet, open air and hydrotherapy. And the first thing is to make an effort to give up one’s bad habits. Hydrotherapy strengthens the nerve-cells and one gains peace of mind. As a result, bad habits too are brought under control. 1

Being in jail Kanta naturally cannot practise hydrotherapy. Therefore the best way for her is to consult the best doctors. It is possible that if she restricts herself to a diet of milk, curd and fruit she may have some relief in the matter of her menstrual trouble and her toothache. Relief from pyorrhoea may be attained by chewing a datun for half an hour morning and evening and by massaging the gums inside and outside with a finely ground clean mixture of salt and charcoal powder. I am not writing separately to Kanta. 2 I am very happy to see that you are both taken up with hydrotherapy. Let this always continue. You have found a pure altruistic activity in which both of you has such great faith and I see the greatest good where the energies of you both are equally applied. I continued my morning hip-bath even through the attack of malaria, and my walks too. The hipbath still continues though the hour has been shifted to ten o’clock. After the morning prayers I go to sleep and I cannot manage a walk after the hip-bath at 10 o’clock. Anyway I do go for walks twice a day. I cannot take friction-bath because due to lack of practice the foreskin cannot be drawn back in the required manner. I had made an attempt on receiving your first letter. The skin is intact and I used to take friction-bath years ago. I have not yet started having the abdominal mud-pack at bedtime. Formerly I used to try mud-packs on many occasions and now I shall try it for your sake if for no other reason. If I come across an honest naturopath, I would certainly keep him with me and popularize the treatment. I have not so far found such a person. Most of the hydropaths in India have reduced their treatment to a means of making money. 3

Hydrotherapy is a well-known and ancient form of therapy. Many books have been written on the subject, but in my opinion the form of hydrotherapy suggested by Kuhne is simple and effective. Kuhne’s book on nature cure is very popular in India. It has been translated in several languages of India. Andhra has the greatest number of Kuhne’s followers. He has written a good deal about diet as well, but here I wish to confine myself to his experiments in hydrotherapy. Hip-bath and sitz-bath are the most important of Kuhne’s contribution to hydrotherapy. He has devised a special tub for use though one can do without it. Any tub thirty to thirty-six inches long according to the patient’s height generally serves the purpose. Experience will indicate the proper size. The tub should be filled with fresh cold water so that it does not overflow when the patient sits in it. In summer the water may be iced, if it is not cold enough to give a gentle shock to the patient. Generally water kept in earthen jars overnight answers the purpose. Water can also be cooled by putting a piece of cloth on the surface of the water and then fanning it vigorously. The tub should be kept against the bathroom wall and a plank put in the tub to serve as back rest. The patient should sit in the tub keeping his feet outside. Portions of the body outside water should be kept well covered so that the patient does not feel cold. After the patient is comfortably seated in the tub, gentle friction should be applied to his abdomen with a soft towel. This bath can be taken for five to thirty minutes. When it is over, the body should be rubbed dry and the patient put to bed. Hip-bath brings down the temperature in high fever, and given in the manner described above, it never does any harm, and may do much good. It relieves constipation and improves digestion. The patient feels fresh and active after it. In cases of constipation, Kuhne advises a brisk walk for half an hour immediately after the bath. It should never be given on a full stomach.

I have tried hip-baths on a fairly large scale. They have proved efficacious in more than 75 cases out of 100. In cases of hyperpyrexia, if the patient’s condition permits of his being seated in the tub, the temperature immediately invariably falls at least by two to three degrees, and the onset of delirium is averted. The rationale of the hip-bath according to Kuhne is this: Whatever the apparent cause of fever, the real cause in every case is one and the same, i.e., accumulation of waste matter in the intestines. The heat generated by the putrefaction of this waste matter is manifested in the form of fever and several other ailments. Hip-bath brings down this internal fever so that fever and other ailments which are the external manifestations thereof subside automatically. How far this reasoning is correct, I cannot say. It is for experts to do so. Although the medical profession has taken up some things from nature-cure methods, on the whole they have given a cold shoulder to naturopathy. In my opinion both the parties are to be blamed for this state of affairs. The medical profession has got into the habit of confining themselves to whatever is included in their own curriculum. They present an attitude of indifference, if not that of contempt, for anything that lies outside their groove. On the other hand, the naturecurists nurse a feeling of grievance against the medicos and, in spite of their very limited scientific knowledge, they make tall claims. They lack the spirit of organization. Each one is self-satisfied and works by himself instead of all pooling their resources for the advancement of their system. No one tries to work out in a scientific spirit all the implications and possibilities of the system. No one tries to cultivate humility (if it is possible to cultivate humility). I have not said all this in order to belittle the work of the naturopaths.

