Considering our pretensions to all that is refined, there is perhaps no race of people more devoid of personal cleanliness than ourselves.[4] This is a fact (however unpleasant the reference to it may be) that admits of no contradiction, for the greater proportion, including even the _higher_ and the middle classes of the population of this country, are never subjected to entire ablution during the whole period of their lives,--from their childhood to their death. Fancy an octogenarian sweltering in the accumulated impurities of three-fourths of a century! “Buried in smoke, in filth, and poisonous damps.” Can it be wondered at that _he_ hands down to his offspring a corrupt, a tainted condition of fluids, which entails misery on them in the shape of scrofula, and every variety of skin disease? Independent, however, of any hereditary predisposition to skin and other diseases, it is too much the custom for persons who merely splash with water their neck, face, and hands daily,--neglecting to wash their bodies from year to year, so that the effete matters of the system become condensed on the skin, thereby obstructing the exhalant pores, and causing various internal complaints, and very frequently universal itching,--to reconcile themselves with the idea that their sufferings have been caused by a scorbutic diathesis, which has been communicated to them by their progenitors, without any fault of their own, or any reference to their own filthy personal habits. There is perhaps no greater absurdity than the common notion, that washing the face and hands, and occasionally the feet, constitutes personal cleanliness, or that such partial ablution can act hygienically. It is from all parts of the body’s surface (more so from some than from others, especially from those that are covered) that chemical compounds and effete elements are eliminated in the shape of the sensible and insensible perspiration--therefore, to escape the evils attendant on filthy personal habits, we must not be content with partial ablution, but extend it to the entire body.