POPULAR ERRORS. 125 



treating — I know not what disoases — by what is called the cold 

 water system, and which I understand, with certain strict regidations 

 in diet and exercise, consists in placing patients in bed with their 

 night dress wetted with cold water. The plan originated with an 

 ignorant empiric, and I believe is still superintended by him ; and at 

 the first view of the subject it might be thought to be as hazardous 

 as it is singular, but the evil which the damp or wet linen would pro- 

 duce if used in the ordinary way, is fully counteracted by the moun- 

 tain mass of dov^ii and woollen covering with which the patient is 

 enveloped, and by which the body speedily becoming heated, and all 

 evaporation prevented, a wann steam bath is created within the bed, 

 and a copious pcrsjnration induced. This method, indeed, is but a 

 clumsy substitute for the modern warm air bath, and only shares 

 with it the advantage of keeping up the perspiration at pleasure. 

 There is nothing, however, in the plan, chilly as it may seem, that 

 has any relation to a cold bath, for the wet linen in which the patient 

 is incased is ?o profusely surrounded with folds of woollen covering, 

 that all sense of coldness is prevented, and it thereby becomes a wann 

 bath. It is, in fact, a copy, under a somewhat different form, of the 

 notable plan which, about fifty years ago, was pursued by that prince 

 of em])irics the far-famed Dr. Graham, and which consisted in 

 having his patients, when stript, buried in the ground with only their 

 heads above it, and where he kept them during several hours. I was 

 ©y enough at the time, and had enough of curiosity to go with some 

 of my school companions to see the silly people so buried, and to 

 hear them afterwards afiinn that they had been comfortably wann 

 and even perspiring. The modem Gennan method and Graham's 

 are strictly analogous, both in their operations and efllects; and 

 whilst the Gennan empirics declares the cold and wet linen to be 

 useful, purely because they are cold, our countryman Graham pro- 

 claimed, and with no little eloquence, that his remedy was to be 

 found in the subtle but life giving energies which the earth was ever 

 exhaling from her bosom, and which were thus imparted to his 

 patients whom he infolded in it. But to proceed from this digression. 

 Besides the use of clothing to protect the body from the cold, 

 there is another purpose to which it is applied, and which has much 

 of the public favour in despite of the manifest evils which it occasions 

 to those by whom it is used. I here allude to that article of female 



