REPAIR AND WASTE 30 1 



the method by which everything entering the body is 

 removed from the system. Whatever is received into the 

 stomach passes to the intestine, a portion going thence 

 through the lacteals and thoracic duct into the blood; 

 the gaseous substances, which enter the lungs, pass di- 

 rectly from these organs into the blood. Solid and liquid 

 poisons usually enter the body through the mouth and 

 stomach, and gaseous ones by way of the lungs. How, 

 then, when a poison has penetrated the system, does 

 nature expel it? If the poison is a liquid or a solid sub- 

 stance taken into the stomach, the irritation it produces 

 or the administration of an emetic may induce vomiting, 

 thus ejecting it before any part is absorbed, and so saving 

 the system from further ill effects. But if the irritant be 

 a gas taken into the lungs, or if the poison has had time to 

 enter the circulation before vomiting takes place, it must 

 then be removed from the system, through the grand 

 emunctories of the blood the perspiratory organs; that is, 

 it must pass off with the perspiration. But for this most 

 admirable provision of nature to cleanse, to purify, to 

 drain off extraneous matter, death would ensue. 



Fourth: Another important use of the perspiration is 

 to regulate the temperature of the body. It has already been 

 shown that much heat is abstracted by the process of 

 evaporation. It cannot but have been observed by every 

 one how readily exercise is followed by perspiration. 

 This, therefore, is nature's method of regulating the heat 

 of our bodies and thus dissipating fevers. 



Failure on the part of the perspiratory organs to 

 perform, in any degree, their functions causes a retention 

 in the system of matters whose presence is exceedingly 

 injurious, for putrefaction is apt to occur, whereby all the 

 fluids of the body will become contaminated, their stimu- 

 lating qualities weakened, and all the secretions so neces- 



