Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/80

80 under similar conditions. Keep this example of plant and horse before you when you consider the question of drinking water.

Let us see what water is used for in the body, and then make up our minds whether or not we have been living normal lives in this respect.

In the first place, about 70 per cent. of our physical body is water! A certain amount of this water is being used up by our system, and leaves the body constantly, and every ounce that is used up must be replaced by another ounce if the body is to be kept in a normal condition.

The system is continuously excreting water through the pores of the skin, in the shape of sweat and perspiration. Sweat is the term applied to such excretion when it is thrown off so rapidly that it gathers and collects in drops. Perspiration is the term applied when the water is continuously and unconsciously evaporated from the skin. Perspiration is continuously being evaporated from the skin, and experiments have shown that when it is prevented the animal dies. In one of the festivals of ancient Rome a boy was covered with gold-leaf, from head to foot, in order to represent one of the gods—he died before the gold-leaf could be removed, the perspiration being unable to penetrate the varnish and the leaf. Nature's function was interrupted and the body being unable to function properly, the soul threw off its fleshly tenement.

Sweat and perspiration are shown by chemical analysis to be loaded with the waste products of the system—the refuse and filth of the body—which, without a sufficient supply of fluids in the system,