Japanese family," he says, "I could hear at their ablutions." And in the course of the day's journey toward the mountains he saw Japanese runners washing by pouring pailfuls of water over each other.

So it is in Japan; bathe, bathe, wash, wash, all the time, from morning until night. No one who has ever witnessed it ever thinks the various processes anything but beneficial to the skin. The scarf-skin, being albuminous, is slightly thinned by the use upon it of water and the alkali which goes to the formation of soap. Even by friction with water alone, it becomes more and more constantly renewed by the layers beneath it. It becomes, by combined ablution and friction, soft, pliant, and finer than satin in the appearance of its texture. Besides this, bathing has upon the corium, or true skin, a revitalizing influence, and thence upon the general system, and thence, by reaction, upon itself. Combined with the proper kinds of soaps, avoiding the irritating ones, bathing removes from the skin all effete oily products, scarf-skin scales, crusts, and everything that may impede the performance of its natural functions, or afford a lodgment to disease.

To give the reader an idea of how far below the civilization of the Japanese many Americans are in these matters, we will take no extreme case by way of illustration, but that of a very respectable man in a distant State, who once freely expressed to us his views on the subject, without the slightest suspicion of how wofully ignorant he was about it. He decided that it is wrong to bathe a baby every day, lest something may be removed that nature had intended for the protection of the skin. That was the way in which he expressed his objection. We gathered from his reply to our question as to what was the nature of the substance to which he alluded, that he meant the oil of the skin. Here was a case where knowledge and ignorance were so comfortably wedded, and reliant upon the opinions of preceding

generations, as to make it impossible to shake the conviction; so we did not attempt the impossible.

It is true, as we have already shown in the chapter on the skin as an organ of the body, that nature secretes and excretes oil for the protection of the skin, even to the point of meeting emergencies, as we had occasion to indicate in the same connection. It is also true that we can use such caustic soaps, or excess of borax, as to remove the oil in quantities so great as to be detrimental to the healthiness of the skin. But there the halftruth which the objector urged ends with the unwisdom of his conclusion. The body may be bathed daily, with the use of the more delicate soaps, with no undue removal of the oil of the skin, and with perfect maintenance of its fine condition. Nature does not cease to yield its store of lubricating material because the scarf-skin is kept cleansed. But the oil, which, having performed its purpose, remains on the surface of the skin in a degraded form, clogging the pores and preventing the freest issue of the effete products of the body, requires the combined detersive influence of pure water and good soap for its removal, and should have them. From its pure source of supply wells up, as nature requires it, whatever the skin in health demands for its best condition. Can any one imagine, and yet this objector must have done so, that any skin can be fragrant if the oily product of the sebaceous glands be retained upon it? Much more probable is it, however, that he had never seen a thoroughly well-conditioned baby, or, if he had, that his sensibility was not acute enough to detect the difference between it and one of the kind to which he had been accustomed. It is the very best practice, adopting the precautions of a warm room and tepid water, a short immersion, a brisk towelling, and quick dressing, to bathe an infant every morning of its life, when it is well, just before it takes its second meal of milk or other food for the day. Only upon these terms can it be perfectly healthy and sweet in

person, and it will be, if healthy, fragrant as a rose. If, as is true, this delicate creature is by constant bathing benefited, its vitality increased, its greatest immunity from disease secured, the process is one which cannot harm, but must improve the physical condition of any grosser being. And so we find, where there is knowledge of its efficacy, the process applied equally to relieving a lowered tone of the system, and to the increase. and maintenance of great vitality and strength.

A

CHAPTER XVI.

BATHING AS PRACTICED IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES.

FULL account of bathing as now practiced, independent

of the history of bathing in ancient and modern times, would in itself fill a volume. We are therefore confined to such general and special considerations, in both branches of the subject, as may be treated of within moderate limits.

Bathing may be regarded as divisible into four kinds, as determined by the motives prompting and the objects sought to be accomplished by the practice. These are, for recreation and comfort; for cleanliness in the interest of general health and agreeableness; for increasing vigor and beauty of person; and, lastly, for medical treatment.

As to the last object, it is to be remarked that, only very recently has the regular medical profession accorded any large measure of acceptance to hydropathic treatment in disease. Hydropathy, so-called, for a long period, and even yet in some degree associated with a visionary pathology, which fitted treatment to nearly all the ills which flesh is heir to, generally repelled regular physicians. A similar consequence ensued from a similar cause in the case of electropathy. The beginning and end of the affair in both cases are not anomalous. From the times of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, down to the present era, the main body of physicians found to its hand, or had proffered to it by the laity or some of their own brethren, procedures which it, as a wisely conservative body of men, was not willing at a moment's notice to accept. The duty of such men, besides being pioneers in discovery, is to prove all things and hold fast only that which is good.

The day has now arrived when the regular profession will