SWEATING by David Paulson

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 18, 1900

SWEATING

By David Paulson

DAVID PAULSON, M. D.

God’s original plan for a man, after sin entered the world, was that he should work hard enough to cause him to sweat. Man, however, has sought out many inventions, and a most pernicious one is the determination to get through this world without working enough to induce perspiration. But a human being instinctively feels the necessity for perspiring, and so it has come to pass that Turkish bathrooms without number, and endless contrivances substituting the same to be utilized in the home, have been established; and man imagines that he is getting as much good from sweating this way as he would if he induced perspiration by substantial labor; but experiments have demonstrated the fact that nature can not be outwitted so readily.

The sweat induced merely by applying heat to the skin contains but a small percentage of waste matter as compared with that which is eliminated during vigorous exercise. The obese person who flatters himself that he can sweat away his flesh instead of honestly working it off, will find, sooner or later, that his theory is a delusion and a snare.

However, it must be admitted that there are some beneficial results obtained by vigorous hot treatments in certain forms of disease, and in this way the individual may do penance for what he neglected to do in the right way during health. But, as a general principle, hot treatments are weakening and enervating; while short, cold treatments are tonic in their nature. Hot treatments feel pleasant while they are being taken; but too often they leave a listless, all-gone feeling when they are discontinued. It requires moral courage to take a cold spray or sponge, but the beneficent after-results remain with the individual all day long.

The man who forges some one’s name upon a note is generally a legitimate product of the idea that there is a better way of getting through the world than by working. “Abundance of idleness” was one of the reasons for Sodom’s overthrow, and it lies at the foundation of the moral and physical decay of thousands to-day.