Benjamin Cutter, William R. Cutter, History of the town of Arlington, Massachusetts, ormerly the second precinct in Cambridge, or District of Menotomy, afterward the town of West Cambridge. 1635-1879 with a genealogical register of the inhabitants of the precinct.

1 Mr. Russell, in a later communication, enumerates the military of West Cambridge at this period thus: (1) The minute-men at the time of the Embargo Scare in 1808; (2) The old standing militia; (3) The cavalry; (4) The light infantry, inaugurated Sept. 1811; (5) The exempts, 1814, during the war scare and feared invasion of Boston.

2 “The town-meeting for a Bathing Tub looks like a joke, but I think I can explain it. For several years, say from 1807 to 1817, the spotted fever raged as a fatal epidemic in the country towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, exciting as much alarm and panic as the cholera in later years. Among other remedies tried, one was to set the patient over a tub of hot water, cover him with blankets, and sweat him half to death. I don't remember a case in West Cambridge, but it was in Bedford, and other towns near. While I was at Westford Academy, in 1815, a young daughter of the house where I boarded was taken at nine P. M., and died at two the next morning. Much alarm existed in West Cambridge, and as a prudential measure, I presume they ordered the steaming apparatus, and for want of a better name probably the town clerk recorded it as a Bathing Tub.” J. B. Russell