also, to dissipate the excessive bodily heat by their evaporation, and thus keep down the bodily temperature to a normal degree. The perspiration and sweat also (as we have stated) assist in carrying off the waste products of the system—the skin being, in fact, a supplementary organ to the kidneys. And without water the skin would, of course, be unable to perform this function
The normal adult excretes about one and one-half to two pints of water in twenty-four hours, in the shape of sweat and perspiration, but men working in rolling-mills, etc., excrete much greater quantities. One can endure a much greater degree of heat in a dry atmosphere than in a moist one, because in the former the perspiration is evaporated so rapidly that the heat is more readily and rapidly dissipated.
Quite a quantity of water is exhaled through the lungs. The urinary organs pass off a large quantity, in performing their functions, about three pints in twenty-four hours being the amount voided by the normal adult. And all this has to be replenished, in order to keep the physical machinery going right.
Water is needed by the system for a number of purposes. One of its purposes (as above stated) is to counteract and regulate the combustion constantly going on in our bodies, arising from the chemical action of the oxygen extracted by the lungs from the air, coming in contact with the carbon arising from the food. This combustion going on in millions of cells produces the animal heat. The water passing through the system regulates this combustion, so that it does not become too intense.
Water is also used by the body as a common
