Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/97

Rh grievous offense; and no man could be allowed to swim on Sunday. It was, in fact, doubtful whether swimming was lawful for a Christian at any time, even on week days, and it was certain that God had on one occasion shown his disproval by taking away the life of a boy while he was indulging in that carnal practice." ("History of Civilization," Vol. II., p. 312.)

"As bathing was a heathenish custom, all public baths were to be destroyed" (by order of the Inquisition) "and even all larger baths in private houses." (Ibid., Vol. II., p. 44.)

That millennium of insanity left its traces in the still far-spread mistrust of our natural instincts, and not before the middle of the eighteenth century a revival of common sense led to the re-establishment of free public baths in several cities of Holland and Southern Europe. Watering-places became fashionable, but the choice of the public favored warm springs, till Squire Priessnitz, a self-educated farmer of Graefenberg, Silesia, called attention to the remedial efficacy of cold-water prescriptions. In his private sanitarium—a mere annex, at first, of a homely farmhouse—he used shower-baths, sponge-baths, sitz-baths, and internal doses of