864 HEJSTRY A. MATTILL 



the sweat and his results are questioned by Bahrmann and Kochmann who 

 conclude that even sool baths have effects no different from those of baths 

 in ordinary water at the same temperature, nor do they trust the various 

 reports on the usually increased chlorid excretion as a result of bathing 

 (Keller; Robin) because of too brief preliminary periods and because the 

 laws of sodium chlorid metabolism are not yet well enough understood. 

 In the careful work on sea bathing above referred to an increased excre- 

 tion of sodium chlorid was recorded during the bathing periods, an amount 

 that would have required an intake of 100 c.c. of sea water, and the 

 accidental gulping of water was avoided. 



In experiments on the metabolic effects of bathing in the Great Salt 

 Lake (20 per cent solids, mostly sodium chlorid) it appeared (Mattill(a) 

 (b) ) that the excretion of urinary nitrogen and salt increased progressively 

 during the progress of the bathing periods. Most of the extra elimination 

 appeared during the three hours following the bath and in amounts of from 

 15 to 50 per cent above the excretion during the same period on non-bathing 

 days (Fig. 1). There was no evident compensatory decrease during the 

 other periods of the day and the accidental swallowing of salt water was 

 studiously avoided. The fairly uniform parallelism between nitrogen and 

 chlorid excretion has no obvious explanation; it is similar to the find- 

 ings obtained by various investigators in experiments on the influence of 

 water ingestiou. Other urinary constituents, ammonia, uric acid and crea- 

 tinin were uninfluenced by the bathing. The mechanical effect of the 

 pressure of water was much greater in this case because of the high concen- 

 tration of solids, and the residual effect of the salts on the skin was cor- 

 respondingly higher. This, according to Ililler may be as great as that 

 of the bath itself. Such salts may be demonstrated spectroscopically on 

 the skin as long as a week after a bath and various physical as well as 

 chemical effects have been ascribed to them (Lehmann; Frankenhauser; 

 Schwenkenbecher). The amounts remaining after a salt bath vary with 

 different individuals perhaps as a result of varying amount of body hair 

 (Loewy and Miiller). 



The clinical investigations as to the influence of salt baths on metabo- 

 lism seem to show more significant results than the purely experimental. 

 The experiments of Heubner on two strumous children and those of 

 Schkarin and Kufajeff on rachitic infants show that these baths have a 

 very definite influence on the child's organism, perhaps because of the 

 relatively greater surface area. The former investigator used gradually 

 increasing salt concentrations and found no increase in body weight in 

 spite of liberal feeding. Nitrogen elimination increased as the bathing 

 period progressed with highest values in the final period leading to a nega- 

 tive balance in one case in which there was poorer utilization of food. 

 In this case there was chlorid retention, in the former sodium chlorid 

 excretion remained practically uniform. Heubner considered that metab- 





