_, which is exceedingly common in Japan, and
is believed to be caused by unvarying food and want of exercise. It
is very obstinate, but is often cured in two or three years with
chloride of iron, albumen, change of diet from the common Japanese
to the European, with red wine, milk, bread, vegetables, &c. This
disease begins with a swelling in the legs, then the skin becomes
insensible, first on the legs, next on the stomach, the face, and
the wrists. Then the swelling falls, fever comes on, and death takes
place. There are besides, certain wells for curing rheumatism, for
which from two to three years are required; for eye-diseases and for
headache, the latter playing an important part among the illnesses
that are cured at Kusatsu. It principally attacks women between
twenty and thirty years of age. One of the Kusatsu wells acts very
beneficially in this case. Its water is conducted to a special
bathing-shed open to the street, intended exclusively for the men
and women who suffer from this disease.

Many of the baths at Kusatsu are taken so hot that special
precautions must be adopted before one steps down into the water.
These consist in winding cotton cloths round those parts of the body
which are most sensitive, and in causing the body to perspire
strongly before the bath is taken, which is done by the bathers with
cries and shouts and with certain movements stirring the water in
the basin with large heavy boards. They then all step down into the
bath and up again simultaneously at a sign given by the physician
sitting at the back of the bathing shed. Without this arrangement it
would perhaps be difficult to get the patients to go into the bath,
for agreeable it could not be, to judge from the grave faces of the
bathers and the fire-red colour of their bodies when they come out.

The baths are under open sheds. Men and women all bathe in common,
and in presence of both male and female spectators. They make their
remarks without reserve on the diseases of the patients, even if
they are of that sort about which one would not speak willingly even
to his physician. Often the bath-basin is not fenced off in any way,
except that it is protected from rain and sunshine by a roof resting
on four posts. In such cases the bathers dress and undress in the
street.

[Illustration: BATH AT KUSATSU. ]

In consequence of the situation of Kusatsu at a height of 1050
metres above the sea, the winter there is very cold and windy.