of which we had heard so much. We shuddered with
terror. William saw our trepidation, and said,
benevolently, ’Yew vill soon like him mosh.’
He spread out the wet sheet upon the thick blanket,
and told us to strip and lie down upon it. Oh!
it was cold as ice! William speedily wrapped
it around us. Awfully comfortless was the first
sensation. We tried to touch the cold damp thing
at as few points as possible. It would not do.
William relentlessly drew the blanket tight round
us; every inch of our superficies felt the chill of
the sheet. Then he placed above us a feather bed,
cut out to fit about the head, and stretched no end
of blankets over all. ‘How long are we
to be here?’ was our inquiry. ‘Fifty
minutes,’ said William, and disappeared.
So there we were, packed in the wet sheet, stretched
on our back, our hands pinioned by our sides, as incapable
of moving as an Egyptian mummy in its swathes.
’What on earth shall we do,’ we remember
thinking, ‘if a fire breaks out?’ Had
a robber entered and walked off with our watch and
money, we must have lain and looked at him, for we
could not move a finger. By the time we had thought
all this, the chilly, comfortless feeling was gone;
in ten minutes or less, a sensation of delicious languor
stole over us: in a little longer we were fast
asleep. We have had many a pack since, and we
may say that the feeling is most agreeable when one
keeps awake; body and mind are soothed into an indescribable
tranquillity; the sensation is one of calm, solid
enjoyment. In fifty minutes William returned.
He removed the blankets and bed which covered us,
but left us enveloped in the sheet and coarse blanket.
By this time the patient is generally in a profuse
perspiration. William turned us round, and made
us slip out of bed upon our feet; then slightly loosing
the lower part of our cerements so that we could walk
with difficulty, he took us by the shoulders and guided
our unsteady steps out of our chamber, along a little
passage, into an apartment containing a plunge bath.
The bath was about twelve feet square; its floor and
sides covered with white encaustic tiles; the water,
clear as crystal against that light background, was
five feet deep. In a trice we were denuded of
our remaining apparel, and desired to plunge into
the bath, head first. The whole thing was done
in less time than it has taken to describe it:
no caloric had escaped: we were steaming like
a coach horse that has done its ten miles within the
hour on a summer-day; and it certainly struck us that
the Water Cure had some rather violent measures in
its repertory. We went a step or two down the
ladder, and then plunged in overhead. ‘One
plunge more and out,’ exclaimed the faithful
William; and we obeyed. We were so thoroughly
heated beforehand, that we never felt the bath to
be cold. On coming out, a coarse linen sheet
was thrown over us, large enough to have covered half-a-dozen
men, and the bath-man rubbed us, ourselves aiding
in the operation, till we were all in a glow of warmth.