WATER is boiling merrily over a brisk fire, when 
some luckless person upsets the vessel, so that the 
heated fluid exercises its scathing influence upon an 
uncovered portion of the body—hand, arm, or face. 
Those who have seen much of the effects produced 
upon the human skin by such accidents, will have 
acquired information not unworthy of influencing 
their opinion on some more general problems con- 
nected with the action of heat upon living matter. 
Here, at all events, there is no room for doubt. Boil- 
ing water unquestionably exercises a most pernicious 
and rapidly destructive action ‘upon the living matter 
of which we are composed. There is no need ta 
appeal to the sufferer’s sensations for this information. 
This, indeed, is a point of view which we may for the 
present dismiss. For however agonizing these sensa- 
tions may be, they could only supply us with infor- 
mation upon a collateral point with which we are not 
at present concerned. Apart from’ such subjective 
effects there are objective effects. That is, we are 
