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THE PHYSIOLOGY OF YOGAM
absorption and respiration have special organs provided for them in the higher animals, they are not altogether restricted to these, but may be performed in part by the general surface, which (although the especial organ of exhalation) permits the passage of fluid into the interior of the system, and allows the interchange of gases between the blood and the air." [Carpenter]. We thus see that it is generally accepted by physiologists that the skin may, to some extent, perform the functions of the lungs.
In some of the lower vertebrata, especially naked Amphibia, cutaneous respiration plays a much more important part. "A frog, the lungs of which have been removed, will continue to live for sometime; and during that period will continue not only to produce carbonic acid, but also to consume oxygen. In other words, the frog is able to breathe without lungs, respiration being carried on efficiently by means of the skin."-[Foster: Text-Book of Physiology, 1877,
p. 271.]
Thus we have got an organ in the skin, which, in certain lower animals, plays an important part in respiration-by which term the absorption of oxygen and the excretion of carbonic acid is meant-and which in man has some capacity to perform that function, naturally very small, but capable of considerable increase, when, as in cases of disease of the lungs, the needs of the body excite it to perform these func
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