In gouty affections, and where the skin is torpid, the water should be drunk as hot as possible—and even in bed, if necessary. Some find it better to drink it luke-warm, and mixed with a little milk. Half an hour after finishing the waters, breakfast, (chocolate, coffee, or egg-milk, or broth with the yolk of an egg,) may be taken. “The less nourishment that is taken between drinking and bathing the better.” Half an hour or an hour should elapse even after the lightest breakfast, before the bath. It is dangerous to bathe when heated or perspiring. “Persons taking a whole bath, should immerse themselves into the water only by slow degrees, up to the neck, having previously sponged the chest and abdomen with the bath water.” If seized with headache or vertigo in the bath, it is too hot, and ought to be left immediately. Baths in which you perspire are too hot, spoil the appetite, weaken the patient, and put him out of humour all day. “All baths, even those of common water—sometimes cause a sensible congestion of blood in the head.” The head should then be sponged with cold water. Great care should be taken to avoid sleep in the bath—or even after a hot bath—but after a tepid bath it may be allowed. In many cases it is very beneficial to use friction, by means of a brush or sponge, whilst in the bath. The duration of the bath is a quarter of an hour to an hour and a half. People should always begin with the short period—and not too high a temperature. Where it is desirable to encourage gentle perspiration after the bath, the patient should go to bed. As all sudden extremes are repugnant to nature, invalids, when travelling towards watering-places, should begin to adopt the regimen and hours which they must follow at the spas. A few tepid baths of plain water are useful preparations, and light cooling diet, should be employed for a week or two before arriving at the spa. The following sketch of the motives, hopes, and prospects which lead invalids to spas—and their routine of life and enjoyments at those places, is drawn by a SPA DOCTOR of twenty years’ standing. It is nearly free from the sins of commission—but not of _omission_. It is penned _en couleur de rose_—and, like the speech of an advocate, it slurs over all features of the case that might seem disadvantageous to the cause of the client. I shall supply some deficiencies at the end. “It is owing, in a great measure, to the enlivening influence which a temporary residence at some watering-place exercises on the mind of the visitor, that the most successful results are obtained there, and which the best endeavours of the regular physician can seldom effect at home.