and Bath as a Health Resort. 171 



four times a week. The thermal Waters should not be taken 

 within an hour of a meal ; and after drinking the Waters in 

 the Grand Pump Room, a patient should not go into the 

 open air for a quarter of an hour. 



Looking through a number of cases recorded during the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we find that nine or 

 ten weeks are mentioned as an ordinary period for a stay 

 in Bath ; but a cure or a great improvement was often 

 accompKshed in a much shorter time. A common prac- 

 tice was to come for six weeks, even for twelve successive 

 years, if the disease or the disorder seemed to yield. It 

 was urged on reasonable persons that the length of time 

 a complaint has lasted proportionately retards the cure ; and 

 that a second or third visit might do what the first did not. 

 It was shown that a steady continuance in the use of means 

 was necessary to conquer all stubborn and inveterate dis- 

 eases ; and that chronic maladies are the proper province 

 of natural or mineral Waters. Eager people come and go ; 

 they bathe with fierce energy, aud imagine that their baths 

 can hardly be too long or too frequent ; and they forget that 

 by such tempestuous haste new maladies are begotten. 

 Proper credit must be given to a new manner of living, new 

 air, new faces, and new amusements. In the early days 

 of the fame of the Bath Waters invalids came here in the 

 former part of the summer, and went away in the latter part, 

 chiefly because the roads were then in the best condition 

 for travel. Afterwards (150 to 200 years ago) it became 

 the custom to visit Bath for medical purposes in April, to 

 leave during the height of the summer, and to return (if 

 possible) in September. The physicians then in repute 

 recommended the " spring and fall," because those seasons 

 were most free from excess of heat and cold, and therefore 



