"The bath is a preventative of disease, by hardening the individual
against the effects of variations and vicissitudes of temperature, by
giving him power to resist miasmatic and zymotic affections, and by
strengthening his system against scrofula, consumption, gout,
rheumatism; diseases of the digestive organs, cutaneous system, muscular
system, including the heart; nervous system including the brain; and
reproductive system."
"The bath," he continues, "has the property of hardening and fortifying
the skin, so as to render it almost insusceptible to the influence of
the cold. A Doctor of Divinity told me, that during the winter time he
was scarcely ever free from cold, often so severe as to lay him up for
several weeks, and that he also suffered from attacks of neuralgia; but
that since he had adopted the use of the bath twice a week, all
disposition to colds and neuralgia had ceased; and for the first time in
sixteen years, he had passed the winter without a cold."