gently guided by their own appetite and the advice of nature, and commit themselves to the common fortune.

baths.

I have seen, in my travels, almost all the famous baths of Christendom, and for some years past have The usefulness of begun to make use of them myself, for I look upon bathing as generally wholesome, and believe that we suffer no little inconveniences in our health, by having left off the custom that was generally observed in former times, almost by all nations, and is yet in many, of bathing every day; and I cannot imagine but that we are much the worse by having our limbs crusted and our pores stopped with dirt. And as to the drinking of them, fortune has, in the first place, rendered them not at all unacceptable to my taste; and, secondly, they are natural and simple, which at least carry no danger with them, though they do us no good; of which, the infinite crowd of people of all sorts of complexions that repair thither, I take to be a sufficient guaranty; and although I have not there observed any extraordinary and miraculous effects; but, on the contrary, having more narrowly than ordinary inquired into it, I have found all the reports of such operations that have been spread abroad in those places, illgrounded and false, and those that believe them (as people are willing to be gulled in what they desire) deceived in them; yet I have seldom known any that have been made worse by those waters, and a man cannot honestly deny but that they beget a better appetite, help digestion, and do in some sort revive us, if we do not go too late, and in too weak a condition, which I would dissuade every one from doing; they have not the virtue to raise men from desperate and inveterate diseases, but they may help some light indisposition or prevent some threatening alteration. He who does not bring along with him so much cheerfulness as to enjoy the pleasure of the company he will there meet, and of the walks and exercises to which the beauty of the places in which baths for the most part are situated invites us, will doubtless lose the best and surest part of their effect. For this

reason I have hitherto chosen to go to those of the most pleasant situation, where there was the most convenience of lodging, provision, and company; as the baths of Banieres in France; those of Plombieres in the frontiers of Germany and Lorrain; those of Baden in Switzerland; those of Lucca in Tuscany; and especially those of Della Villa, which I have the most, and at several seasons, frequented.

use of baths.

Every nation has particular opinions touching their use, and several rules and methods in using them, Every nation makes a particular and all of them, according to what I have seen, almost of like effect. Drinking them is not at all received in Germany; for all diseases they bathe only, and will lie dabbling in the water almost from sun to sun. In Italy, where they drink nine days, they bathe at least thirty, and commonly drink the water mixed with some other drugs, to make it work the better; we are here ordered to walk to digest it; there they are kept in bed after taking it till it be wrought off, their stomachs and feet have continually hot cloths applied to them all the while; and as the Germans have a particular practice, generally to use cupping and scarification in the bath, so the Italians have their doccie, which are certain little streams of this hot water brought through pipes, with which they bathe an hour in the morning and as much in the afternoon, for a month together, either the head, stomach, or any other part where the malady lies. There are infinite other varieties of customs in every country, or rather there is hardly any manner of resemblance to one another. By which you may see that this part of physic, to which alone I have submitted, though the least depending upon art of all others, has yet a great share of the confusion and uncertainty everywhere else manifest in the profession. The poets say whatever they please with greater emphasis and grace; witness these two epigrams:

Alcon hesterno signum Jovis attigit: ille
Quamvis marmoreus, vim patitur medici.

Ecce hodie, jussus transferri ex æde vetusta,
Effertur, quamvis sit deus atque lapis.1
"Alcon 2 did yesterday Jove's statue touch,
Which, although marble, suffer'd by 't so much
That now to-day 'tis order'd that it shou'd
Be taken from th' old temple where it stood;
Which, as was need, without delay was done,
Although he was a god, and made of stone."

And the other,—

66

Lotus nobiscum est, hilaris cænavit; et idem
Inventus mane est mortuus Andragoras.
Tam subitæ mortis causam, Faustine, requiris?
In somnis medicum viderat Hermocratem.3

Andragoras bath'd, supp'd, and went well to bed
Last night, but in the morning was found dead;
Would'st know, Faustinus, what was his disease?
He dreaming saw the quack, Hermocrates.

