This important physiological truth should be carefully laid to heart, for it accentuates the vital necessity of imbibing a sufficient quantity of fluid daily to preserve the proportion in the system requisite for health. Water is the only known substance that possesses the power of permeating every cell and fibre of the living organism, without creating disturbance or irritation. Water is, in fact, an indispensable necessity for physical existence--its excess or deficit creating abnormal conditions; but the latter is the more common condition. Being universally present in all the tissues of the body, water is the principal agent in the elimination of waste material from the body, according to Nature’s plan--hence, for the preservation of health, every adult should drink from two to three quarts of water per day, certainly not less than two quarts. One of the remedial factors in the copious use of water in “flushing the colon” is that a liberal percentage of it is absorbed through the walls of the colon, directly into the circulation, thus increasing the amount in the tissues, and causing more fluid to pass through the kidneys--cleansing them. Hot water is, in reality, a “natural scavenger,” but its virtues are only imperfectly known. As a therapeutic agent it is almost without a peer, and yet it is so little used that it is practically a dead letter. Chemists are burning the midnight oil in their laboratories searching for new weapons with which to fight sepsis, while hot, boiled water, which is one of the best antiseptics in existence, is almost ignored. It may be asked why (if it is such an invaluable remedial agent) it is not more extensively used and advocated? In the first place, its merits are not generally known. In the second place, physicians who know of its value hesitate to prescribe it, for the reason that the majority of patients expect the doctor to prescribe drugs, and are disappointed if he does not. There is a tendency on the part of the majority of people to slight that which is near at hand and easily obtained, in favor of those things which are designated by mysterious titles, or are difficult of attainment. Man has been so long accustomed to regard with a species of awe the hieroglyphics on orthodox prescriptions, that he finds it difficult to dissociate from it the idea of talismanic power. But to return to its uses. Hot water used as a stomach bath (see description in the appendix at end of book) is a valuable auxiliary in the preservation and restoration of health.