£*•

OF THE ORGANIC SYSTEM. 101
drogen. Here are salts and minerals, the latter, when
in excess, sometimes forming gravelly and stony accre
tions. The kidneys are vital
organs ; for, if the matters
they separate from the blood,
and send off to the bladder,
through the ureters, were
retained, they would poison
the blood to putrefaction, and
paralyze
the brain to comh.
Or malpigian bodies, from the kid
ney of an owl, injected and very
largely magnified. These bodies, as
well as the testes, offer fine examples
of the extension of secreting sur
face, by the convolution of tubes. benal glands,
The skin is not less important as a great depurating
organ. I call the skin an organ, as I do lungs, liver, kid
ney. Like them, it isa vast collection of individual organs ;
each at work by itself in this great process of purifica
tion. Like the lungs and alimentary canal, the skin has
internal functions,
as well as 'external. The blood
breathes by the skin, receives oxygen ; and it is through
this avenue that it gets the life-giving influence of light,
and aromal influences, electrical, magnetic, or mesmeric,
and miasmatic. The skin, even with its covering of
horny cuticle, offers but little impediment to such liquids
as water, alcohol, spirits of turpentine, etc., and the
gases travel through it without hindrance.
Franklin's air-bath was a very common-sense discov
ery of a very common-sense philosopher. We may be
invigorated or poisoned through the skin. It is a truly
vital organ. Let a certain portion of its surface be de-