I met Sister Cecilia at a health food store at a mission of the Seventh Day Adventists. Besides being a missionary to my heathen part of paradise, she liked to go to Africa on missionary trips. One day I went to the health food store, and she wasn't there. When I asked about her, they took me over to a nearby house. It was July, and there she lay all bundled up in bed, with a hot water bottle on her head. "Are you sick?" I asked. "Oh, not really."
She told me that she had come down with malaria on her trip to Africa, and the Lord had shown her that if she took a very hot bath she would go into remission. I asked her about the malaria. She said it was a type that attacks the brain and has the highest mortality rate. A dangerous disease. Is it contagious? She said it was contagious during a relapse only if the right kind of mosquito bit her and then someone else.
I asked her how hot the water was. She told me that she got the water as hot as she could stand and then when she was in the bathtub she would cover herself with plastic bags to keep the heat in. She would take her temperature and get it up to 104º F, keep it there about half and hour, and then get in bed and bundle up, and keep her temperature over 100º F for another hour. Then after an hour she was done, but she rested for the rest of the day. "Don't do this when you're alone, because you could pass out," she told me.
Over the course of a year, she started doing her hot bath routinely twice a week. "Not more," she warned, "because you can get depleted of minerals." She said that since she had been doing a hot bath twice a week, she never had another relapse of malaria.
After a year, she quit doing the hot baths twice a week, since that's pretty draconian, as one would find out if one were to ever try it to do it one's self. But the malaria was gone and never came back.
Sister Cecilia had other health cures, and was an expert on herbal medicine. She liked to give people tours of the woods and show them where to find medicinal plants and what to do with them. And she sold vitamins.
Soon the FDA came calling on Sister Cecilia for practicing medicine without a license. It was a friendly warning. Right.
I've tried the hot bath cure on every sort of illness. I was never able to attain a temperature of 104º F, usually around 102-103º F. I had to start with water at a temperature of about 111-112º F. If the water wasn't hot, I never could run a fever and after the first twenty minutes the hot bath is too enervating to keep trying to raise your temperature. I mentioned to her that I had had the flu but couldn't get my temperature up to 104º. "How high did you get?" she asked. "102.5º" "Well, that should do it." From that time on I never heard her recommend 104º F again. She said 103º F. I was curious about why she changed her story. I wondered if there had been a mishap with someone she had told her story to.
It was nice to have something to combat viruses with, and most bacteria. It saved me once.
One day I stepped on a board with a nail in it, and put the nail all the way through my foot. It was as unpleasant to remove as it was to step on it. I did the recommended thing and went to the doctor for a tetanus shot. They were out. I went to two other doctors. They were out.
So I faced tetanus without a vaccination. And sure enough, a couple of days later, I began to feel terrible. And my jaw hurt like thunder. It was terribly painful and frightening, because that was only the beginning. I told my brother about it, and he dusted me off, saying he was sure it was nothing.
The next day I gave myself the hot bath treatment and managed to get my temperature to 103.5º. But, after the first bath, I decided to do it again after an hour, and then again in another hour, since I was alarmed about my illness.
After resting the rest of the day, I had no more jaw pain or illness. I saw a doctor a while after that about allergies. He gave me a skin test for immunity to tetanus to see if my immune system was working properly. Having recently recovered from tetanus, it produced an amazing reaction, swelling my arm up to twice its size, which was painful. "You're sure immune to tetanus!" he remarked.
Other times in flu season, I've taken hot baths preemptively, and not come down with the flu.
Sister Cecilia is still around, but she's hung up her spurs. She doesn't work at the health food store or give herb walks anymore.
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