The epidermis does not afford complete protection against chemicals, many of them being able to destroy it quickly. The rule of washing the skin immediately after contact with strong chemical agents should always be followed.
"Rough calculations have placed the number of sweat glands on the entire body at about 2,000,000." Rettger, Studies in Advanced Physiology.
Heat also leaves the body by the lungs, partly by the respired air and partly through the evaporation of moisture from the lung surfaces. Respiration in some animals, as the dog, is the chief means of cooling the body.
"The story is told of some woodsmen who were overtaken by a severe snowstorm and had to spend the night away from camp; they had a bottle of whisky, and, chilled to the bone, some imbibed freely while others refused to drink. Those who drank soon felt comfortable and went to sleep in their improvised shelter; those who did not drink felt very uncomfortable throughout the night and could get no sleep, but in the morning they were alive and able to struggle back to camp, while their companions who had used alcohol were frozen to death.... This, if true, was of course an extreme case; but it accords with the universal experience of arctic travelers and of lumbermen and hunters in the northern woods, that the use of alcohol during exposure to cold, although contributing greatly to one's comfort for the time being, is generally followed by undesirable or dangerous results."—HOUGH AND SEDGWICK: The Elements of Hygiene and Sanitation.
Foods that are difficult to digest, or which cause disturbances of the digestive organs (a coated tongue being one indication), have a bad effect upon the skin. It is in this way that the use of tea and coffee by some people induces a sallow or "muddy" condition of the complexion.
A most valuable antiseptic ointment is prepared by the druggist from the following formula:
Lanolin, 25 grams.
Ichthyol, 6 grams.
Yellow vaseline, 20 grams.
This is applied as a thin layer on the surface, except in the case of boils or abscesses. In treating these a heavy layer is spread over the affected part and then covered with absorbent cotton or a thin piece of clean cotton cloth.
In a larger sense adjustment includes all those activities by means of which the body is brought into proper relations with its environment, including the changes which the body makes in its surroundings to adapt them to its purposes.
Almost to the present time, physiologists have described the nervous system as being made up of two kinds of structural elements which were called nerve cells and nerve fibers. The nerve cells were supposed to form the ganglia and the fibers to form the nerves. Recent investigators, however, employing new methods of microscopic study, have established the fact that the so-called nerve cell and nerve fiber are but two divisions of the same thing and that the nervous system is made up of, not two, but one kind of structural element. The term "neuron" is used to denote this structural element, or complete nerve cell.