He Said, If He Must Die, The
Sooner The Better, As He Had Nothing Left For His Subsistence.
Instead of immediate death, he found instant case, and continued
mending every day, till his health was entirely re-established.
I
myself drank the waters of Bath, and bathed, in diametrical
opposition to the opinion of some physicians there settled, and
found myself better every day, notwithstanding their unfavourable
prognostic. If I had been of the rigid fibre, full of blood,
subject to inflammation, I should have followed a different
course. Our acquaintance, doctor C - , while he actually spit
up matter, and rode out every day for his life, led his horse
to water, at the pond in Hyde-Park, one cold frosty morning,
and the beast, which happened to be of a hot constitution,
plunged himself and his master over head and ears in the water.
The poor doctor hastened home, half dead with fear, and
was put to bed in the apprehension of a new imposthume; instead
of which, he found himself exceedingly recruited in his spirits,
and his appetite much mended. I advised him to take the
hint, and go into the cold bath every morning; but he did not
chuse to run any risque. How cold water comes to be such a
bugbear, I know not: if I am not mistaken, Hippocrates recommends
immersion in cold water for the gout; and Celsus expressly says,
in omni tussi utilis est natatio: in every cough swimming is of
service.
I have conversed with a physician of this place, a sensible man,
who assured me he was reduced to meer skin and bone by a cough
and hectic fever, when he ordered a bath to be made in his own
house, and dipped himself in cold water every morning.
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