BATHS OF LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 119, 23 May 1925, Page 16

BATHS OF LIFE

ESSENTIAL FOODS OF TEE BODY

'•There is much in the cult of sun and air bathing, writes Sir Herbert Barker in the "Sunday Chronicle." Every man and every woman should take an air bath unclothed every day, whatever the weather may be. We are, half of us, air starved more thau. food starved. The skin craves air. It needs it in order to Function properly. Cut it off for sixteen hours by thick clothes, and for the remaining, eight by sleeping suits and blankets, and'you deny it its essential food. One day in the near future there will be municipal sun baths for men and women wnere, for a penny or two, they will be able to get their daily "dosage" of the life-giving golden rays while strolling naked in a central marble chamber.' Imagine this white, wonderful, lofty room. You have undressed and left your .olothes in a cubicle. You stroll on to the spotless smooth, warm floor. Look up. You will see tilted down, like great searchlights, the arcs that give the ultra violet ray, the life-giving ray in the snnlight. They look cold, steel blue. But the flickering blue lightning that quivers in the tube behind the great eye of the lamps holds the source of all energy and vitality, and this it ig invisibly transferring to you. In ten minutes you will be browned. You are being bathed in the bath of life. I have a sun lamp in my Park lane house, and expose myself to it frequently. Very soon these, la-mps will bo as conventional a part of the. equipment of every house as.a bathroom or the electric light installation.

' Mflst men and women who pride them-Kelves-on their civilisation wear too maiw clothes, and clothes of'tho wrong sort. In America, where they pay more atteution to health, the average man and woman when choosing clothes, pays some attention to their weight, thickness, texture, and comfort. The educated vouit; American girl has almost a uniform.' It consists of- one straight easy-fitting undergarment, made of very fine piateri.il, and 'an easy-fitting frock oyer it. She wears no corsets, regular exercise'prc.serves her figure, and makes' a- corset unnecessary in her youth—and rolls her stockings.' Old-fashioned people, moralise over this mode., and find much -to criticise in it. 'Yet it is-the same free, neajtny mode of dress - that the Greek women adopted in .the, fiolden Age of old Greece—with all the amenities of civilisation—and. the women of kter times have never excelled those early women for beauty, health, and'gentle intelligence.

It may be san} that, to expose the bare body for an air.bath in winter is asking for trouble in. the shape of colds,, pneumqma, pl enr^ d gQQ(J k what else. It all depends on the physical conation o? a man or'a woman wbothe* ■he or she'can do these things,' essential to perfect health, with impunity. It is naturally dangerous to do anything of nrL^V without preliminar^ preparation, sun bathing must be careMy -indulged in at first.: Noth£n bnfc harm results from a sndden, prolon-ed to Me fall force of a summer sun. When the body is in good health, hardened by 4^ little regular daily exercise, inured to cxposare-by progressive air bathing over a penod of aome months, it is quit? possible, and even pleasant, to take exerciso nude on a winter's day. " The truth is, we are soft, because we have got away from N ature p w « £ aye Ttt'^ om of Dalne who holds the ultimate Eeerets.