Upon which I will relate two stories :

The Baron of Caupene in Chalosse and I have betwixt us the advowson of a benefice of great extent, at Two pleasant stothe foot of our mountains, called Lahontan. It practice of lawyers ries against the is with the inhabitants of this nook as 'tis said and physicians. of those of the vale of Angrougne; they lived a life apart, their fashions, clothes, and manners distinct from other people; were ruled and governed by certain particular laws and customs received from father to son, to which they submitted, without other constraint than the reverence to custom. This little state had continued from all antiquity in so happy a condition that no neighbouring judge was ever put to the trouble of inquiring into their doings, no advocate ever retained to give them counsel, nor stranger ever called in to compose their differences, nor was ever any of them seen to beg. They avoided all alliances and traffic with the other world, that they might not corrupt the purity of their own government; till, as they say, one of them, in the memory of their fathers, having a mind spurred on with noble ambition, contrived, in order to bring his name into credit and reputation,

1 Ausonius, Epig. lxxiv. 2 A celebrated physician.

3 Martial, vi. 53.

to make one of his sons something more than ordinary; and having put him to learn to write, made him at last a village notary. This fellow, being thus puffed up, began to disdain. their ancient customs, and to put into the people's ears the pomp of the other parts of the nation; the first prank he played was to advise a friend of his, whom somebody had offended by sawing off the horns of one of his goats, to make his complaint to the king's judges thereabout; and so he went on in this practice, till he spoiled all. In the tail of this corruption, they say, there happened another, and of worse consequence, by means of a physician, who took it into his head to marry one of their daughters, and to live amongst them. This man first of all began to teach them the name of fevers, rheums, and imposthumes, the seat of the heart, liver, and intestines, a science till then utterly unknown to them; and instead of garlic, with which they were wont to cure all manner of diseases, how painful or extreme soever, he taught them, though it were but for a cough, or any little cold, to take strange mixtures, and began to make a trade not only of their healths, but of their lives. They swear that till then they never perceived the evening air to be offensive to the head, that to drink when they were hot was hurtful, or that the winds of autumn were more unwholesome than those of the spring; that since this use of physic they find themselves oppressed with a legion of unaccustomed diseases, and that they perceive a general decay in their wonted vigour, and their lives cut shorter by the half. This is the first of my stories.

The other is, that before I was afflicted with the stone, hearing that the blood of a he-goat was with many in very great esteem, and looked upon as a celestial manna, rained down upon these latter ages for the good and preservation of the lives of men, and having heard it spoken of by men of understanding for an admirable drug, and of infallible operation; I, who have ever thought myself subject to all the accidents that can befall other men, had a mind, in

my perfect health, to furnish myself with this admirable medicine, and therefore gave order to have a goat fed at home, according to the receipt; for he must be taken in the hottest month of all summer, and must only have aperitive herbs given to eat, and white wine to drink. I came home by chance the very day he was to be killed; and one came and told me that the cook had found two or three great balls in his paunch, that rattled against one another amongst what he had eaten; I was curious to have all his entrails brought before me, where, having caused the skin that inclosed them to be cut, there tumbled out three great lumps, as light as sponges, so that they appeared to be hollow; but as to the rest, hard and firm without, spotted and mixed all over with various colours; one was perfectly round, and of the bigness of an ordinary bowl; and the other two something less, of an imperfect roundness, as seeming not to be arrived at their full growth. I find, by inquiry of people accustomed to open these animals, that it is a rare and unusual accident. 'Tis likely these are stones of the same nature with ours; and if so, it must needs be a very vain hope in those who have the stone, to extract their cure from the blood of a beast who was himself to die of the same disease. For to say that the blood does not participate of this contagion, and does not alter its wonted virtue, it is rather to be believed that nothing is engendered in a body but by the conspiracy and communion of all the parts; the whole mass works together, though one part contributes more than another, according to the diversity of operations; wherefore it is very likely that there was some petrifying quality in all the parts of this goat. It was not so much for fear of the future, and for fear of myself, that I was curious of this experiment, but because it falls out in mine, as it does in many other families, that the women store up such little trumpery drugs for the service of the people, using the same receipt in fifty several diseases, such a receipt as they will not take themselves, and yet triumph in their successes.