Organon §291

Baths of pure water have been found useful both as palliatives and as homeopathically serviceable auxiliary means in the restoration of health. They have uses both in acute maladies and during the convalescence of patients recently cured of a chronic disease. In cases of convalescence, the state of the patient, as well as the temperature, duration, and frequency of the baths, must be taken into account. However, even when they are properly used, baths are not actually medicinal in themselves, since they only bring forth physically beneficial alterations in the sick body.

Lukewarm baths, of from 318 to 348C [888 to 938F], serve to awaken the slumbering irritability of the fibers in cases of apparent death (from freezing, drowning, asphyxiation) where the feeling of the fibers has been benumbed. While these baths are only palliative, they often prove themselves to be sufficiently effective, especially if at the same time, coffee is given and the patient is rubbed by hand.

Warm baths

Warm baths can provide homeopathic assistance in cases where the irritability is very unevenly distributed and has accumulated far too much in some organs, as is the case with some hysterical cramps and infantile convulsions.

Cold baths

Cold baths have proven to be a homeopathic aid and also a restorative palliative in the convalescence of patients who have been medicinally restored from a chronic disease. Momentary immersion in cold baths, of 78 to 138C [458 to 558F], has been found to be a homeopathic aid for a patient's lack of vital heat. Later in convalescence, momentary, frequently repeated immersions in cold baths have proven to be a restorative palliative for the tone of slack fibers. When the restoration of slack fibers is the intent, cold baths are to be taken for more than a moment, even for several minutes, and at increasingly cold temperatures. While this is a palliative, it only acts physically and therefore it is not connected with the disadvantage of an opposite reaction, which takes place (and is to be feared) with dynamic medicinal palliatives.