e immersed, and without a sufficient
quantity of moisture to prevent rigidity: nothing seems so well
adapted to both these purposes as the use of the warm bath; and
especially in those, who become thin or emaciated with age, and who
have a hard and dry skin, with hardness of the coat of the arteries;
which feels under the finger like a cord; the patient should sit in
warm water for half an hour every day, or alternate days, or twice a
week; the heat should be about ninety-eight degrees on Fahrenheit's
scale, or of such a warmth, as may be most agreeable to his sensation;
but on leaving the bath he should always be kept so cool, whether he
goes into bed, or continues up, as not sensibly to perspire.

There is a popular prejudice, that the warm bath relaxes people, and
that the cold bath braces them; which are mechanical terms belonging
to drums and fiddle-strings, but not applicable except metaphorically
to animal bodies, and then commonly mean weakness and strength: during
the continuance in the bath the patient does not lose weight, unless
he goes in after a full meal, but generally weighs heavier as the
absorption is greater than the perspiration; but if he suffers himself
to sweat on his leaving the bath, he will undoubtedly be weakened by
the increased action of the system, and its exhaustion: the same
occurs to those who are heated by exercise, or by wine, or spice, but
not during their continuance in the warm bath: whence we may conclude,
that the warm bath is the most harmless of all those stimuli, which
are greater than our natural habits have accustomed us to; and that it
particularly counteracts the approach of old age in emaciated people
with dry skins.

It may be here observed in favour of bathing, that some fish are
believed to continue to a great age, and continually to enlarge in
size, as they advance in life; and that long after their state of
puberty. I have seen perch full of spawn, which were less than two
inches long; and it is known, that they will grow to six or eight
times that size; it is said, that the whales, which have been caught
of late years, are much less in size than those, which were caught,
when first the whale-fishery was established; as the large ones, which
were supposed to have been some hundred years old, are believed to be
already destroyed.

All cold-blooded amphibious animals more slowly waste their sensorial
power; as they are accustomed to less stimulus from their respiring