n.]

Compare the dirtiness of the water in which you have washed when it is
cold without soap, cold with soap, hot with soap. You will find the
first has hardly removed any dirt at all, the second a little more, the
third a great deal more. But hold your hand over a cup of hot water for
a minute or two, and then, by merely rubbing with the finger, you will
bring off flakes of dirt or dirty skin. After a vapour bath you may peel
your whole self clean in this way. What I mean is, that by simply
washing or sponging with water you do not really clean your skin. Take a
rough towel, dip one corner in very hot water,--if a little spirit be
added to it it will be more effectual,--and then rub as if you were
rubbing the towel into your skin with your fingers. The black flakes
which will come off will convince you that you were not clean before,
however much soap and water you have used. These flakes are what require
removing. And you can really keep yourself cleaner with a tumbler of hot
water and a rough towel and rubbing, than with a whole apparatus of bath
and soap and sponge, without rubbing. It is quite nonsense to say that
anybody need be dirty. Patients have been kept as clean by these means
on a long voyage, when a basin full of water could not be afforded, and
when they could not be moved out of their berths, as if all the
appurtenances of home had been at hand.

Washing, however, with a large quantity of water has quite other effects
than those of mere cleanliness. The skin absorbs the water and becomes
softer and more perspirable. To wash with soap and soft water is,
therefore, desirable from other points of view than that of cleanliness.

XII. CHATTERING HOPES AND ADVICES.

[Sidenote: Advising the sick.]

The sick man to his advisers.
"My advisers! Their name is legion. * * *
Somehow or other, it seems a provision of the universal destinies, that
every man, woman, and child should consider him, her, or itself
privileged especially to advise me. Why? That is precisely what I want
to know." And this is what I have to say to them. I have been advised to
go to every place extant in and out of England--to take every kind of
exercise by every kind of cart, carriage---yes, and even swing (!) and
dumb-bell (!) in existence; to imbibe every different kind of stimulus
that ever has been invented; And this when those _best_ fitted to know,
viz., medical men, after long and close attendance, had declared any
journe