-i68 The Bath Thermal Waters , 



all the saline constituents exist in a comparatively small 

 proportion : " so little soul," complained some, " in so large 

 a body." But the bulk of fluid is Nature's way of offering 

 a medicine. Interrogate Nature, and she says : " I give a 

 medicine which is hot and diluted " ; that is to say, the heat 

 and the dilution are the conditions on which the medicine 

 is supplied. 



Drinking the Waters was considered to be a prepara- 

 tion for bathing. The old notion was that drinking and 

 bathing should never go on at the same time ; but the 

 physicians of the last century were unanimous that each 

 process helped the other, and both were commonly ordered 

 together. During the seventeenth century an enormous 

 quantity of the water was drunk; many took ten pints in 

 the day, and unlimited measure was now and then given. 

 Dr. Peirce's patients often drank three pints on the morning 

 after arrival, and afterwards regularly two quarts per diem, 

 intermitting a day sometimes. An alderman of the city 

 drank a quart of thermal water every day for nineteen 

 months, and was restored to " perfect ease and health." 

 " How miserable a man had J been," said the dignitary, 

 " had I lived anywhere but in Bath." But some physicians 

 were much more temperate in their prescriptions, and de- 

 sired convalescents to drink only so much as " shall not be 

 grievous to the stomach." At the end of the last century 

 the rule was (according to Warner) to divide the daily dose 

 of the water into three portions, two of which were taken 

 before breakfast, allowing the space of half-an-hour between 

 each, and one at noon. If the old methods of drinking 

 the thermal Waters were too extravagant, our present practice 

 is too restricted. The timid dole now commonly prescribed 

 reads like a quiet censure T)n the bold medical ways of 



