THE SWIMMING BATHS OF LONDON. BY R. E. DUDGEON, M.D. LONDON: HENRY TURNER AND CO., 77, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1870. _Price Sixpence._ PRINTED BY J. E. ADLARD, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE. THE SWIMMING BATHS OF LONDON. Swimming is an exercise at once healthful, pleasant, and useful. The full hygienic effects of swimming can only be obtained when it is practised in the open air, and in unpolluted water of a natural temperature. In a close, more or less imperfectly ventilated room, and in water artificially heated, from which, consequently, the air has been partially expelled, swimming, while still retaining its characters of pleasantness and utility, ceases to be a hygienic agent of any considerable power. Every town which aspires to be considered at all perfect in its sanitary arrangements should possess ample swimming baths of pure water in the open air. The seaside towns of this seagirt land are provided by nature with a most exquisite description of swimming bath in the ever-changing, ever-fresh sea—ever-fresh, that is, when not polluted by the drainage of the town, as often happens. But our inland towns are not so well off, and unless in the neighbourhood of a lake or a river, they must construct artificial baths or do without them. Even when they have a lake or a river they too often allow it to be so polluted by sewage as to render it unfit for bathing purposes; and when they have neither lake nor river, they too often neglect to provide artificial substitutes, thus depriving themselves of a powerful hygienic agent, a pleasant recreation, and a useful accomplishment.