Let me conclude with a brief summary of the sanitary views which it is my aim to inculcate in this essay.--I have endeavoured to show the importance of the skin as an independent organ endowed with sensation, circulation, powers of nutrition, and powers of elimination. I have viewed it in its relations to the rest of the animal economy--the digestive organs, the heart, the lungs, and the brain--with the purpose of showing its influence on these organs. I have regarded it in its natural state, as full of vigour, and possessing the properties of healthy colour, texture, sensation, and secretion; and in the unnatural state to which it has been brought by the perpetual use of clothing, wherein its colour, texture, sensation, and secretion are unhealthy, and its power of generating heat lost. I have explained the manner of operation of the bath on the skin, both in its healthy and unhealthy state; how, in the former case, it is a direct preservative of the health of the skin, and, through the skin, of the entire organism; and, in the latter, that it possesses the power of restoring the skin to a state of health: further, that the bath may be made the means of preventing disease, and an adjuvant in its removal when already established. CHAPTER III. RATIONAL USE OF THE BATH. Admitting the importance of the bath to the health and well-being of society, when properly employed, it becomes our duty to consider in what the _propriety_ of its employment consists. It consists in the selection of a _temperature_ which is suitable to the constitution and idiosyncrasies of the individual; of a _time of day_ most in accord with the constitution of the body; of a period of _duration_ of the bath; of the _frequency_ of repeating it. Then we have to consider certain points of detail which come before us in the shape of objections to the bath: for example, the apprehension of _taking cold_ after the bath; of causing disturbance of the nutritive functions; of inducing weakness. And, again, we may view it as a remedy against certain affections of a spasmodic type, in which its mode of action is so clear as to be intelligible to the unmedical understanding; and further, we have to regard it in its applicability to our fellow-creatures of the four-footed class, and especially to the horse. PROPER TEMPERATURE OF THE BATH.