Sir E. B. Lytton says of the pack:—­

Of all the curatives adopted by hydropathists, it is unquestionably the safest—­the one that can be applied without danger to the greatest variety of cases; and which, I do not hesitate to aver, can rarely, if ever, be misapplied in any case where the pulse is hard and high, and the skin dry and burning.  Its theory is that of warmth and moisture, those friendliest agents to inflammatory disorders.

I have been told, or have read (says Mr. Lane), put a man into the wet sheet who had contemplated suicide, and it would turn him from his purpose.  At least I will say, let me get hold of a man who has a pet enmity, who cherishes a vindictive feeling, and let me introduce him to the soothing process.  I believe that his bad passion would not linger in its old quarters three days, and that after a week his leading desire would be to hold out the hand to his late enemy.

Of the sensation in the pack, Sir E. B. Lytton tells us:—­

The momentary chill is promptly succeeded by a gradual and vivifying warmth, perfectly free from the irritation of dry heat; a delicious sense of ease is usually followed by a sleep more agreeable than anodynes ever produced.  It seems a positive cruelty to be relieved from this magic girdle, in which pain is lulled, and fever cooled, and watchfulness lapped in slumber.

The hydropathic breakfast at Sudbrook being over, at nine o’clock we had a foot-bath.  This is a very simple matter.  The feet are placed in a tub of cold water, and rubbed for four or five minutes by the bath-man.  The philosophy of this bath is thus explained:—­

The soles of the feet and the palms of the hands are extremely sensitive, having abundance of nerves, as we find if we tickle them.  If the feet are put often into hot water, they will become habitually cold, and make one more or less delicate and nervous.  On the other hand, by rubbing the feet often in cold water, they will become permanently warm.  A cold foot-bath will stop a violent fit of hysterics.  Cold feet show defective circulation.

At half-past ten in the forenoon we were subjected to by far the most trying agent in the water system—­the often-mentioned douche.  No patient is allowed to have the douche till he has been acclimated by at least a fortnight’s treatment.  Our readers will understand that from this hour onward we are describing not our first Sudbrook day, but a representative day, such as our days were when we had got into the full play of the system.  The douche consists of a stream of water, as thick as one’s arm, falling from a height of twenty-four feet.  A pipe, narrowing to the end, conducts the stream for the first six feet of its fall, and gives it a somewhat slanting direction.  The water falls, we need hardly say, with a tremendous rush, and is beaten to foam on the open wooden floor.  There were two douches at Sudbrook:  one, of a somewhat milder nature, being