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tions of the body those which can become most offensive. Leather is porous, and freely yields effluvium to the air, besides being capable of much absorption. When made into shoes, it has added to its natural capacity for absorbing and transmitting odor that derived from the presence of the lining of the shoes. Even shoes cleaned by mixing the blacking with saliva have an unpleasant odor, because saliva is a digestive fluid, and in becoming stale, in contact with soluble matter, becomes also putrid. We are glad to say that already a movement is perceptible to do away with the dirty practice of using saliva in connection with the blacking of boots and shoes. When we see men in cars putting their odoriferous shoes in disrespectful proximity to ladies, we often have occasion to reflect how much faster the material prosperity of the country is proceeding than what should be its accompaniment in good manners.

Bromidrosis may be physiological, appertaining to healthy function, or pathological, appertaining to diseased function. An instance of the former condition may be observed in the pure Negro, and, as we individually believe, markedly to some degree in the North American Indian and in some other races, although the fact is not generally known. When the condition is pathological it may be constitutional, or it may be temporary, and it may in any case be general or local. The commonest form of the affection is, as we remarked, as localized, and the locality of its predilection and most unfortunate choice, the feet. When reaching a certain degree of virulence, the excretions become most irritating to the flesh, which is excoriated and tender to the pressure of the weight of the body in standing. If the affection be physiological, or be individually constitutional, frequent ablution with one or other of the soaps recommended for that purpose in our list of medicated soaps and frequent change of clothing will afford relief. If, on the contrary, the affection be distinctly a disease, recourse should be had to the advice of a

physician, as the treatment that should be adopted depends upon too many conditions to warrant giving a general prescription for what is, of necessity, in every instance a special case.

There is also a disease called hyperidrosis, characterized by copious, not fetid, sweating, which, as it sometimes involves the feet, should not escape notice here. For this the sufferer should go to a regular physician for constitutional treatment, for no man is in all respects as any other man in either health or sickness. In this disease frequent bathing is not indicated, but only occasional bathing of the parts in hot water, with the use of dusting powders and other external combined with internal remedial measures, which no one but a regular physician, with the patient before him and a full history of his case, is equal to judiciously prescribing.

Every man has his idiosyncrasy within a general likeness in temperament to other persons. He has his past history, which is exactly like no one else's. And he has his present condition, which is identical with no one else's. This disease is most erratic in its manifestation. It may be general or local, may be on one side or both, may be strictly localized without reference to side, and, finally, may be one of the signs of much more serious affections, such as consumption, nervous prostration, etc. The copious exudations caused by it frequently prove very annoying, and proceeding beyond that point, especially when the feet are attacked, they macerate the flesh and expose raw and painful surfaces of the corium. We counsel any one who is afflicted with the disease to resort at once to a physician for his advice. A friend of ours, who makes in consultation with us a great many experiments for discovering curative effects in electricity, has lately communicated to us what may prove an invaluable treatment for hyperidrosis. He suppressed, with one or two mild applications of the galvanic current, directly to the parts, by means of the sponge-covered poles of a battery, a long-standing,

persistent case of localized hyperidrosis. We are inclined to believe that this treatment will prove universally palliative or curative in the affection, from the fact of our holding the modern medical view, that such morbid conditions as are represented by this disease depend upon a lowering of the nerve tone, which the galvanic current, judiciously administered, certainly tends to

restore.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CONSTITUTION, GROWTH, AND DISEASES OF THE NAILS.

DESCRIPTION of the constitution, growth, and diseases

of the nails naturally follows an account of the cosmetic care and treatment of the hands and feet, for the nail is subject to unhealthiness, not only from partaking of loss of tone with the general system, but from specific disease, from the action of powerful chemical agents, and from mechanical injuries. We mentioned, in the chapter on the cosmetic care and treatment of the hands, our own individual experience with the nails, in temporarily injuring their healthy nutrition through incautiously dabbling for several months in water highly acidulated with sulphuric acid. If a cause like this could affect nails unfavorably, it can easily be realized that many others of which the reader may at present have no knowledge would seriously injure them.

We have learned, in connection with our examination of the constitution and growth of the skin, that that portion of it called the scarf-skin is pierced up to the under side of its horny layer by microscopic papillæ that rise from the surface of the corium, the sensitive skin, the true skin. In fact, these minute papillæ with single nerves may justly be regarded, so numerous and close together are they, besides being constituted like the corium, as a large extension of the corium upward to the under surface of the horny layer of the scarf-skin. Now, the nail is only a modified form of the horny layer of the scarf-skin, and the nailbed is the mucous layer re-inforced by the corium in parallel folds, instead of the corium with, as usual, a smooth general surface from which papillæ rise. The nature of the structures and forces in play is virtually the same; it is their

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