As a lay co-worker, I wish them to see things in their true colour so that they may make improvements wherever possible. It is my conviction that so long as some dynamic personality, from among the naturopaths themselves, does not come forward with the zeal of missionary, things will continue as they are. Orthodox medicine has its own science, medical unions and teaching institutions. It has to a certain measure of success. The medical profession should not be expected to put faith, all of a sudden, in things which are yet to be fully tested and scientifically proved. In the mean time the public should know that the specialty of nature-cure methods lays in the fact that being natural, they can be safely practised by laymen. If a man suffering from headache wets a piece of cloth in cold water and wraps it round his head, it can do no harm. The addition of earth to cold water enhances the utility of the cold pack, now about the sitz or friction-bath. The organ of reproduction is one of the most sensitive parts of the body. There is something illusive about the sensitiveness of the glans penis and the foreskin. Anyway, I know not how to describe it. Kuhne has made use of this knowledge for therapeutic purposes. He advises application of gentle friction to the outer end of the external sexual organ by means of a soft wet piece of cloth, while cold water is being poured. In the case of the male the glans penis should be covered with the foreskin before applying friction. The method advised by Kuhne is this: A stool should be placed in a tub of cold water so that the seat is just about the level of water in the tub. The patient should sit on the stool with his feet outside the tub and apply gentle friction to the sexual organ which just touches the surface of the water in the tub. This friction should never cause pain. On the contrary the patient should find it pleasant and feel rested and peaceful at the end of the bath.

Whatever the ailment, the sitz-bath makes the patient feel better for the time being. Kuhne places sitz-baths higher than hip-baths. I have had much less experience of the former than of the latter. The blame, I think, lies mostly with me. I have been lax. Those whom I advised sitz-baths, have not been patient with the experiment, so that I cannot express an opinion on the efficacy of these baths, based on personal experience. It is worth a trial by everyone. If there is any difficulty about finding a tub, it is possible to pour water from a jug or a lota and take the friction-bath. It is bound to make the patient feel rested and peaceful. As a general rule people pay scant attention to the cleansing of the sexual organ. The friction-bath will easily achieve that end. Unless one is particularly careful, dirt accumulates between the foreskin and the glans penis. This must be removed. Insistence on keeping the sexual organ clean and patiently following the treatment outlined above will make the observance of brahmacharya comparatively easier. It will result in making the local nerve endings less sensitive and unwanted seminal emissions less likely.

To say the least it is very unclean to allow seminal emissions to occur. Greater insistence on cleanliness should and will cause a feeling of revulsion against the process and make one much more particular than otherwise in taking all the precautions to avoid them. Having dealt with the two Kuhne baths, a few words about wet-sheet packs will not be out of place. It is very useful in pyrexia and insomnia. The method of giving wet-sheet packs is this: Spread three or four thick broad woolen blankets on a cot and on top of them a thick cotton sheet dipped in cold water with the water wrung out. The patient lies flat on the wet sheet with his head resting on a pillow outside the sheet. The wet sheet and the blankets are wrapped round the patient covering the whole body except the head which is covered with a damp towel treated after the manner of the wet sheet. The sheet and the blankets are wrapped round the patient, so that outside air cannot get inside. Though the patient feels a gentle shock when first laid in the wet-sheet pack, he finds it pleasant afterwards. In a minute or two he begins to feel warm. Unless the fever has become chronic, in about five minutes it begins to come down with sweating. In resistant cases I have kept the patient wrapped in the wet-sheet pack up to half an hour.

