Mind and Body.

Southern Cross, Volume 19, Issue 25, 30 September 1911, Page 12

Mind and Body.

(By “Physical Culturist") LIFE IN A SANITARIUM. A writer in Kellogg’s Good Health Magazine gives the following interesting account of his experiences : “I expect to recover from my ailments in short order, but it will be Song before I recover from my surprises. I had always supposed a sanitarium to be the dullest place imaginable —aj medical cloister deadened and hushed into monotony. That is one idea among many to which I said good-bye yesterday. The Battle Creek Sanitarium, with its two thousand busy occupants, is on the face of it much like an excellent hotel. Battle Creek has given the word ‘-'sanitarium" a new meaning, which apparently no other word can supply —the meaning of a great recreative resort with all the facilities of a modern hotel and none of its disagreeable bustle ; with all the comforts and resources oi a hospital, and none of its depressing" monotony. More than half the time here you forget that you are sick or that anybody else is sick. It requires a vivid imagination to believe that the people you meet here are really sick. I have never seen a healthier-looking Jot of invalids. “All told, there are about a thousand of them here now, and they make as pleasant and entertaining a crowd as you could find. anywhere. In your own room, and in a hundred nooks and resting places you will find absolute quiet and seclusion. But the average invalid, if he is like you and me, usually prefers to mix with cheerful people and thus escape from himself and his worries.

“But to go back to my story of yesterday's doings. In the latter part of the afternoon I was busy taking my bath treatment and massage. I reported at the desk in the bath office, and awaited the ordeal with a little trembling and a lot of curiosity. I was quickly taken in hand by a tall attendant whose bathing suit set off a handsome physique. He soon showed himself as genial as he was sinewy. After providing me with a towel and a , sheet he escorted me to an unoccupied dressing-room, where I undressed and wrapped myself in the sheet. As I strutted down the corridor to the treatment room, I felt sure I looked like a Roman in his toga. “Obeying- orders, I stretched myseAf face down on a table-couch, and tolerated a hot pack on my spine until the stimulus subsided into mere comfort. Then the attendant removed it.

“ ‘A'our back looks like the Red Sea.' he said. Then, suddenly, ‘Have ion over boon in Alaska ?’ he asked as be dexterously ran a piece oT ice down my spine. ami I shivered, ‘ No-o !'

“Their geography is certainly mixed. After going through this performance a few times, I was hustled across the corridor to a stall, while I stood in a diminutive tub while salt was rubbed all over my delicate skin until I looked like a red pepper. “ ‘Don't mind it,’ said the attendant. ‘When you get through your skin will (eel as smooth as marble.’ And it did.

“To got the salt off, I sidled into a needle spray between two vertical slabs, from which jets of water crisscrossed horizontally. I stood it hot for a minute or two, and then coW. As my ministering angel rubbed me dry, and placed me in front of two electric fans, and then, 'All over !’— I realised that I had never felt better in ail my life. I wanted to jump about with gAee like a schoolboy. It was a line glow of genial warmth, a sense of real bodily comfort, exhilarating and delightful beyond description. But you can’t realise it until vou’vc been through it yourself.

“I had a similar experience immediately after, when the Swedish massage was given to me. I was given to a: young swarthy fellow who proved as pleasant as my bath attendant. He chatted gaily w r ith me, while his fingers, palms and lists did their continuous work rubbing, squeezing, slapping, rapping, and kneading every limb and portion of my body in turn. It was all done so amiably-, and I felt so chastened when I got through that I had to say 'Thank you !'

“I have had that same massage again to-day, and another bath treatment (different every day), and I am feeling glorious at the prospect of enjoying these luxuries again every day while I’m here.” '

One hundred thousand persons marched in procession in Belfast in a demonstration against Home Rule. Lord Ranfurly, ex-Governor of N.Z., yvas present, and Lord Hugh Cecil telegraphed :—“We must defend the Union as our ancestors defended Londonderry.” It is proposed that ss provisional government should be set up in Ulster in the event of Home Rule being carried. Sir Edyvard Carson, who represents Dublin University, declares that the Ulster loyalists did not intend to fight the army or navy, but if these forces, under the British Government, came out tot displace them they- would do so at their peril. The Government yvoulcl ponder long before they yvould dare to shoot a loyal Ulster Protestant devoted to his country and his King.