Of the Salubrity of Warm Bathing. 593 



bathing, or of its usefulness as a remedy for certain 

 diseases. 



But to return from these speculations to more 

 interesting details, — to the results of actual experi- 

 ments. During the thirty-five days that I continued 

 to make daily use of a warm bath, I made a number 

 of experiments on myself, in order fully to satisfy my 

 own mind on several important points respecting 

 which I still had doubts remaining. Some of those 

 experiments were certainly too hazardous to be recon- 

 ciled to sober good sense, and to that prudent atten- 

 tion to the preservation of health which every wise 

 man would be ashamed of neglecting. But though I 

 may be blamable for my temerity, and may even ex- 

 pose myself to ridicule by making a discovery of my 

 rashness, yet I am so deeply impressed with the im- 

 portance of the results of some of my experiments that 

 I cannot refrain from laying them before the public. 



Having long entertained an opinion that the most 

 effectual means that can be used to prepare the body 

 to support, without inconvenience and without injury, 

 those occasional exposures to cold to which every 

 person is liable who inhabits a cold country, is, by a 

 proper application of warmth and without the fatigue 

 of violent muscular exertion, to bring on, and keep 

 up for a certain time, at certain intervals, such a full, 

 strong, and free circulation and perspiration as shall 

 effectually remove from time to time all those gradual 

 contractions and obstructions which chilling cold nat- 

 urally produces, and give a new impulse to those ac- 

 tions in which life, health, and strength consist; I 

 imagined that, if this opinion was well founded, the use 

 of the warm bath, instead of rendering my habit more 



VOL. IV. 38 