This has finally resulted in sweating. Sometimes there is no sweating but the patient goes off to sleep. In that case he should not be awakened. The sleep indicates that the wet-sheet pack has produced a soothing effect and he is quite comfortable. The temperature invariably falls at least by one or two degrees as a result of the wet-sheet pack. It was over thirty years ago that my second son suffered from double pneumonia and high fever resulting in delirium. I had a medical friend advising me as to his condition. I would not, much to his sorrow, try his prescription. But I tried water cure. I used to put him in wet-sheet packs when fever shot up very high. After six or seven days the temperature went down. So far as I remember I gave him orange juice also, but nothing else. Typhoid supervened. It lasted 42 days. There was no treatment beyond simple nursing. I gave him milk and water for food. He had daily sponges. He was completely cured and is today the strongest and healthiest of all my four sons. At least this much might be said of the treatment that he was none the worse for it. Wet-sheet packs are also useful in the treatment of prickly heat, urticaria, other forms of skin irritation, measles, smallpox, etc. I have tried them on a fairly large scale for these ailments. For smallpox and measles cases, I added enough potassium permanganate to the water to give it a light pink colour. The sheet used for these patients should afterwards be sterilized by soaking it in boiling water and leaving it in it till it cools down sufficiently and then washed with soap and water. In cases where circulation has become sluggish, the leg muscles feel sore and there is a peculiar ache and feeling of discomfort in the legs, an ice massage does a lot of good.

This treatment is more effective in summer months. Massaging a weak patient with ice in winter might prove a risky affair, now a few words about the therapeutics of hot water. An intelligent use of hot water gives relief in many cases. Application of iodine is a very popular remedy for all sorts of injuries and the like. Application of hot water will prove equally effective in most of these cases. Tincture of iodine is applied on swollen and bruised areas. Hot water fomentations are likely to give equal relief, if not more. Again, iodine drops are used in cases of earache. Irrigation of the ear with warm water is likely to relieve the pain in most of these cases. The use of iodine is attended with certain risks. The patient may have allergy towards the drug. Iodine mistaken for something else and taken internally might prove disastrous. But there is no risk whatever in using hot water. Boiling water is as good a disinfectant as tincture of iodine.

I do not mean to belittle the usefulness of iodine or suggest that hot water can replace it in all cases. Iodine is one of the few drugs which I regard most useful and necessary, but it is an expensive thing. The poor cannot afford to buy it and moreover its use cannot be safely entrusted to everybody. But water is available everywhere. We may not despise its therapeutic value because it is obtained so easily. Knowledge of common household remedies often proves a godsend in many a crisis. In cases of scorpion-stings where all remedies have failed, immersion of the part in hot water has been found to relieve the pain to a certain extent. A shivering fit or a rigor can be made to subside by putting buckets of hot boiling water all round the patient who is well wrapped up or by saturating the atmosphere of the room with steam by some other device. A rubber hot-water bag is the most useful thing, but it is not to be found in every household. A glass bottle with a well-fitting cork, filled with hot water and wrapped in a piece of cloth, serves the same purpose. Care should be taken to choose bottles that will not crack on hot water being poured into them. Steam is a more valuable therapeutic agent. It can be used to make the patient sweat. Steam-baths are most useful in cases of rheumatism and other joint-pains.

The easiest as well as the oldest method of taking steam bath is this: Spread a blanket or two on a sparsely but tightly woven cot and put one or two covered vessels full with boiling water under it. Make the patient lie flat on the cot and cover him up in such a- way that the ends of the covering blankets touch the ground and thus prevent the steam from escaping, and the outside air from getting in. After arranging everything as above, the lid from the vessels containing boiling water is removed and steam soon gets on to the patient lying between the blankets. It may be necessary to change the water once or twice. Usually in India people keep an angithi under pots to keep the water boiling. This ensures continuous discharge of steam, but is attended with risk of accidents. A single spark might set fire to the blankets or to the cot and endanger the patient’s life. Therefore it is advisable to use the method described by me even though it might seem slow and tedious. Some people add neem leaves or other herbs to the water used for generating steam. I do not know if such an addition increases the efficiency of steam. The object is to induce sweat and that is attained by mere steam. In cases of cold feet or aching of legs, the patient should be made to sit with his feet and legs immersed up to the knees in as hot water as he can bear. A little mustard powder can be added to the water. The foot-bath should not last for more than fifteen minutes. This treatment improves the local circulation and gives immediate relief. In cases of common cold and sore throat a steam kettle which is very much like an ordinary tea kettle with a long nozzle can be used for applying steam to the nose or throat. A rubber tube of required length can be attached to any ordinary kettle for this purpose.

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