OF THE SALUBRITY OF WARM BATHING. 



HAD I any hopes of being able by any thing I 

 could say to prevail on the inhabitants of this 

 island to adopt more generally a practice which so 

 many nations have considered as a most rational 

 luxury, and which, no doubt, is as conducive to health 

 as it is essential to personal cleanliness, I should think 

 my time well employed, were I to write a volume in 

 recommendation of warm bathing; but I am sensible 

 that, after all that has already been said on that subject 

 by ancient and modern writers, by historians and by 

 medical men, what I could add would be of little 

 avail. The subject is, however, so intimately connected 

 with that treated in the preceding Essay, that I may, 

 perhaps, without any impropriety, take the liberty to 

 make a few observations concerning it. 



If a perfectly free circulation of the blood, brought 

 on and kept up for a certain time without any violent 

 muscular exertion, and consequently without any ex- 

 pense of strength, be conducive to health, in that case 

 warm bathing must be wholesome; and, so far from 

 weakening the constitution, must tend very powerfully 

 to strengthen it. 



Among those nations where warm bathing has been 

 most generally practised, and where the effects of it 

 have, of course, been best known, no doubts have ever 



