Page:Linda Hazzard - Fasting for the cure of disease.djvu/173

 should be exposed to the general purification resultant from oxygenation of the blood, and an insure this, in addition to lung exercise, the body should be in contact with outer air day and night. Well ventilated living and sleeping rooms are important to the highest degree in illness, in fasting, and in health.

BATHING. The skin or covering of the human body consists of an outer layer called the cuticle, and of an inner one, the corium. These constitute the true skin, but under them lies a third layer of cellular tissue, which is considered also as part of the skin, when that word is used in its most comprehensive sense. In man the skin is covered more or less with scattered hairs, profuse in some parts and scanty in others. The office of the skin is one of protection to the organs beneath, and it is also a vast excretory system, sending out quantities of perspiration through the sudoriferous glands located in its texture. Each of these glands consists of a long fine tube coiled into a knot near its closed end, which is situated in the cutaneous cellular tissue, and constitutes the gland proper, and of a straight or spinal duct traversing the outer layers and ending in a surface opening called a pore. Nearly 3,000 of