Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: think the Englifh ambaflador is as great a man at Paris as the chancellor of France. I ought to make an apology for troubling you with fuch an unentertaining detail, and confider that the detention of my books muft be a matter of very little confequence to any body, but to Your affectionate humble fervant. LETTER III. Boulogne, Augufl 15, J76j, I Am much obliged to you for your kin4 enquiries after my health, which has been lately in a very declining condition. In confequence of a cold, caught a few days after my arrival in France, I was feized with a violent cough, attended with a fever, and ftitches in my breaft, which tormented me all night long without ceafing. At the fame time I had a great difcharge by expectoration, and fuch a dejection of fpirits as I never felt before. In this fituation, I took a ftep which maymay appear to have been defperate. I knew there was no impofthume in my lungs, and I fuppofed the ftitches were fpafmodical. I was fenfible that all my complaints were originally derived from relaxation. I therefore hired a chaife, and going to the beach, about a league from the town, plunged into the fea, without he- fitation. By this defperate remedy, I got a frefh cold in my head ; but my ftitches and fever vanifhed the very firft day; and by a daily repetition of the bath, I have dimi- nifhed my cough, ftrengthened my body, and recovered my fpirits. I believe I fhould have tried the fame experiment even if there had been an abfcefs in my lungs, though fuck practice would have been contrary to all the rules of medicine: but I am not one of thofe who implicitly believe in all the dogmata of phyfic. I faw one of the guides at Bath, the ftouteft fellow amongft them, who recovered from the lafl ft age of a confump- tion, by going into the king's bat...