It is through the skin that much of the poison of the body is thrown off; and it is because there are conditions in our methods of living which prevent its full activity that we have so much insanity of a certain form, habits that are injurious to body and brain and are often the cause for the boy being inattentive to his studies and blamed by the teacher for being lazy or stupid. He is not, in fact, anything of the kind; he is indolent and unable to interest himself in his work because through his brain is flowing blood contaminated by poisons that the skin has not been able to cast off. I think we all know about those Saturday night’s baths. Your mother was brought up with the impression that if you had a bath once a week that was sufficient. You see the real facts were never given her. She simply thinks of cleanliness, and once a week is enough to get the DIRT off the ordinary boy. But this is the OUTSIDE dirt――what you must be careful to do is to get the _inside_ dirt――poisons――out of your system. Many an unfortunate boy has been handicapped for life because these poisons accumulated in his system as he grew up and the real cause for his nervousness, restlessness and inability to keep at one thing was never known. Here is an example of the powerful effects of not keeping the pores of the skin so open that every drop of the poisons being made in the body every minute can work out. If a healthy boy should have his body――up to his neck――wrapped in tin foil, or any similar substance which would completely close the pores of the skin, he would soon have headache. This would become very severe, followed by loss of consciousness and finally convulsions――fits followed by death. Now this would occur even if he were in the open air. You can see by this fact that the lungs cannot alone cast off the poisons in the body; in fact their principal work is to supply the blood with oxygen and throw off carbonic acid gas――carbon dioxide; the skin must get rid of much of the other injurious material. Another important thing to remember is that when this poisonous stuff is allowed to remain in the body it causes a ready soil for disease germs to grow in――typhoid fever, malaria, pneumonia, etc. If you keep the body free from all its poisons and have plenty of sleep, exercise and proper food scarcely any disease can attack you, for there are in the human body millions of little cells which roam around devouring all the germs of real diseases if they dare venture into a healthy body. If this were not so, not one of us would live out our infancy. You have heard a great many stories about the endurance of the little Japanese, and a lot has been said about its being due to their custom of living on rice. This has but little to do with their powers of endurance. Of course a diet of rice and vegetables do not leave in the body such an amount of poison as meat will leave; but even when the Japanese eat meat we witness their wonderful powers of endurance.