An Objectionable Process
GENERAL D---- was more distinguished for gallantry in the field than for
the care he lavished upon his person. Complaining, on a certain
occasion, to the late Chief-Justice Bushe, of Ireland, of the sufferings
he endured from rheumatism, that learned and humorous judge undertook to
prescribe a remedy. You must desire your servant, he said to the
general, to place every morning by your bedside a tub three-parts
filled with warm water. You will then get into the tub, and having
previously provided yourself with a pound of yellow soap, you must rub
your whole body with it, immersing yourself occasionally in the water,
and at the end of a quarter of an hour, the process concludes by wiping
yourself dry with towels, and scrubbing your person with a
flesh-brush.--Why, said the general, after reflecting for a minute or
two, this seems to be neither more nor less than washing one's
self.--Well, I must confess, rejoined the judge, it is open to that
objection.