Yours,
TABITHA BRAMBLE
BATH, April 26.



To Dr LEWIS.

DEAR DICK,

I have done with the waters; therefore your advice comes a day
too late I grant that physic is no mystery of your making. I know
it is a mystery in its own nature; and, like other mysteries,
requires a strong gulp of faith to make it go down -- Two days ago,
I went into the King's Bath, by the advice of our friend
Ch--, in order to clear the strainer of the skin, for the benefit
of a free perspiration; and the first object that saluted my eye,
was a child full of scrophulous ulcers, carried in the arms of
one of the guides, under the very noses of the bathers. I was so
shocked at the sight, that I retired immediately with indignation
and disgust -- Suppose the matter of those ulcers, floating on the
water, comes in contact with my skin, when the pores are all
open, I would ask you what must be the consequence? -- Good
Heaven, the very thought makes my blood run cold! we know not
what sores may be running into the water while we are bathing,
and what sort of matter we may thus imbibe; the king's-evil, the
scurvy, the cancer, and the pox; and, no doubt, the heat will
render the virus the more volatile and penetrating. To purify
myself from all such contamination, I went to the duke of
Kingston's private Bath, and there I was almost suffocated for