Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/229

219 NEW MODE OF BATHING.

EXTRACTS OF LETTERS TO M. DUBOURG.

London, July 28, 1763. GREATLY approve the epithet which you give, in your letter of the 8th of June, to the new method of treating the fmall pox, which you call the tonic or bracing method: I will take occaſion, from it, to mention a practice to which I have accuſtomed myſelf. You know the cold bath has long been in vogue here as a tonic but the ſhock of the cold water has always appeared to me, generally ſpeaking, as too violent, and I have found it much more agreeable to my conſtitution to bathe in another element, I mean cold air. With this view I riſe early almoſt every morning, and ſit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the ſeaſon, either reading or writing. This practice is not in the leaſt painful, but, on the contrary, agreeable; and if I return to bed afterwards, before I dreſs myſelf, as ſometimes happens, I make a ſupplement to my night's reſt of one or two hours of the moſt pleaſing ſleep that can be imagined. I find no ill conſequences whatever reſulting from it, and that at leaſt it does not injure my health, if it does not in fact contribute much to its preſervation.—I ſhall therefore call it for the future a bracing or tonic bath.