Mother: Why would it not be best to let it remain in the house?
Percy: Because it would decay and make us ill.
“One inch square.”
Mother: Well, it is the same way in the house we live in. All the food we eat can not be used, and some parts of the body are wearing out all the time. If the waste stayed inside, we should become ill. In the skin there are thousands and millions of little tubes called pores, which help carry away the waste. If you become very warm, you say you are “sweating,” or per-spir´ing; that is, drops of water come out all over your body. They come through the pores, or little holes in the skin. But we sweat, or perspire, all the time, whether we can see it or not. If the pores of the skin were stopped up, a person would soon die. If the skin is very dirty, the sweat can not get out, and it stays inside. To show you how many pores there are, you may look at this little piece of paper, which is just one inch square. In such a space on the limbs there are five hundred pores. On the trunk of the body, forehead, back of the hand, and on the foot, one thousand; and on the palm of the hand and sole of the foot there are twenty-seven hundred. Each of these little waste-pipes is one-fifth of an inch long. If they were placed one after another, wise men tell us we would have two or three miles, and perhaps even more, of waste-pipes for the body. What do you suppose would happen if they were choked up, and all the waste should remain inside?
Amy: We would become ill.
Mother: We surely would. Sometimes we call it “taking cold.” If we cool off too quickly when warm, or get our clothes wet and do not put on dry ones, or in a warm spring day put on thin clothes, all these things stop the waste-pipes, and we “catch cold,” have a sore throat, and we may have a fever, which shows that the waste is being burned up inside; and the house becomes burning hot.
Percy: Then the pores must be kept open all the time if we would be well.
Mother: Yes; but there is another way than those I have told you by which they get choked up. The waste-pipes leave the dirt they carry out of the body on the skin, for that is as far as they can carry it. The master of the house must see that the skin is kept clean, so the pipes will not be choked.
Elmer: Then he ought to wash it often.