These habits are what gives them the ability to endure physical work without exhaustion.
While upon this subject I would like to impress upon you the unnecessary custom of using any perfumes upon the body. The sweetest odor is that coming from a clean, healthy skin.
There is another feature of this skin cleanliness――the help it gives the kidneys. A lot of poisonous matter is cast off from the kidneys. Now, if the pores of the skin are kept constantly open, much of this material goes out through them, thereby relieving the kidneys from extra work. As you grow along in years this becomes a very important matter, for many kidney diseases are due to the overwork they have had to do, when it could have been better done by the skin. When we come to dealing with vital matters in keeping good health――the care of the sex organs――more will be told you about these poisons.
As considerably more than ninety per cent. of the body is made up of water, you can realize how necessary it is that plenty of pure water should be supplied the body. Here again the sweating process aids man to replace waste water by returning to it pure water. The loss of water containing poisonous stuff makes one thirsty, and this is one way Nature has of keeping man’s body well balanced――the useless goes out and the useful goes in.
If we thoroughly understand what our body consists of and how to care for it, there would be no necessity for doctors or medicines. In fact, drugs are far more harmful than useful. Four or five simple medicines――or rather correctives――are all man needs if he has the proper understanding of himself. Of course surgeons are necessary and doctors in accidents――such as the great diseases like pneumonia or typhoid, for these are really accidents, accidental insomuch as you have taken poisonous germs into your stomach or lungs. But even in this latter disease, knowledge of how it is contracted is all that is necessary, for then we can keep our sewerage from emptying into the drinking water; flies from landing on refuse and then on the food we are to eat, and if you carefully remember all I shall tell you, those diseases which are breaking down so many of our fathers and mothers, can be avoided. Kidney troubles, as I informed you, may be avoided by commencing to see that the kidneys do not do the work that the skin is intended to do.