Page:Hatha yoga - or the yogi philosophy of physical well-being, with numberous excercises.djvu/85

Rh the urea, etc. It is needed in order to be manufactured into saliva, bile, pancreatic juice, gastric juices, and all the other valuable juices of the system, without which digestion would be impossible. Shut off your supply of fluids, and you decrease your supply of all of these necessary things. Do you realize that?

If you doubt these facts, thinking them to be but theories of the Yogis, you have but to refer to any good scientific work upon physiology, written by any of the Western authorities upon the subject. You will find all that we have told you fully corroborated there. A well-known Western physiologist has said that so much water exists in the tissues of a normal system, that it may be asserted as an axiom that "all organisms live in water." And if there is no water, there can be no life, or health.

You have been shown that the kidneys secrete about three pints of urine in twenty-four hours, which is passed off from the system, carrying in solution waste products and poisonous chemical substances which have been gathered up from the system by the kidneys. In addition to this, we have shown you that the skin excretes from one and one-half pints to two pints of water, in the shape of sweat and perspiration, in the same time. In addition to this there is a moderate quantity (average ten to fifteen ounces) given off by the lungs in exhalation during the same time. Besides a certain amount passes off through the excretions from the bowels. And a small amount is passed from the system in the shape of tears, and other secretions and excretions of the body. Now, how much water is needed to renew