One may stand in silent, worshipping wonder before the sight; another may be impelled to imitate and show to his fellow-man what in that holy moment he has seen.

But both enjoy the spectacle of human beauty with full consciousness and enlightened purity of thought." It was not, however, so much on these more spiritual sides, but on the side of hygiene, that the nineteenth century furnished its chief practical contribution to the new attitude towards nakedness.
Lord Monboddo, the Scotch judge, who was a pioneer in regard to many modern ideas, had already in the eighteenth century realized the hygienic value of "air-baths," and he invented that now familiar name.

"Lord Monboddo," says Boswell, in 1777 (_Life of Johnson_, edited by Hill, vol.iii, p.

168) "told me that he awaked every morning at four, and then for his health got up and walked in his room naked, with the window open, which he called taking _an air-bath_." It is said also, I know not on what authority, that he made his beautiful daughters take an air-bath naked on the terrace every morning.

Another distinguished man of the same century, Benjamin Franklin, used sometimes to work naked in his study on hygienic grounds, and, it is recorded, once affrighted a servant-girl by opening the door in an absent-minded moment, thus unattired.
Rikli seems to have been the apostle of air-baths and sun-baths regarded as a systematic method.