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 amenity of those places invite 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 best conveniency of lodging, provision, and company, as the baths of Bagneres in France, those of Plombieres on the frontiers of Germany and Lorraine, those of Baden in Switzerland, those of Lucca in Tuscany, and especially those of Della Villa, which I have the most and at various seasons frequented.

Every nation has particular opinions touching their use, and particular rules and methods in using them; and all of them, according to what I have seen, almost with like effect.  Drinking them is not at all received in Germany; the Germans bathe for all diseases, 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.  Here we are ordered to walk to digest it; there we are kept in bed after taking it till it be wrought off, our stomachs and feet having 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, and with these 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 evil lies.  There are infinite other varieties of customs in every country, or rather there is no manner of resemblance to one another.  By this you may see that this little part of physic to which I have only 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 put what they would say 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 aeede vetusta,
               Effertur, quamvis sit Deus atque lapis.”

["Alcon yesterday touched Jove’s statue; he, although marble, suffers the force of the physician:  to-day ordered to be transferred from the old temple, where it stood, it is carried out, although it be a god and a stone.”—­Ausonius, Ep., 74.]

and the other: 

              “Lotus nobiscum est, hilaris coenavit; et idem
               Inventus mane est mortuus Andragoras. 
               Tam subitae mortis causam, Faustine, requiris? 
               In somnis medicum viderat Hermocratem:”