University of Virginia Library

THE SKIN.

Before we take our leave of the thermal
and acidulous waters, we desire to say a few
words on that beautiful organ which, above
all others, distinguishes man from the inferior
animal creation, and which in lovely woman
frequently attains such exquisite perfection as
to place her second only to the angels.

The skin being one of the great safetyvalves
of the body, though perhaps the least
regarded by the great mass of mankind, and
especially so by that portion of it yclept "the
Anglo-Saxon race," is amongst the most important
organs of the human body.

Had Nature required of the kidneys to secrete
all the impurities of the circulation, they
would be inadequate to perform the labour at
least without vastly more power than they
now possess; she has, therefore, in her wisdom,
invested the external covering of the
body and the mucous surfaces of the internal
organs with an exhalant apparatus that frees
the blood from those serous portions that are
no longer necessary for the nutrition of the
body, and from an excess of carbon and other
matters that might deteriorate its quality, just
as the absorbent system appears to have been
intended to introduce new and alterative materials
into the system for its comfort and sustenance.
How deeply the skin sympathises in
all important lesions of the great organs of the
body is known even to ordinary observers,
yet it has never received from the faculty
that consideration to which it is entitled.

It is, perhaps, not because they are not fully
sensible of its importance; but because they
despair of reforming the habits of the people
in the most essential point connected with the
healthy condition of this organ. The march
of improvement, however, is onward, and we
should never despair of effecting a reform so
obviously important as that of cleanliness.
Who would have thought twenty years ago,
that five millions of a people proverbially addicted
to intoxication would, at this day, exhibit
an example of temperance which throws into
the shade all the reforms of modern times?

In our southern country especially, there is
an urgent necessity for frequent ablutions,
owing to the relaxed state of the system, produced
by intense heat, and the consequent
evaporations of the serous portion of the blood
through the superficial covering of the body.
In such a condition of things, the balance between
the excreting functions of the skin and
kidneys is destroyed, and the former has to
perform a duty, which eventually overpowering
its energies, its action becomes morbid,
and it is no longer able to resist either the
impulse from within, or the sudden depression

from cold to which it is exposed from
without, by extraordinary and sudden vicissitudes
of temperature.

We know, however, from the experience of
eastern nations, that like all other hygienic
principles, the salutary practice of bathing is
liable to abuse. Carried to excess, and accompanied
by the use of powerful narcotics, it is
pernicious to the physical, mental, and moral
energies. It should, then, be resorted to not
exclusively as a luxury, but as a means of
cleansing the skin from accumulated impurities,
and encouraging a just proportion of the
fluids to the capillary circulation.

The manly exercise of swimming, when it
can be practised, cannot be too strongly recommended.
In the palmy days of Rome,
the river Tiber was not permitted to roll its
waters to the sea neglected and unheeded. It
was the constant practice of the Roman citizens
to disport in its bosom, after they had
anointed their bodies as a protection against
the coldness of the water. Of its efficacy in
procuring sleep we are assured by the satirist:

With regard to the wealthy, who are able
to afford themselves all the conveniences of
bathing, if they do not avail themselves of
their advantages it is their own fault, and deserve
no sympathy; but it is otherwise with
persons of moderate circumstances living in
cities, and workers in manufactories. Their
health demands the care of the public authorities,
and of their employers. One hundred
thousand dollars would construct in the city of
New York five floating baths, that would accommodate
ten thousand persons in twenty-four
hours; and these, at a charge of three
cents each, would yield a revenue of more
than one hundred thousand dollars a year.

In the manufactories of this country, which
have almost all extensive water-power, how
easy would it be to provide a large bathing
chamber, in which all the labourers, male and
female, should be required to bathe at least
once a week. It would be easy to raise the
temperature of the water to about 85 or 90° F.

In an establishment giving employment to
two hundred persons, five cents a week deducted
from the pay of each would amply pay
the proprietor, and in a mere pecuniary point

of view would be a saving to the labourers,
who may thereby be saved from many ailments
that cause loss of time. But we would
not stop here: we would recommend to the
legislatures, whenever application was made
for an act of incorporation by a manufacturing
company, to insist on a proviso obliging
the corporators to provide a convenience such
as we have described, and to insist on its use.
Whenever temperance shall have become universal,
and conveniences for bathing shall
have been furnished to the great mass of the
inhabitants of cities, and the more enlightened
and opulent portion of the community will
have by their own example induced the poorer
class to adopt this great hygienic practice, we
may look for an advance in the average of
human life and human morals, which now
might seem unattainable.

It is unnecessary to particularize the various
chronic affections of the skin. From the
earliest periods in which we find accounts of
sulphurous waters, they have been celebrated
for the cure of this class of diseases. As it is
the sulphuretted hydrogen that is the active
property in these cases, there can be little difference

in favour of any particular Spring,
used merely as an external remedy, in which
light we are now considering this class of
agents; but of this we are certain, that persons
afflicted with cutaneous diseases will in
most instances fail to realize their expectations
if they depend exclusively on the thermal
waters. It has been a long established
custom, and one the correctness of which has
been tested by experience, to spend the early
part of the season in using the sulphurous
waters, and the latter part at the Hot, Warm,
and Sweet Springs. These latter agents will
indeed, of themselves, relieve slight affections
of the surface; but it should be recollected
that most chronic diseases of the skin are dependent
on visceral derangement, and that no
external application will remove the exciting
cause. We know that sulphuretted hydrogen
is possessed of such subtle power that it pervades
the whole animal econony, and alters
or modifies the fluids from which those diseases
are propagated.

It is indeed essential that the use of the
sulphurous waters should be combined with
the simultaneous use of bathing in the mineral

water, and this is now attainable at all the
Sulphur Springs of Western Virginia. When
the system has been saturated with the sulphurous
waters, then may the natural baths
be used with double advantage; and we are
sure we do not risk the charge of extravagant
laudation, when we assert that the world cannot
produce three fountains superior to those
of which we have been treating in the foregoing
pages.