IMPORTANCE OF ABLUTION AND BATHING. 73 



grateful feeling of comfort which its use imparts. 

 The warm, tepid, cold, or shower bath, as a means 

 of preserving health, ought to be in as common use 

 as a change of apparel, for it is equally a measure 

 of necessary cleanliness. Many, no doubt, neglect 

 this, and enjoy health notwithstanding ; but many, 

 very many, suffer from its omission ; and even the 

 former would be benefited by employing it. The 

 perception of this truth is gradually extending, and 

 baths are now to be found in fifty places for one in 

 which they could be obtained twenty years ago. 

 Even yet, however, we are far behind our conti- 

 nental neighbours in this respect. They justly con- 

 sider the bath as a necessary of life, while we still 

 regard it as a luxury. 



When we consider the importance of the exhala- 

 tion performed by the skin, the extent to which ab- 

 lution and bathing of every description are neglected 

 in charitable institutions, in seminaries for the 

 young, and even by many persons who consider 

 themselves as patterns of cleanliness, is almost in- 

 credible. Mr. Stuart, in speaking of the North 

 Americans, states in his remarks, that " the prac- 

 tice of travellers washing at the doors, or in the 

 porticoes or stoops, or at the wells of taverns and 

 hotels once a day, is most prejudicial to health ; the 

 ablution of the body, which ought never to be neg- 

 lected, at least twice a day, in a hot climate, being 

 altogether inconsistent with it. In fact," he adds, 

 " I have found it more difficult, in travelling in the 

 United States, to procure a liberal supply of water 

 at all times of the day and night in my bedchamber 

 than to obtain any other necessary. A supply for 

 washing the face and hands once a day seems all that is 

 thought requisite."* But, bad as this is, I fear that 

 numbers of sensible people may be found much 

 nearer home, who limit their ablutions to the visible 



* Three Years in America, vol. 11. p. 440. 

 G 



