Warm applications possess a high degree of utility in the various painful and inflammatory affections of the abdominal organs. Acute peritonitis, local or general, is probably more frequently benefited by applications of ice. As a rule, the feelings of the patient furnish the guide to the selection of the temperature. In the absence of any specific indication from the feelings of the patient, the following rule may be adhered to: If the case be one of pain without fever or inflammation, warm or hot applications; if inflammatory, cold. Those materials which retain heat and moisture longest are to be preferred; for example, the material known as spongiopiline, poultices of flaxseed-meal, flannels wrung out in hot water and covered with oiled-silk, etc. When the weight of the application is objected to, a light material, like a bag of hops dipped in hot water, may be applied. In affections of the pelvic viscera, the same modes of application can be resorted to, under the same conditions.

Heat, especially dry heat, is a very important remedy in sudden and alarming depression of the vital powers, with feebleness of the heart's action and coldness of the surface. Active haemorrhage, of course, contraindicates its employment. Feeble infants, born at term or prematurely, are often saved by the application of dry heat—the highest temperature which can be borne without blistering being necessary. The methodus medendi is simple enough: the heating of the blood in the superficies of the body increases the movement of both heart and lungs. High heat, especially if long continued, is decidedly contraindicated in cases of fatty and fibroid degeneration of the heart, in cases of carditis, considerable obstruction of the orifices, etc.

Hot-air baths, and hot applications of any kind, may be dangerous in old subjects, and in those persons of middle age who present the evidences of degenerated vessels. Not infrequently, attacks of migraine, cases of ordinary neuralgia of the fifth, tic-douloureux of mild form, etc., are relieved by hot, dry applications made over the course and peripheral distribution of the affected nerves. Stupor and coma, due to uraemia, or to narcotic medicines, may be relieved by dry heat applied to the neck. The alternate use of cold and heat is generally more efficient. In neuralgia of the larger nerves, dry heat is palliative. In irritable spine, the so-called spinal irritation, dry heat is an efficient remedy. In these cases solar heat is especially serviceable— the sun's rays falling on the spine, or, what is better, the rays concentrated by a burning-glass on various points on the spine.

Probably the most generally useful application of dry heat is in the treatment of chronic rheumatism and in general dropsy. In the treatment of these maladies, elimination is the object to be accomplished: in the one case, of certain excrementitious substances, notably of uric acid; and in the other, of water by the skin.

The Turkish bath has an unquestionably good effect in constitutional syphilis. Here there are two objects to be accomplished—to promote the action of the mercurial medicines and of the ptisans, and to secure elimination through the skin. In the same way the Turkish bath is highly useful in plumbic, mercurial, and paludal cachexiae. Our French colleagues maintain the superior value of sulphur-vapor baths in the cachexiae produced by the mineral poisons.