In the middle ages there was a perfect horror of the Sea. They libelled the great Sea, they called that fertile mother "the kingdom of the prince of the powers of air"--the very name which was given to Satan. The nobility of the seventeenth century would by no means consent to have its palaces near the huts of the rude seamen. The frowning castle, with its ugly and formal garden, was almost always built, as far as possible from the sea, on some place destitute of sun and air, but marvellously rich in fog and miasmata. In England it was just the same. If the manor house was on a hill, the advantage of the situation was sedulously provided against by a forest of tall trees, and quite as often, instead of being on the hill, it was in the pestilent marsh below. At the present day, England, wiser than of old, builds by the sea side, rejoices in sea baths even in winter, and is rewarded by strong health. The people of the sea coasts better knew, even in earlier times, the life-giving power of the sea. Its purifying power first struck them; they observed its power in curing scrofula of its disgusting sores, and they well knew the power of its bitterness in killing the parasite worms which, otherwise, would kill the child. They ate the Sea weed and the _Halcyonia_, well knowing that the iodine that they contain contracts and makes firm the flesh. Russell, who heard and noted these popular recipes, was thus enabled to answer the question of the Duke of Newcastle, and did so in his excellent book, published in 1750, on the use of Sea water in cases of glandular wasting. There is a great force in his sentence--"The great want is not how to cure, but how to repair, _to create_." He proposed a miracle, but a quite possible one; to make new flesh, new tissues. And he proposed to do that chiefly with the child, who, though born of polluted parents, might yet be re-made. It was at the same time that Bakewell, the Leicestershire farmer, _created_ meat. Up to that time horned cattle were chiefly valued for their milk, from his day forth they are made to yield a more generous food. The poor milk diet, in fact, had to be abandoned by men who are compelled to be so active, so laborious, so untiring. Russell's little book, in 1750, created Sea bathing; it is not too much to say he created it, for it really was he who made it in vogue. This whole grand theory may be summed up in a very few words: "It is necessary to drink sea-water, to bathe in sea-water, and to eat sea-weed; clothe your children as lightly as possible, and let them have plenty of air. The Ocean breeze, and the Ocean water; there you have the sure cure."