Of the exanthemata, the only disease in which bathing has been employed, is the small pox. In Upper Hungary, Fischer has described it as the domestic remedy for this disease; and, in an epidemic small pox of considerable virulence, by imitating this practice, he was very successful. Dr. Stack, in his Thesis published at Leyden, has shown that variolous fevers, threatening a copious eruption, were mitigated by warm bathing, and the disease proceeded mildly and safely. When the eruptions are repelled, also, it has been very useful.

The heat of the bath should be carefully regulated, and should certainly not exceed 100°. The foundation of this practice we shall afterwards explain. See Cutaneous diseases.

In haemorrhages and phlegmasia the use of bathing is equivocal; yet, with caution, it has been employed in the latter successfully.

In amenorrhaea from cold it has been, useful; and such is the popular prejudice in favour of pediluvium, that it is too indiscriminately used. It is chiefly adapted to the strong and robust, where the suppression has been owing to a violent occasional cause. In the pain from stone in the ureters, or the gall ducts, from its relaxing power, it is a valuable remedy.

From its power of determining to the surface it is useful where any acrimony is to be discharged, or any unequal balance of the circulation is to be removed. In the former view we find it employed in cutaneous diseases and syphilis; in the latter, in chronic catarrhs and diarrhaeas. In the first it chiefly assists the effects of mercury, and in the latter only supplies the advantages of a milder climate. In hydrophobia it has been employed, though with no very particular success. The ancient physicians used it in their complicated form, but concluded with immersing the patient into the piscina, the cold bath.

As a stimulus, the warm bath has been found very useful; and in the diseases for which it is most successfully employed the heat must be raised very high, far beyond that used in the experiments described. To this high degree of heat the peculiar virtues of the Bath waters are to be attributed, rather than to their impregnation. They are assisted also by the percussion in pumping on an affected part; a mode of application which greatly adds also to the tonic power of the cold bath.

In cases of hemiplegia there have been many doubts respecting the use of the warm bath. These chiefly arise from the disease being often occasioned by effusion on the brain, which the necessary stimulus might increase; and many instances have been adduced of its producing in such cases a fatal apoplexy. Undoubtedly, where marks of a determination to the head are strong; where the patient has not passed the meridian of life; or where the vessels have been stimulated by a continued excess of wine and spirituous liquors; warm bathing is a precarious remedy. In palsies in general, however, it may perhaps be allowed; and, as we have said, in amaurosis: so we shall find in haemi-' phlegia, that the effusion having once taken place, the disease is continued in consequence of the injury which the nervous system has received from the compression. We may then disregard the cause, except in the younger and more inflammatory constitutions just described. It should, however, be managed with caution: a drain from the head should be established by a perpetual blister, and the bowels freely emptied previous to its employment.

There is little management required in the use of the balneum in chronic rheumatism. It is a disease nearly allied to palsy, as the vessels, from the previous distention, are rendered paralytic, and contract spasmodically on fluids, probably in too large a proportion. The warm bath is particularly useful, and often alone will cure the disease. In that species of it confined to the hip joint, sciatica, bathing and pumping on the part affected, are very valuable remedies.

In the hip joint, also, the relaxation of the ligament often occasions or endangers dislocation. It is the morbus coxarius of De Haen; the arthropuosis of other authors. If it has not yet advanced to a suppuration, the Bath waters have certainly relieved a large proportion of those who have applied for their assistance; nor need we despair of imitating their effects by employing an equal temperature, and pouring it from a height. It would not require any great ingenuity to contrive a hand pump fixed in a reservoir, which is continually filling from cocks conveying boiling and cold water. The size of the aperture, or the number of cocks conveying cold water, might easily regulate the heat. A common garden engine might be readily converted to this purpose.

Contracted limbs are greatly benefited by warm pumping, and gradually moving the limb during the relaxation obtained. Dr. Blegborough, in these local diseases, has contrived a receptacle for the part from which the air is exhausted while the vapour is applied; but this seems unnecessary. If the vapour is confined, all the benefit will be obtained without previous exhaustion; or, in reality, the vapour itself, by rarefying the air, will exhaust the vessel sufficiently.

The warm bath, if the temperature is too high, will certainly be injurious to the plethoric, or those disposed to any accumulations in particular parts, unless they are such as the bath may dissipate. In the weak, the relaxed, and the irritable, it is hurtful; and hence the indiscriminate use of pediluvium in chlorosis and ame-norrhcea has been highly injurious. In both views it is injurious in hectic fevers, and in scirrhosites of the liver. Hoffman thinks it hurtful in asthma; and it will be seemingly so from its effect on the respiration. Dr. Falconer differs from him in this respect; and, on trial, in convulsive asthma, it has not seemed particularly injurious, though so much benefit was not derived from it as to induce a repetition. Those subject to haemorrhage should be cautious in its use; and, in general, danger may attend its employment after any agitation of mind or body, which greatly quickens the circulation. The Romans used it in the time of the emperors after a full meal: the practice is reprobated by Juvenal and Horace, rather as a luxurious than a dangerous indulgence.