ve, less time will suffice.
Where the usages of society will allow the principal meal to be taken
near the middle of the day, the following time for meals is approved by
physiologists generally: breakfast at 7 o'clock, dinner at half past 12,
and tea at 6. Luncheons and late suppers should be avoided; for the
former will always be found to interfere with the healthful performance
of the function of digestion, and the latter will induce restlessness,
unpleasant dreams, and pain in the head. "A late supper," says the
author of the Philosophy of Health, "generally occasions deranged and
disturbed sleep; there is an effort on the part of the nerves to be
quiet, while the burdened stomach makes an effort to call them into
action, and between these two contending efforts there is disturbance--a
sort of gastric riot--during the whole night. This disturbance has
sometimes terminated in a fit of apoplexy and in death."

THE SKIN.--This membranous covering, which is spread over the surface of
the body to shield the parts beneath, serves also as an excreting and
secreting organ. By the great supply of blood which it receives, it is
admirably fitted for this purpose. The whole animal system, as we have
seen, is in a state of transition, decay and renovation constantly
succeeding each other. While the stomach and alimentary canal take in
new materials, the skin forms one of the principal outlets by which
particles that are useless to the system are thrown out of the body.
Every one knows that the skin perspires, and that checked perspiration
is a powerful cause of disease and death; but few have any just notion
of the extent and influence of this exhalation. When the body is
overheated by exercise, a copious sweat breaks out, which, by
evaporation, carries off the excess of heat, and produces an agreeable
feeling of coolness and refreshment. The sagacity of Franklin led him to
the first discovery of the use of perspiration in reducing the heat of
the body, and to point out the analogy subsisting between this process
and that of the evaporation of water from a rough porous surface, so
constantly resorted to in the East and West Indies, and in other warm
countries, as an efficacious means of reducing the temperature of the
air in rooms, and of wine and other drinks, much below that of the
surrounding atmosphere. This is the higher and more obvious degree of
the function of exhalation. But in the ordinary state of the system, the
skin