“The body has come forth shining like alabaster, fragrant as the cistus, sleek as satin, and soft as velvet. The touch of your own skin is electric. Buffon has a wonderful description of Adam’s surprise and delight at his first touch of himself. It is the description of the human sense when the body is brought back to its purity. The body thus renewed, the spirit wanders abroad, and, reviewing its tenement, rejoices to find it clean and tranquil. There is an intoxication, or dream, that lifts you out of the flesh, and yet a sense of life and consciousness that spreads through every member. Each breastful of air seems to pass, not to the heart but to the brain, and to quench, not the pulsation of the one but the fancies of the other. That exaltation which requires the slumber of the senses—that vividness of sense that drowns the visions of the spirit—are simultaneously engaged in calm and unspeakable luxury; you condense the pleasures of many scenes, and enjoy in an hour the existence of years. But this, too, will pass. The visions fade, the speed of the blood thickens, the breath of the pores is checked, the crispness of the skin returns, the fountains of strength are opened—you seek again the world and its toils, and those who experience these effects and vicissitudes for the first time exclaim, ‘I feel as if I could leap over the moon.’ Paying your pence according to the tariff of your deserts, you walk forth a king.” Having now described the bath, as we hope, in a form intelligible to our readers, we would make some observations on its physical and moral effects: and, first, as to its physical. For cleansing the blood from all impurities there is nothing equal to its effects. Sarsaparilla may hide its diminished head. By the principle of endosmosis and exosmosis, a principle well known to chemists, the serum containing all the morbid portions of the blood, on passing off in perspiration, is replaced by water, and the fountains of life are cleansed. This benefit will be appreciated when it is recollected how many of “the ills that flesh is heir to” are derived from a diseased and morbid condition of the blood. As an instance of the purifying effect of the Turkish bath we may mention, that where mercury exists in the system, the gold ring of the bather has been turned to the colour of silver, owing to the mercury amalgamating with it on its exuding from the skin. Mr. Urquhart observes:—