se or the medicine or both had greatly debilitated me. I tried to
attend school, but was unable till January or February; nor even then
was I at all vigorous. I was able in the spring to work moderately; but
it was almost a whole year before I occupied the same ground,
physically, as before. Indeed, I have very many doubts whether I ever
attained to the measure of strength to which I might have attained had
it not been for the expenditure of vital power in a long contest with
Lee's pills and disease.

One lesson I learned, during my long sickness, in moral philosophy. I
allude to the power of associated habits. Thus I was accustomed to take
my pills daily for a long time, in combination with the pulp of a
certain favorite apple. By degrees this apple, before so congenial to my
taste, became so exceedingly disgusting to me that I could hardly come
in sight of it, or even of the tree on which it grew, without nausea;
and this dislike continued for years. By the aid of a strong will,
however, I at length overcame it, and the apple is now as agreeable to
my taste, for any thing I know, as it ever was.

CHAPTER VI.

THE COLD SHOWER-BATH.

My long experience of ill health, and of dosing and drugging, had led me
to reflect not a little on the causes of disease, as well as on the
nature of medicinal agents; and I had really made considerable progress,
unawares, in what I now regard as the most important part of a medical
education. In short, I had gained something, even by the loss of so
precious commodity as health. So just is the oft-repeated saying, "It is
an ill wind that blows nobody any good."

It was about this time that I began to reflect on bathing. What gave me
the first particular impulses in this direction I do not now recollect,
unless it was the perusal of the writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr.
John G. Coffin. My attention had been particularly turned to cold shower
bathing. I had become more than half convinced of its happy adaptation
to my own constitution and to my diseased tendencies, both hereditary
and acquired.

But what could I do? There were in those times no fleeting shower-baths
to be had; nor indeed, so far as I knew, any other apparatus for the
purpose; and had there been, I was not worth a dollar in the world to
buy it with; and I was hardly willing to ask for money, for such
purposes of my father.

I will tell you, very briefly, what I did. My father had several clean
and at that