One of the most important properties of the bath is its power of preserving that balance of the nutritive functions of the body which in its essence is health; in other words, preserving the _condition_ of the body. The healthy condition implies an exact equipoise of the fluids and the solids, of the muscular and the fatty tissues, of the waste and the supply. This state of the body is normally preserved by a proportioned amount of air, exercise or labour, and food; but even the air, the exercise, the labour, and the food must be apportioned, in its kind and in its order, to the peculiar constitution of the individual. Those who have ever had occasion to reflect on this subject, must have felt the difficulties which surround it, and have been aware how extremely difficult it is to say what may be faulty in our mode of using these necessaries of our existence. If I were asked to select an example, as a standard of the just equipoise of these conditions, I should take the ploughman; intellect at the standard of day to day existence, moderate food, vigorous but not over-strained labour, plenty of air, and plentiful exposure. But who would care to accept existence on such terms as these. Give us brain, give us mind, however ungovernable, however preponderant its overweight to the physical powers, however destructive to the powers of the body. In a word, we select a morbid condition: our meals, our air, our exercise, our indoor and outdoor habits are all unsound; we prefer that they should be unsound; the necessities of our life, of our position, require that they should be unsound. How grand, therefore, the boon that will correct these evils without the necessity for making any inconvenient alteration in our habits! THAT BOON IS THE BATH. The bath promotes those changes in the blood for which fresh air is otherwise needful. The bath gives us appetite, and strengthens digestion. The bath serves us in lieu of exercise. "The people who use it," writes Mr. Urquhart, "do not require exercise for health, and can pass from the extreme of indolence to that of toil." How glorious a panacea for those home-loving matrons whom no inducement can draw forth from their _Lares_ and _Penates_, to enjoy a daily wholesome exercise, and who, as a consequence, become large, and full, and fat, and bilious, and wheezy; and who, in their breach of Heaven's law, lay the foundation of heart disease. "A nation without the bath is deprived of a large portion of the health and inoffensive enjoyment within man's reach; it therefore increases the value of a people to itself, and its power as a nation over other people."[17] [17] "The Pillars of Hercules."