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Are the effects, as described by hydropathists and by the British and Foreign Medical Review, produced without purging, vomiting, drugging, or the lancet—or by what other means are such essential results to be attained? We answer, by hydropathy alone are they to be produced, through the medium of the external and internal skin or mucous membrane, the most important organ in the human structure, and the most neglected by the guardians of the public health; and by the promotion of all the secretions and excretions.

The Abbé Sanctorius, a Florentine, might be said to have spent twenty years of his life in a balance determining the amount of matters thrown off by the pores of the skin. To ascertain this, he first cleaned and then placed small glasses, some not longer than thimbles, on various parts of the human frame, when the result proved that every man ought to pass off from his person, daily, from six to seven pounds. Two and a half pounds are supposed to be released by the ordinary modes of evacuation, and the remainder by the pores of the skin. Now, if this exhalation is impeded, and the necessary amount not eliminated (which must happen if the skin has lost that energy, which exercise of the body and cold ablutions can alone support), what becomes of the superfluous juices thus retained in the system? The answer is easy; they circulate through the internal organs and become the source of fevers, inflammations, dropsy, and all sorts of diseases. Medical men see these effects, but do not suppose them to have resulted from suppressed perspiration. Instead of attacking the skin, they assault the stomach and bowels, weaken the digestive organs, and by that means create disease; whilst water, on the contrary, is a remedy, possessing at once dissolving and strengthening properties, which would seem to neutralise each other, but that we have daily evidence to the contrary.

Herein lies the great secret of hydropathy: by its modes of application, morbid humours are drawn to the surface and eliminated, the body is cooled, and the skin put into a state to perform its indispensable duty. In internal inflammations, the morbid heat from the internal skin or mucous membrane is drawn off by the application of cold and irritation to the surface, and the disease subdued without charging the stomach with anything but pure spring water, which in contradistinction to drugs, produces the most salubrious effects.

The following extract shows that the skin is the great drain through which matters injurious to the system, and superfluous heat are drawn off and accounts for hydropathy being so universal a remedy.

A Practical Treatise on Healthy Skin, by Erasmus Wilson, 1 Vol. 1845.—Extract.

“The structure of the skin and the diseases to which it is liable, have latterly received from many of the medical profession considerable attention. The skin is that soft and pliant membrane which invests the whole of the external surface of the body, as also the interior which is called mucous membrane.

“The construction of these two membranes may easily inform us, without having recourse to fanciful hypotheses, how disease, affecting any part of this membrane, either internally or externally, may pass to any other part and affect the whole; and thus how a faulty digestion in a lady, a disease of the investing or mucous membrane of the stomach, may show itself in eruptions on the face. We see at once, too, how it happens that, calling into more active action the shower bath and flesh brush, dyspepsia may be avoided or cured. It serves also to explain the circumstance noticed by Fourcroy and Vauquelin, that the skin, with all its products, ‘is capable of supplying the office of the kidneys,’ and carrying off, as we know it to imbibe nourishment, the indispensable excretions for which the proper organs may be deficient.

“In explanation of this circumstance, we must remark, that the skin, internal or external, in which terminate all the arteries and commence the veins, in which too, the nerves of sensation commence, and the nerves of volition terminate, not only envelopes the whole body internally and externally, but is also the secretory organ of every part, and the immediate means of communication with the external world.

“The skin is the organ of contact with the external world, and the means of making us acquainted with every part of the universe. The senses of touch, of hearing, of smell, of taste, are all exercised by the skin.

“By the vessels terminating in the skin, or of which it is formed, all the phenomena of nutrition, and decay of appetite, and sensation, health and disease are produced.

“Whatever may be the climate or temperature in which the body is placed, it is kept at nearly one uniform and vital heat by the varying and adapting operations of the skin.

“The skin is the organ by which electricity is conducted into and out of the body.

“Its functions are, in short, proportioned to its vastness; and as it envelopes every part, so manifold are its purposes.

“The structure of the skin is highly curious; it consists of two layers; the one horny and insensible, guarding from injury; the other highly sensitive, the universal organ of feeling, which lies beneath; the latter feels, but the former dulls the impression.

“The following will show how, by the perspiratory organs, excess of water is removed from the blood, and the uniform temperature of the body preserved.

“Taken separately, the little perspiratory tube with its appended gland, is calculated to awaken in the mind very little idea of the importance of the system to which it belongs; but when the vast number of similar organs composing this system are considered, we are led to form some notion, however imperfect, of their probable influence in the health and comfort of the individual; the reality surpasses imagination and almost belief.

“The perspiratory pores on the palm of the hand, are found to be 3,528 in a square inch; now each of these pores being the aperture of a little tube of about a quarter of an inch long, it follows that in a square inch of skin on the palm of the hand, there exists a length of tube equal to 882 inches, or 73½ feet. Such a drainage as 73 feet in every square inch of skin, assuming this to be the average for the whole body, is something wonderful; and the thought naturally intrudes itself, What if this drainage were obstructed? Could we need a stronger argument for enforcing the necessity of attention to the skin? On the pulps of the finger, where the ridges of the sensitive layer of the true skin are somewhat finer than the palm of the hand and on the heel, where the ridges are coarser, the number of pores on the square inch was 2,268, and the length of tube 567 inches, or 47 feet. To obtain an estimate of the length of tube of the perspiratory system of the whole surface of the body, I think,” says Dr. Wilson, “that 2,800 might be taken as a fair average of the number of pores in the square inch, and 700 consequently of the number of inches in length. Now the number of square inches of surface in a man of ordinary height and bulk is 2,500, the number of pores therefore, 7,000,000, and the number of inches of perspiratory tube 1,750,000, that is 145,833 feet, or 48,000 yards, or nearly 28 miles.

“This is only a specimen of the extraordinary structure.

“Besides the perspiratory vessels, the skin is provided with vessels for secreting an oily substance, which is of a different nature at different parts of the body; with vessels to repair abrasion and provide for its growth, and carry off its decayed parts; with nerves and blood-vessels that are probably as numerous and extensive as the perspiratory vessels.

“It must at the same time be remembered, that the interior skin or mucous membrane, is provided with equally numerous and complicated vessels, to answer some analogous purposes. The whole of them may be affected by applications to the external skin.”

Dr. Wilson has, in his work, introduced some equally curious and instructive passages, as to the formation and uses of the oil-glands, the structure and functions of the hair, the influence of diet and clothing, and the effect of exercise and cleanliness on the health of this extensive organ.