neutralise their injurious effects as much as possible! This is the way Hydropathic agents become scandalised in the hands of men who have not fortitude of mind or intelligence enough to abandon at once a pernicious reliance on drugs. It is, we know, an infirmity of educational training and professional practice that has engrained drug superstitions, and they are most difficult to eradicate-indeed, impossible to do so from the majority of minds. But surely when a practitioner has advanced so far as to have tested the potent curative powers of the Bath, and found no failure and deceit there, as Surgeon Milton has done, or when, like Hebra, he adopts other Hydropathic means, surely a little more study, reflection, and experience ought to make him discard drug fallacies altogether, and not mar salubrious treatment by counteracting or contaminating it with what is poisonous ? In all cases of actual sores, simple water dressing is incomparably superior to all the poultices and filthy ointments that ever were devised.

There is only one other form of skin disease to which we need refer, as our object is not to particularise the various forms of disorder peculiar to the skin, but to indicate generally that in all forms Hydropathic treatment is the surest, the safest, and by far the most agreeable that can be employed. Surgeon Milton says:

"Prurigo often breaks out in persons who have nothing to reproach themselves with in regard to cleanliness. Mr. Startin, indeed says, 'that the neuralgic itching which some writers consider as a form or variety of prurigo is, perhaps, more frequently met with in the respectable walks of life than any other cutaneous affection.' Such persons often seem surprised at being told to make free use of hot baths, but they forget that they do not take sufficient exercise to keep the skin in a healthy state, and that means, which would do very well with men riding twenty miles a-day, or working hard at training, are quite inefficient when exercise is reduced to a gentle stroll. Elderly persons in good circumstances, and people who have retired from business, often seem to think it is hardly respectable to go beyond a steady walk, but prurigo will not yield to such gentle means, and till regular active exercise has become a settled habit, the action of the skin must be encouraged. In all cases I think no woollen ought to be worn next the skin."

Now, we have very fully described the perspiratory organ

ism and functions of the skin in Chaps. VII. and VIII., with a view to illustrate the action of the Bath on the internal economy through its medium. But we now desire to draw attention. more particularly to the absolute necessity of attending to skin cleanliness, as essential to personal purity and health. We do not mean mere surface washing with soap and water, cold or warm, by which the external surface may be made to wear the appearance of cleanliness, but the thorough flushing of the pores -the perfectly healthy action of the whole organism, by which alone internal and external purity can be preserved. We will explain.

Independently of the perspiratory apparatus of the skin, there is another apparatus physiologically known as the " sebacious system," which is composed of numerous follicles spread over the greater portion of the body, the function of which is to secrete a peculiar oily matter for the purpose of keeping the surface of the skin in a soft and healthy condition. "The apparatus for keeping the surface of the skin bedewed with an oily fluid," observes Erasmus Wilson, in his Practical Treatise, "resembles, in general particulars of structure and economy, that of the perspiratory system. It consists of minute tubes, which traverse the scarf and sensitive skin, and enter the substance of the corium, where they terminate in small glands."-Page 56.

According to the same authority, and there is none higher on the subject, it is the healthy action of the sebacious system which is peculiarly and injuriously affected by the "sedentary and irregular habits of refined society." Its functions are not properly performed; the secreting process is irregularly effected, and its organism torpid; the contents of the oil cells get solid and dense, and are either imperfectly or not at all exuded. In this state they are either thrown out on the surface of the skin in a mass, or, if too solid and dry, to be so ejected, they accumulate in the tube of the gland which they unnaturally distend, and cause an irritation which frequently is manifested by extensive inflammation.

In this foul state of the sebacious system the parasite first

observed by a German physiologist, Dr. Simon, makes its appearance in the oil tubes, and multiplies rapidly. The animalcule of the skin is found in the oil tubes whenever there exists any disposition to the unnatural accumulation of their contents; it is found in numbers, varying in one to twenty, in the interior of the little groved cylinder, which is squeezed out by the pressure of the fingers."-Ibid, p. 62. This parasite Mr. Wilson calls entozoon folliculorum, and it unites the characters of the higher annelida or worm-tribe, of the lower arachnida or spider-tribe, and of the lower crustacea or crab-tribe, to such a degree that the scientific zoologist is puzzled in which class to include it.

But it appears it abounds in all town populations. "As in the majority of mankind, and certainly in all the inhabitants of cities and large towns, the skin is more of less torpid in its functions, so the presence of this animal in the skin is the rule, its absence the exception. I have found it in all ages, from youth to old age, more numerously, it is true, in the latter than in the former period, and in great and remarkable numbers during sickness."-Ibid, p. 62.

Not only is it to be found in all ages, but also in all ranks of society; and the British and Foreign Medical Review ob

serves:

"The delicate town bred lady of fashion, in descending from her carriage, shrinks instinctively from the mass of rags, filth, and vermin, which is brought in contiguity with her precious person by some pertinacious beggar; ignorant all the while that her sebacious follicles give board and lodging to a host of parasites, whose numbers may equal that of the various kinds of small deer' that nestle in the matted hair and tattered garments of the fellow being whom she regards with such loathing. Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise, but we consider that such knowledge ought not to be withheld from deference to fastidious delicacy, for it supplies an immediate inducement to the adoption of such habits as may free the sebacious system of those unwelcome inhabitants."—Vol. xxi., p. 202.

Now, a sufficient quantity of habitual exercise in pure air will effect the desired purpose. But an occasional “constitutional walk" will not have the effect; and, failing such exercise as will cause free perspiration, relieve the torpidity of the skin,

and restore its normal action, no amount of mere surface washing, nor any quantity of poisonous lotions can be of any avail. Even warm water bathing will not free the system from these disagreeable lodgers, and, in fact, failing proper healthy exercise, there is no means that can be commanded equal to the Bath. Hot Air, and not Hot Water, is the sole remedy, and this is one great reason why there should be Hot-air Baths in every town, and why every one who, lacking the necessary exercise, desires to preserve personal purity-thorough integrity of the skin. organism internally and externally-without which there cannot be perfect health-should consider it a moral duty to habitually take the Bath.

CHAPTER XXII.

The effect of Drug treatment in Cholera-Its universal failureThe Hydropathic treatment—The disease popularly known as "The Black Death"-The Drug treatment of it on the Continent-The mal-practice of Irish Physicians despite of all experience-Effects of Temperature.

CHOLERA is one of the many diseases which, in a marked degree, has baffled all the skill and resources of drug-practitioners. No medical man, pretending to character, will now presume to possess any control over this disease by his drugs. Physic is not one whit advanced in this respect, but is just now as ignorant and as powerless as in 1832; and yet how book shelves do groan under the weight of choleraic literature-an accumulation of pretentious volumes filled with wild theories and wilder remedies, conjectures and modes of treatment all in as endless a variety as the reflections in a kaleidoscope, yet all founded on drugging, and all pretending to cure by drugs! "There is no known cure for Cholera," says Dr. Johnson, Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in King's College, London, and, he adds, "there probably never will be." This probability may be taken for an absolute certainty as far as the Physic School is concerned, but not so as regards Hydropathic practice, as we will explain.

All the authentic information that has been obtained concerning Cholera, shows that it is a very simple form of disease, and that there is nothing ecessarily incurable about it. In the "Report of the Cholera Epidemic of 1865, in the Maltese Islands," by Surgeons Adams and Welch, published by the Army Medical Department, there is a great deal of valuable