It is impossible, therefore, to avoid the conclusion that the close clothing of the body from the moment of birth, and the continuance of the process throughout our lives, must tend to prevent the proper and healthy development of the skin and also to debilitate it; and that the opposite course, of exposing the skin to the air, and promoting its natural functions by means of the bath, must have the contrary effect of hardening and strengthening the skin and rendering its functions more perfect. In the bath we learn to distinguish by the eye and by the touch, the weak and the strong, the unhealthy and the healthy skin; we find the former pale, soft, flabby, wrinkled, sordid, starved, and morbidly sensitive; while the latter is pink, hard, firm, elastic, smooth, clear, sensible, and well nourished. When the fingers are drawn forcibly over the skin of the practised bather, the white streaks caused by the pressure are instantly restored to their pink hue when the pressure is relaxed; the sanguineous stream seems to follow the pressure like a surge and instantly obliterates its effects; and the skin recoils with a snap like India-rubber when it is pulled away from the body and suddenly released. In the bath there are no wrinkles and no decrepit age; the skin becomes firm and elastic; it recovers its colour and its smoothness; it fits close to the muscular frame beneath, instead of falling away from it in grim festoons; its hues are selected from the palette of youth. But this is not all: as the skin regains its health, the hair returns upon the scalp of the bald; and white hairs which have crept untimely and unbidden among the dark locks of mid-age, shrink away from the sight, and seek a more suitable and more unwholesome roost. But these visual appearances of the skin, which obviously indicate its unhealthy external characters, also denote a deficient and imperfect circulation of the blood; a deteriorated sensibility; a defective cell-formation and secretion; an exhausted tone and vigour. In respect of one of these qualities--namely, healthy sensibility of the skin--I met in the bath with a curious and unexpected illustration. When I was invited by Mr. Stewart Rolland to pass from his Calidarium at a temperature of 170°, into his Laconicum, in which the actual temperature was 190°, but the sensible temperature some degrees higher, in consequence of the presence of watery vapour, I was suddenly made aware that the skin of my body had lost its power of appreciating the higher degrees of heat, and that my face and hands were my only reliable monitors of the actual elevation of the temperature.