SWEAT (AS. swat, 011G. siceiz, Ger. Sehweiss, sweat; connected with Lat. sndor, Gk. ISpuis, hidro8, Lith. swidrs, Skt. sreda, sweat). The fluid that is excreted through the pores of the skin; perspiration. The nature, composition, and uses of this fluid in the normal state have been noticed in the article on SKIN (q.v.). The sweat is diminished in amount in many febrile diseases, especially if the temperature is high and prolonged. Anidrosis, as this condition is called, accompanies diseases in which there is a profuse discharge of fluid from the kidneys, as in diabetes, or from the bowels or stomach. In anasarea or general oedema and mysredema sweat is diminished from stretching of the skin. Cer tain drugs. as belladonna and strychnine. marked ly diminish the amount of sweat ; others, notably pilocarpine, increase it. Profuse sweating (hy peridrosis) occurs in acute rheumatism. Asiatic
cholera, and certain adynamic fevers, the sweat ing stage of malaria, the advanced stages of pul monary plithisis. and septieemia. Certain ail ments are characterized by localized sweats; for example, the hands and feet in conditions of gen eral debility; the head in rickets; and unilateral or one-sided sweating of the head or face or body in some nervous diseases, or from pressure on the sympathetic nerves by thoracie aneurism. The eomposition and color of the sweat may in rare instances undergo remarkable alterations. When through disease the action of the kidneys has be come impaired the sweat has sometimes a urinous odor and deposits white scales or urinary solids upon the skin. This is known as uridrosis. Bromidrosis is an affection of the sweat glands characterized by offensive-smelling perspiration.