The value of friction to the human body is too well known to require observation. Hair gloves, hard brushes, or coarse towels cause a glow and an elastic feeling, though if long persevered in, they irritate and weaken the skin. For the daily purposes of life, cold ablutions, and friction with dry cloths are sufficient; but to rouse the dormant energies, to give vitality to the system or combat illness, something more powerful is required. The rubbing-sheet is a small sheet, soaked in cold water, and afterwards wrung out. This the attendant throws over the patient naked, who, standing up, receives it over his head and shoulders. When thus completely enveloped, the attendant rubs (outside the sheet) the back, loins, legs, and feet of the patient, whilst he himself rubs his abdomen and chest. The operation lasts about three minutes; the wet sheet is then replaced by a dry one, and friction again renewed until the body becomes quite dry; after which, if one rubbing-sheet only is prescribed, a waist-bandage is put on, a glass of water drank, and the invalid proceeds to take the air. If two or three rubbing sheets are prescribed, after the first operation as just described is over, the patient walks about the room in the dry sheet, with no other covering, for four or five minutes, occasionally approaching the window, which should be opened, throwing open the slight covering, in order to expose his skin to the air. The second and third rubbing-sheets are applied as the first. Rubbing-sheets being used to effect several objects, are accordingly well wrung out, or not much wrung out, or scarcely wrung out at all. The first are used where there is a great want of vital energy, slow and languid circulation; the second is the ordinary mode of using the rubbing-sheet; the third is adopted where parties have lain in the packing-sheet or blankets and have no bath to cool them afterwards. Where there is a superabundance of heat, the rubbings are repeated perfectly wet, until the body is cooled. The Rubbing Sheet is one of the safest and most efficacious appliances in the Water-cure. Every human body has in it 100-1/2 degrees of heat; this is not diminished by the rubbing; by extracting we increase. Whenever persons are unwell, no matter the cause (except there may be eruptions on the body), a Rubbing Sheet is advisable. Where patients have been too exhausted to endure any other treatment, these sheets will resuscitate them in an extraordinary way. Priessnitz perceived that merely rubbing the body with a damp and afterwards with a dry cloth was beneficial; but he found that whilst one part was under the operation, the other was exposed to catching cold; this gave him the idea of the Rubbing-Sheet, with which the whole body is covered at once.