In general terms I have given you some facts necessary to know if you wish to reach full manhood in perfect health and with all the organs so adjusted that the human machine in you will work the rest of your long life without squeaking and rattling. But there are many little details for you to know in order to keep the adjustment perfect and to increase the power and energy in you—mental and physical. Too many boys and youths have never been taught how to get the best that is in them to work—to be a success because they are doing what is in them to do and are happy in doing it—this is what means success. I shall try in the next chat to go into some of these details, and so on up to the most important facts in life. To give you a comprehensive knowledge of your sex organs, how to care for them, what Life means, and in all matters that go to make up the normal man. To give you instruction that makes a man, produces the character of the man of honor, to give you the inward grace of a gentleman, which cannot manifest itself outwardly save in good manners, modesty of bearing and fearlessness. And so many of these qualities depend inwardly upon a perfect adjustment of all your organs. You shall be told all about differences of man and woman; why you should be at all times kind and considerate to the girls and women—in fact what the world means in its development and what you can do to assist in its better development.
[CHAPTER II]
THE OUTSIDE LUNGS—THE SKIN
I have told you that next to the lungs the greatest breathing organ of the body is the skin. The great importance of this fact has been overlooked by many of your school teachers and parents—that is, from the boy’s standpoint.
It is through the skin that much of the poison of the body is thrown off; and it is because there are conditions in our methods of living which prevent its full activity that we have so much insanity of a certain form, habits that are injurious to body and brain and are often the cause for the boy being inattentive to his studies and blamed by the teacher for being lazy or stupid. He is not, in fact, anything of the kind; he is indolent and unable to interest himself in his work because through his brain is flowing blood contaminated by poisons that the skin has not been able to cast off.
I think we all know about those Saturday night’s baths. Your mother was brought up with the impression that if you had a bath once a week that was sufficient. You see the real facts were never given her. She simply thinks of cleanliness, and once a week is enough to get the DIRT off the ordinary boy. But this is the OUTSIDE dirt—what you must be careful to do is to get the inside dirt—poisons—out of your system. Many an unfortunate boy has been handicapped for life because these poisons accumulated in his system as he grew up and the real cause for his nervousness, restlessness and inability to keep at one thing was never known.
Here is an example of the powerful effects of not keeping the pores of the skin so open that every drop of the poisons being made in the body every minute can work out. If a healthy boy should have his body—up to his neck—wrapped in tin foil, or any similar substance which would completely close the pores of the skin, he would soon have headache. This would become very severe, followed by loss of consciousness and finally convulsions—fits followed by death. Now this would occur even if he were in the open air. You can see by this fact that the lungs cannot alone cast off the poisons in the body; in fact their principal work is to supply the blood with oxygen and throw off carbonic acid gas—carbon dioxide; the skin must get rid of much of the other injurious material.
Another important thing to remember is that when this poisonous stuff is allowed to remain in the body it causes a ready soil for disease germs to grow in—typhoid fever, malaria, pneumonia, etc. If you keep the body free from all its poisons and have plenty of sleep, exercise and proper food scarcely any disease can attack you, for there are in the human body millions of little cells which roam around devouring all the germs of real diseases if they dare venture into a healthy body. If this were not so, not one of us would live out our infancy.