The moral and spiritual circulation, the free action of life-forces in
character, may be checked and impeded as well as the physical forces,
as described below:
From the experiments of Scharling, Gerlach, and others, it has
been shown that appreciable quantities of carbonic acid gas
are hourly exhaled by the skin. If this process of cutaneous
respiration is absolutely interrupted, as by covering the
skin with varnish, death follows very soon, the heart and
lungs becoming gorged with blood, as in ordinary cases of
asphyxiation. In ignorance of this physiological fact, certain
monks in the middle ages gilded the skin of a young lad who
was to represent an angel (angels being understood, it would
seem, to have golden skin); but he did not live through the
performance of the “mystery” or “morality” in which he had to
play his angelic part. Even if the body be inclosed, all but the
head, in a water-proof covering, asphyxiation follows. Some,
indeed, present themselves in public gatherings, not within
the walls of lunatic asylums, either, with the respiratory,
circulatory, and perspiratory organs manifestly obstructed,
and, in fact, with the whole economy of the body from head to
foot hampered obviously to the eye by powder, paint, enamel,
corset, tight gloves, tight shoes, and goodness knows what other
contrivances for checking all the processes and movements for
whose perfect freedom of action nature has carefully provided.
These may, perhaps, be best explained as cases of reversion
to the ways of savage progenitors.--R. A. PROCTOR,
_Syndicate Letter_.
(453)