The next I shall recommend, is a Cutaneous Exercise; _Chafing of the Skin_, or as we usually call it, the Use of the _Flesh-Brush_. It is very strange that this Exercise, which was in such universal request among the Ancients, of which they have wrote so copiously, have given us so many Rules and Distinctions for the use of it, which they put in Practice, in almost all Distempers, and without which, scarce any Man of tolerable Circumstances pass’d a day, either in Sickness or in Health; I say, it is strange, that what was so much esteem’d by them, should be so totally neglected and slighted by us, especially when we consider that their Experience agrees so exactly with our Modern Discoveries in the Oeconomy of Nature, _viz._ That there is so great a disproportion between the Evacuations perform’d by the Skin insensibly, and all the others put together; that the first exceeds all the rest by many Ounces. One would be apt to think, that this Theory should convince us, that the Ancients did find their Account in those diligent Frictions, and that they really answer’d their Expectations in the several Cases, in which they made use of ’em; and that we, who live in a Colder Climate, have much more reason to expect great advantages from this Method, if we would use it to some purpose, with Continuation and close Repetition. If a Person happens to be a little more costive than ordinary, what a Concern is he in for it? What Doses of Purging Physick are repeated to take off this suppos’d Evil; which at the same time is frequently obviated by a larger _Diaphoresis_, which at such times is often sensible in the Palms of the Hands, and very often not sensible, but yet real, and to the greater Benefit of the Person, than a Laxity of the Intestines would have been. But if six or eight Ounces of the _Materia Perspirabilis_ is kept in, which is of far worse Consequence, than the like Weight of the _Fæces_; no body is very solicitous about that: and if it discover it self in a Cold or Headach, presently there is Recourse to Purgatives; and if it be the Summer time, perhaps the Purging Waters are drank so long _de die in diem_, till Nature lose the way she has been accustom’d to; and perhaps never comes to be able to make the same Discharges for Quantity by insensible Perspiration, as she did before she was thus violently forc’d out of her way. This was not the way of the Ancients, they were for stimulating and soliciting that part, which was primarily defective, that they might reduce it to an Ability to make its wonted Discharges; so that where there is a great Lett of insensible Perspiration, which in some Cases is easily discover’d by the Smoothness and Dryness of the Hands, it is certainly most natural to endeavour to stimulate the Glands of the Skin by rubbing; which by the Colour it brings into the Skin, Sufficiently shews what it is able to do, if us’d long enough. And certainly we ought to have regard to this sort of Discharge above