(Editor's note: Dr. Robert Wallis, MD, wrote the following article in 1991, at age 90, for Bio-Logic Aqua Technologies Biomedical Research. He is now 101. Born in France during the heyday of the great European spas, he has a PhD in Physics as well as an MD in Internal Medicine. In addition to clear writing, the article has much historical interest. Although research into the skin's utilization of external moisture has progressed considerably since 1991, the article is amazingly insightful.

When the article was written, "Bio-Logic Aqua^TM tissue-culture grade water" was referred to as "Nature's Mist^®." The article has been edited slightly to reflect this change in terminology. Bio-Logic Aqua^TM is the ingredient in NATURE'S TEARS^® EyeMist^TM and Nature's Mist^® skin mist.)

Next to air, water is the single most important element in the smooth functioning of the body's major organs of elimination-the kidneys, the intestines, the eyes and the skin. Paradoxically, the part that this last organ plays in ridding the body of waste products and toxins, as well as its immunological power, is frequently forgotten. A dramatic reminder of the skin's crucial role is the case of extensive burns: the body goes into a state of shock, auto-intoxication and acute dehydration. Curing the patient depends in great part on intensive internal and external re-hydration. The quality of the therapeutic water is of paramount importance to the perfection of the treatment, just as it is under normal physiological circumstances.

At all times, pure, lightly mineralized spring-water is the key to a health organism, both inside and out. Just as drinking this type of water cleanses us from the inside, that same quality of water when applied to our skin determines how well this precious organ functions.

I have been a "water pilgrim" for most of my 90 years. My fascination with the healing power of water began in 1914, when as a boy I accompanied my physician father to Marienbad, Czechoslovakia in hopes of curing his chronic gout. It was to be the first of many visits with him to some of the most eminent spas in Europe-Evian, Vittel and L'Eau des Thermes Sextius at Aix-en-Provence, named for a Roman emperor who cured his excesses there.

During my years in medical school and throughout my nearly 70 years of practicing internal medicine on two continents, I have sustained this early interest and applied my knowledge of water in helping heal my patients. I realized that an understanding of the synergistic action of water with the body's major organs of elimination was indispensable to my being an effective doctor. My original thesis dealt with the problems of water retention. Then, in 1929, I worked as the assistant of Professor Louis Ravaut at the Hospital Saint Louis, a world-famous institute specializing in the physiology and diseases of the skin. The following year, I won the gold medal for a Paris internship, spending the year working with Professor Maurice Villaret, chief of hydrology at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris.

During those years we did extensive experimentation with various types of mineralized spring-water and their curative powers. Put simply, we found that "less is more"; that lightly mineralized water has a double advantage over hard waters. First, it appears that the trace minerals in high dilution-almost in homeopathic doses-are better absorbed by the organism than if secured in high concentrations. Second, light water seems to favor the optimum functioning of the internal eliminatory organs as well as that of the skin.

Why Bio-Logic Aqua^TM tissue-culture grade water is the skin's ideal elixer:

1. It is very lightly mineralized compared to the majority of other spring waters.
2. Its pH, slightly on the acid side, is ideal for the skin.
3. It is packaged just as it flows from its perpetually replenished aquifer. No modification is needed.

Nature's Mist^® skin moisturizing system, with Bio-Logic Aqua^TM tissue-culture-grade water, works both subjectively and objectively: in the former sense, it gives users a feeling of freshness and well being, a feeling of "respiration of the skin"; in the latter sense, this water seems to stimulate all functions of the normal skin in four ways:

1. It facilitates the desquamation of the corneal layer of the epidermis and thus activates the formation of new skin.
2. Its unique composition acts to keep the pores open, facilitating normal elimination and perspiration as well as emptying of the sebaceous glands.
3. By the same token this dilation of the pores permits a better penetration of all products that are applied to the skin, whether cosmetic of medicinal. As early as 75 B.C. Pliny the Younger said, "Corpora non agunt nisi soluta," (nothing penetrates the body unless it is dissolved).
4. It stimulates the rich vaso-motor system of the face through successive and rapidly alternating vaso-constriction and vaso-dilation, especially at the time of evaporation.

Robert Wallis, MD
Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and of the New York Academy of Sciences