There was another serious defect in the management of the prison, and that
was, the neglect to provide the means for entire ablution, which, in warm
climes, becomes an imperative necessity. "Animals perspire, that they may
live;" and this function is as necessary to a healthy life as either
breathing or digestion: the skin, like the lungs, gives off carbonic acid
and absorbs oxygen. But it differs from the lungs in giving off a much
larger bulk of the former gas than it absorbs of the latter. The quantity
of carbonic acid which escapes varies with circumstances. It is sometimes
equal to one thirtieth, and sometimes amounts to only a ninetieth part of
that which is thrown off from the lungs, but generally it amounts to 100
grains daily. But exercise and hard labor increase the evolution of carbon
from the skin, as it does from the lungs. A large quantity of nitrogen
also escapes by the skin.
Hence we may infer the effect upon the prisoners, from the want of
ablution, and the means of removing the accumulating filth of their
bodies. The functions of the skin, and their influence in the practical
feeding of animals, have been carefully studied by the experimentalists,
and they have observed that the difference in washed and unwashed animals,
during the process of fattening, amounts to one fifth.
Pure air and the enforcement of daily ablutions having been introduced
into some of the English schools, the sick rate was reduced two thirds. A
general of a beleaguered city in Spain was obliged to put his soldiers on
short allowance, and compelled them to bathe daily in order to amuse them,
when he found, to his surprise, that they became in better condition than
when on full rations.
Chadwick states, in his papers on Economy, that "amongst soldiers of the
line who have only hands and face washing provided for, the death-rate is
upwards of 17 per 1000."
When sent into prisons where there is a far lower diet, sometimes
exclusively vegetable, and without beer or spirits, but where regular head
to foot ablutions and cleanliness of clothes, as well as of persons, are
enforced, their health is vastly increased, and the death-rate is reduced
to 2-1/2 per 1000.