There are here four
baths, with a dressing-room to each, and also an elegant pump-room.
Lest seven wells and fifty baths should not be sufficient to
accommodate the visitors at Leamington, preparations are making for
the eighth well, near Ranelagh gardens, where the baths are intended
to be more splendid than any of the former, and also the pump-room,
under the title of the Spa.
From the hour of seven to nine in the morning is the accustomed time
to promenade and drink the water, though numbers defer it till after
breakfast, and bathe in the evening before they retire to rest.
When the warm baths are not in use, they are invariably kept and shewn
empty, being filled in presence of the visitor, or during the time he
is preparing to use them; the process of filling not requiring more
than three minutes. The cold baths are in general emptied and of
course filled every day, or more frequently if required; but of late
they are not much resorted to, the warm or tepid bath being preferred.
The prevailing opinion among medical men is, that the latter is by far
the more efficacious in most disorders, and more conducive to health
than the former; because, where a person continues immersed in saline
water for some time, it enters into the pores of the skin, and by that
means is more likely to be of benefit in cutaneous or other disorders
for which it is usually recommended.
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