The frequency of taking the bath must, like other points of balneal economy, be regulated by the purpose sought to be attained. Where maintenance of existing health is the object, once or twice a week may be sufficient. I can conceive the bath to be made a part of the process known as "dressing for dinner," and then it may be taken as often as we dine. Medically, its frequency of repetition must be left to the medical man; and in every case the amount of effect produced must regulate its repetition. "Little and often," I would suggest as a maxim applicable to the bath as to some others of the enjoyments of life; and much to be preferred to the opposite position, "seldom and much." The Romans took the bath daily; the Mussulmans take it once a week. To the natives of a country possessing a damp, cold, and variable climate, like that of Britain, wherein catarrhs are the scourge of the population (such catarrhs being attributable in most cases to checked perspiration and extreme cooling of the surface of the body), the apprehension of cold and catarrh from the use of the bath is a natural expectation. But the practice of the bath proves such an apprehension to be unfounded, and our reason helps us to see that there is in reality no such danger. The ordinary process of taking a cold is as follows: we are warmed by exercise, perhaps somewhat exhausted at the same time; the skin is bedewed with perspiration; the perspired fluid evaporates, producing chill; and the chill occasions a shock to the nervous system and to the whole economy, that results in the reaction known as "_a cold_." But if we contrast these conditions with those of the bath, we find that there is no parallel between them. In the bath we perspire; in a warm and genial temperature we abstract from the system all the watery fluid that Nature has, at the time, to spare; we rinse off the perspiration with warm water; we shut up the pores by means of cold water; we warm the body anew; we then rest tranquilly until every particle of moisture is removed from the skin; and when we are thoroughly dry, we put on dry and warm clothes. In this process it is clear that there is not even a chink by which a cold can approach us. If we hear of people taking cold after the bath, we may be assured that they have broken its laws somehow or somewhere. The bath, properly conducted,--and improperly conducted it is not the bath--THE BATH CANNOT GIVE COLD.